October 6 (SeeNews) - Installed wind generation capacity in Bulgaria doubled on Tuesday as U.S. energy company AES Corp connected to the grid a 270 million euro ($397.8 million) wind farm, the Energy Ministry in Sofia said.
AES Corp opened the farm of 52 wind turbines with a combined installed capacity of 156 megawatts (MW) manufactured by the world's largest wind turbine producer Vestas in Kavarna, on Bulgaria's northeastern Black Sea coast, the ministry said in a statement. Bulgaria had an installed capacity of 159 MW of wind power at the beginning of 2009.
You can download the 2023 Renewable energy in Southeast Europe report here
The new wind farm was built by AES Geo Energy, a joint venture between AES and Bulgarian-German company Geo Power.
Bulgaria must cover 11% of its gross domestic energy consumption with power from renewable energy sources by 2010 and should increase that share to 16% by 2020, compared to about one percent in 2005, in order to comply with European Union directives. The country joined the bloc in 2007.
Investor interest in developing wind farm capacities in Bulgaria is considerable, the ministry said and added that currently it has requests for connecting up of 4,200 MW of new wind turbines to the country's electricity transmission system and a further 1,000 MW to the distribution network.