Renewables accounted for 93 pct of installed power last year

Turkey last year added some 4,025 megawatts (MW) to its installed power capacity, around 93 percent of which are in the form of renewables, according to Energy and Natural Resources Minister Fatih Dönmez. The minister wrote on Twitter that the majority of Turkey's newly installed power capacity – around 642.1 MW – was in the solar energy sector, followed by hydroelectric power with 889.9 MW. Meanwhile, an installed capacity of 509.4 MW was put into use last year, of which 331 MW uses lignite and 271.3 MW uses natural gas.

Last year, 218.8 MW of installed power generated using geothermal energy was put into use. It was followed by 139 MW using biomass and 24 MW using imported coal.

The total new power generation in 2018 was 4,025 MW, of which 40.8 percent was provided by solar, 22.1 percent by hydroelectricity. 12.7 percent of the capacity came from wind power while 8.2 percent was provided by lignite-fired thermal power. These sources were followed by natural gas with 6.7 percent, geothermal with 5.4 percent, biomass with 3.5 percent, and imported coal with 0.6 percent.

Thus, along with the other items that came into power generation, domestic and renewable energy sources constituted 93 percent of the total installed capacity last year.