China Sends Solar Equipment to Energy-Starved Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan chose three companies from China to build new solar panels because of the huge energy shortages caused by the cold winter.
The country’s renewable energy drive should in theory be a cakewalk for companies from China, the world’s largest exporter of solar equipment. This is the first ever solar energy project won by a Chinese company. Tashkent seems happy to have a variety of partners in this sector it believes important in plugging the electricity gap in its provinces.
The Energy Ministry said Last week, a government briefing revealed that GD Power China, a consortium of Chinese businesses, won a tender to create a 150-megawatt sun power plant in Namangan. French and United Arab Emirates companies were also awarded the rights to develop solar plants in Bukhara or Khorezm.
The installation that U.A.E.’s Masdar is building is the largest of the three, with 250 megawatts of capacity, or enough to power tens of thousands of homes.
Oddly, the Energy Ministry awarded the Chinese outfit the Namangan Contract. said On December 16, it announced that it was looking to amend the deal by reducing what the grid will pay for the electricity produced at the plant. GD Power China had previously set the price at 4.828c per kilowatt hour.
This tariff is considerably higher than that charged by Masdar at 3.044 cents per kilowatthour and Voltalia SA at 2.888 cents/kilowatthour, both of which were also projects of GD Power-PowerChina. submitted For.
PowerChinaA state-owned civil engineering firm,, is expanding its portfolio of renewables across the globe. It was part of an all-Chinese group. lost to Masdar After Uzbekistan had put out a tender in 2021 for solar plants in Jizzakh and Samarkand, it was awarded the contract.
Guodian Power Development Another state-owned Chinese energy company is GD Power. It has interests in both traditional energy and renewable energy.
Green energy was on the agenda when President Shavkat Miyoyev and XI Jinping, his Chinese counterpart, discussed it back in September. held talks Sidelines to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit
There they agreed on “breakthrough projects,” according to a readout from Mirziyoyev’s office.
In May, Uzbekistan’s investment committee and China’s Ministry of Commerce reached an agreement to build a series of small and medium-sized hydroelectric power facilities worth a total of $2.7 billion.
Kursiv’s business media reported last year that two separate Chinese companies were being investigated had Reached agreements Officials in Fergana have approved two solar farms totaling more than $1 million. These projects are currently in flux.
China is sometimes involved in value chains even though it doesn’t have facilities to build them.
Masdar won a contract for a 500 megawatt windfarm in the Navoi area. turned to the Chinese turbine manufacturer Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology as its main supplier.
That project – slated for completion in 2024 – will be one of the largest of its kind in Central Asia and a notable contribution to Uzbekistan’s optimistic plans to make green energy account for a quarter of its needs by 2030.
These kinds of investments mark something of a role reversal in China’s relationship with the Uzbek energy sector. Uzbekistan was a major source of natural gas to China up until this year.
But, a severe energy crisis during an unseasonably cold Uzbek winter has put paid to Tashkent’s export ambitions, leaving swathes of the country without electricity or heat and forcing thousands of industrial workers into temporary redundancies.
Chinese companies will be an integral part of the effort to bring back energy parity.
By Eurasianet.org
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