Ukraine's biggest vertically integrated energy holding, DTEK, has launched the Botiyeve Wind Power Station (wind farm) in Zaporizhia region.
The company press service said that the company has completed the installation of twenty wind turbines and is now hooking them up to the country’s power grid. Another ten will be installed before this month is out. By the end of this year, all thirty turbines of the first generating line (combined capacity of 90 MW) will be connected to Ukraine’s Unified Energy System.
Another 100 MW of generating capacity at the Botiyeve wind farm will be put into operation before 2014. When full designed generating capacity (200 MW) is achieved, the facility will be producing an average of 686 million KW/hours of electric power annually.
The DTEK press service said that the construction of the wind farm is one of the holding’s biggest investment projects and its first in the field of alternative energy. Overall investment in the wind farm project will run to over EUR 350 million. In the wind-power facility DTEK Pryazovsky (Zaporizhia region), which the Botiyeve wind farm is part of, plans involve the investment of about EUR 900 million.
Vestas Deutschland, the German subdivision of Denmark’s Vestas Wind Systems AS, is building the wind turbines for the Botiyeve facility.
DTEK General Director Maksym Tymchenko said that that the development of renewable energy sources is one of the holding’s strategic priorities.
“The launch of the Botiyeve Wind Power Station will produce a reduction of emissions into the atmosphere equivalent to 730,000 tonnes of CO2 each year. Our company today is by rights one of the biggest national investors – with capital investments topping UAH 9 billion by the end of 2012,” Timchenko said.
At the present time, DTEK is working on the construction of two other wind farms for the future DTEK Pryazovsky – Prymorsk and Berdiansk. The three Pryazovsky wind farms (combined generating capacity of 550 MW) are projected to be in full operation before the end of 2015.
DTEK, founded in 2005 to manage the energy assets of tycoon Rinat Akhmetov’s SCM group. DTEK manages a vertically integrated group of enterprises that mine and enrich coal, and generate and sell electricity.
