Azerbaijan talks turbines production for offshore wind plants

BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 7. Azerbaijan is considering domestic production of wind turbines for offshore wind power plants in the Caspian, Elnur Soltanov, Deputy Minister of Energy of Azerbaijan told Trend.

According to the deputy minister, preliminary research says that technical potential for offshore wind production is 157 GW.

"We have already signed relevant deals with Masdar and Fortescue Industries on the total installed capacity of 22GW, which is really huge. For instance, the entire installed capacity of power production, be it renewable, or non-renewable, is 8 GW. And out of those 22 GW, about 16 GW account for offshore wind energy production. We also have another MoU with ACWA Power on the construction of an offshore wind farm," he said.

As projects develop, more concrete figures will be able, but, in any case, Azerbaijan has more offshore wind energy than it will ever be able to utilize domestically, the deputy minister noted.

"So, basically, this is limitless energy. And when we are speaking about the production of hydrogen, we want to combine this with the offshore wind energy that we have," he added.

Soltanov pointed out that offshore wind is more expensive than onshore wind, or solar power.

"The thing that does not facilitate eventual issues is the fact that Azerbaijan is a landlocked country. Those wind turbines are huge. We are talking about length of a single blaze that reaches about 100 meters. And, unless you produce them domestically, you have to utilize Volga-Don Canal to bring them in, and with the current war that is going on, this does not help either. And bringing them over land is technically very demanding and challenging. So, we are really thinking about maximizing the domestic production. This will help neutralize the fact that we are a landlocked country," he explained.