Thursday, 9 June 2011

Ashegoda Wind Farm, the first of its kind in Ethiopia, is going to start projection of the first megawatt of electricity in July according to Jean-Christophe Belliard, the Ambassador of France to Ethiopia, who has been closely following the project.

The wind farm will have an installed capacity to generate 120 megawatt of electricity.

Believed to be the biggest wind farm in sub-Saharan Africa, the wind farm project is to be completed in three phases. The first of the project's three phases, according to the ambassador, will be fully completed by September and connected to the national grid with an installed capacity of 30 megawatt of electricity.

The construction of the wind farm project is in progress in Ashegoda, 20 km south west of Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray Regional State. Vergnet Group, the French turbine manufacturer and developer of wind farm, is commissioned to undertake the construction of the farm project at a cost of 210 million euro.

For various reasons, the project had been going slow when it started but now it is moving fast, the ambassador said.

The ambassador said that the wind farm was equipped with the kind of technology that makes it possible to tone down the wind mill just by pressing a button when a bad storm is coming.

By the time the project is fully completed in February 2013, it will have 120 GEV-HP 1 megawatt twin-blade tilting rotor turbines installed.

Source: Walta Information Centre