Chinese wind and hydropower developer Hydrochina Corporation, a subsidiary of China Power Construction Corporation (Powerchina), has signed a 30-megawatt (MW) wind farm deal with the Pakistani authorities to install turbines manufactured by Xinjiang, China-based Goldwind group 350 kilometers North of Karachi.
Goldwind will provide 20 customised GW82 1.5MW turbines to HydroChina Corporation, with shipments to be made at the end of the year. Each wind turbine will be supported with one box-type substation. Installation work completion is scheduled for the third quarter of 2016.
The Tapal wind project, located in the province of Sindh, is the third wind farm to be constructed in Pakistan by Hydrochina and Goldwind’s second deal in the country.
In May 2012, Hydrochina signed an agreement with First Dawood to jointly develop a 50MW wind farm in Karachi. In September of the same year, the company signed a contract with Pakistan’s Sapphire Wind Power Company to construct a 49.5MW wind project, 135 kilometers away from the city.
All three agreements, along with a coal-fired power plant to supply Port Qasim in Southern Pakistan, are four of the 14 preferential projects in the “China-Pakistan Economic Corridor”(CPEC), a megaproject which aims to connect Gwadar Port in southwestern Pakistan to China’s northwestern autonomous region of Xinjiang, notably via a network of highways, railways, pipelines to transport oil and gas.
Energy and transport connectivity are but two of the focuses of the scheme which also includes information industries and industrial parks, agricultural development and poverty alleviation, tourism, financial cooperation as well as livelihood improvement including municipal infrastructure, education, public health and people-to-people communication.
In November 2014, Goldwind completed the installation of 33 units of 1.5MW turbines for the Three Gorges First wind farm in the country. According to the Chinese Wind Energy Association, China had exported a total of 1.76 gigawatt of wind turbines to 28 countries in the world by the end of 2014.
Pakistan’s wind power development is speeding up following the introduction of a generous feed-in tariff early this year. The country has two other wind farms already built and three under construction.
The country's long-term objective is to build up its wind energy capacity to a total of 2 gigawatts (GW), according to local press reports.
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