“The wind power plant is under construction on 20 hectares and the first phase is scheduled to be completed by the end of summer,” IRNA quoted Mandana Zanganeh as saying.
The farm, located in the Mil-e Nader village in Zabol County, is the first large-scale wind farm in the southeastern province. It has 20 wind turbines each with a capacity of 2.5 MW.
“Due to the infrastructure built by the government in the region, including a 400 kV substation and 25 kilometers of transmission lines linking the plant to the national grid, conditions are appropriate for investment in the sector and more wind power plants will be built in the future,” she added.
A 1 MW wind power can produce up to 3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity a year. When operational, Mil-e Nader farm will generate up to 150 million kilo-watt hours per annum.
With abundance of wind, Zabol has huge potential for producing high volumes of electricity with wind turbines. The city is near the Afghan border and if electricity output increases, increasing power export to the neighbors would be possible.
Northern areas of the underdeveloped Sistan-Baluchestan Province are suitable for large wind farms.
The region has strong and continuous winds, known as the ‘120-day wind,’ which occurs from late May to late September in the east and southeast of the Iranian Plateau, particularly in Sistan-Baluchestan. Typical wind speed is 30-40 kilometers per hour, but occasionally exceeds 100-110 km.
Despite the advantages, there is only one small-scale wind turbine in the region.
Installed power production capacity is around 84,000 MW, but output from renewables barely comprises 1%. The share of renewables is less than 1,000 MW and there are increasing calls for moving faster towards eco-friendly energy as climate change takes a toll.
About 60.4 gigawatts of wind energy capacity was installed globally in 2019, a 19% increase from installations in 2018 and the second-best year for wind historically.
Total capacity for wind energy globally was over 651 GW at the end of 2019. China and the US remained the world’s largest onshore wind markets, together accounting for more than 60% of new capacity last year.
Offshore wind is playing an increasingly important role in driving global wind installations.
The year 2020 was expected to be a record year for wind energy, with Global Wind Energy Council forecasting 76 GW of new capacity. However, as the sector has been impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, wind energy projects have not progressed as planned.