Kazakhstan to get 34 green power stations by 2020

34 renewable energy sources (RES) power generation projects will be launched in Kazakhstan by 2020. They will include wind, hydro and solar power stations, Tengrinews.kz reports citing the information published on the website of Kazakhstan Ministry of Industry and New Technologies. The aggregated capacity of the green power stations will make 1,362.34 MW. Most of the energy (1,081 MW) will be produced by 13 wind power stations. 205.45 MW will be produced by 17 hydro power stations. 76 MW more will be produced by 4 solar power stations. Wind power stations will be launched in East-Kazakhstan and North-Kazakhstan oblasts in 2013. Starting from 2014 the wind energy will be used by two stations near Yerementau town in Akmola oblast. Three wind power stations will be launched in Almaty oblast in the period from 2014 to 2018, two of them will be located in Shelek corridor and another one in the Dzhumgarian gates area. The most powerful power stations (300 MW) will be built in Kargala region of Aktobe oblast. Kordai wind power station will be launched in Zhambyl oblast in 2015. 100MW wind power station will be built in Saryssu region of the same oblast. Wind power stations in Karaganda and Kostanay oblasts will start operating in 2015. Another wind power station will be built in Fort-Shevchenko town in Mangistau oblast. The biggest hydro power station with a capacity of 60.8 MW will be built at the Shelek River in Almaty oblast. Almaty oblast has the highest number of hydro power stations and it will get 11 more of them by 2020. Besides, hydro power stations will start operating in East-Kazakhstan, Zhambyl and South-Kazakhstan oblast by that time. Solar energy will be used to produce power in Almaty, Zhambyl and Kyzylorda oblasts. The station with the largest capacity (24 MW) will be built in Zhambyl oblast. Oblast administrations and different companies are responsible for implementation of the renewable energy sources projects. The power stations will be constructed at the cost of investors' own funds and loaned money. The potential of Kazakhstan’s wind power stations exceeds the country’s needs 10-fold. According to adviser of UNDP/GEF (United National Development Program/Global Ecological Fund) Gennadiy Doroshin, installation of wind generators will require significant investments and each kW of energy will cost around $2-2.5 thousand, which means that the power will cost around 20-25 tenge ($0.13-0.17) for 1 kWh.