The State Grid Corporation of China, the country’s national electricity provider, has secured a contract with Norwegian wind energy equipment maker NBT to build a wind farm in southeastern Ukraine with an investment of one billion euros, Reuters has reported.
The wind farm will be built at Zophia in the country’s Zaporozhye region with an installed power generation capacity of 750 megawatts, serving more than a million households with 160 turbines.
Once completed, the wind farm will take over from France’s Fântânele-Cogealac as the largest in Europe.
The first phase of the project, with a capacity of 42.5 megawatts, is expected to be ready by 2020, while the remaining two phases are expected to be completed by 2021. Works related to engineering, construction and procurement will be implemented by the China Electric Power Equipment and Technology Corporation, a subsidiary of State Grid, Reuters has reported.
“We are convinced that such a significant investment by an international investor will have great advantages for the renewable energy sector of Ukraine and will help to attract additional foreign investment in Ukraine,” NBT vice president Thorstein Jenssen said when announcing the project in September.
The Chinese media reported that the two companies signed an agreement to pre-finance the project with money from the Industrial Commercial Bank of China, the Export-Import Bank of China and the China Construction Bank.
Norway’s NBT has already been working with PowerChina, another Chinese energy giant to build a 250 megawatts wind farm in Syvash, southern Ukraine.
