Europe will see a historic exchange of power this month when, for the first time ever, Turkey is connected to the European electric grid. That link-up, which uses GE smart grid technologies, is part of seismic energy changes underway in Turkey, ranging from an aggressive plan to generate 20 percent of its electricity production from renewable resources by 2020 to ambitious cleantech initiatives that are being launched in coordination with the World Bank. As blog cleantechies.com noted in its story last year: “As Turkey aims at taking its place among the top-ten biggest economies by 2050, an increase in its energy consumption is inevitable. Electricity demand has been growing with an annual rate of 6.5 percent since 2002 … [and] scenarios forecast a 6 percent growth rate until 2020.” On the down side, the site points out that “Turkey’s growth of electricity supply barely matches its fast growth of demand.” But on the good, the World Bank observes that the country is “one of the leaders among developing countries creating clean power and energy efficiency projects.”
 Power play: Bob Gilligan, vice president — digital energy for GE Energy Services, said that the smart grid communications and control technologies such as those being deployed in Turkey are “enabling international trade and power-sharing breakthroughs that seemed nearly impossible just a few years ago.” Photo: World Bank. |
The GE Digital Energy team says that the smart grid link-up announced today was engineered in a matter of months using GE’s interconnection safeguards and integration tools. It means Turkey will be able to buy and sell electricity across its borders — aiding its own energy needs and strengthening the reliability and availability of energy throughout all of Europe.
 Clean dreams: In Turkey, foreign natural gas (48%), coal (29%) and hydro power (17%) provide the biggest shares of resources, with renewable energy producing close to 1% of the total installed capacity, according to cleantechies.com. But in 2006, the Turkish government created incentives to get the renewable sector growing. Photo: World Bank. |
The smart grid work comes on the heels of April’s news that Gama Energy, a joint venture between Gama Holding A.S. and GE Energy Financial Services, was launching its first wind energy projects in Turkey. The Sares and Karadag wind farms in the country’s western region feature GE’s larger, 2.5-megawatt wind turbines and will be able to power about 59,000 average Turkish homes. Although Turkey has massive renewable energy sources, it has developed just 600 megawatts out of a potential estimated at 88 gigawatts.
 Nice line-up: GE’s technologies will monitor grid status, automate control of power generation and load within Turkey, and it will optimize power sharing — with the goal of improving reliability and preventing cascading outages. It’s currently in the final phases of testing. Photo: World Bank. |
Turkey’s work with the World Bank’s $5.2 billion Clean Technology Fund is designed to focus on renewable sources such as biomass, hydro, wind and geothermal –– to both develop them and to better integrate them into the grid. As blog greenprophet.com noted at the time, “Funding is being channeled through banks, which will loan cash to private entrepreneurs to give the market a boost. Banks will also give loans to business that want to become more energy efficient. The Turkish program is the first project of the Bank’s Climate Technology Fund, which is bankrolled by several countries.”
As the World Bank summed up the possibilities: “Imagine a future where energy from the sun and the wind powers megacities like Istanbul, Cairo and Mexico City — where efficient and clean mass transit systems move people where they want to go quickly. Turkey, Egypt and Mexico want to go beyond imagining.”
GE also recently launched its “ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid,” which is a $200 million commitment to find the best ideas from researchers, entrepreneurs and start-ups that will help create smarter, cleaner, and more efficient electric grids — and accelerate the adoption of power grid technologies. The 10-week challenge is one of the largest of its kind and is still attracting ideas on how to make the grid smarter from all over the world.
* Read today’s announcement
* Read the wind farm announcement
* Read “Turkey lands World Bank’s first smart grid” on greenprophet.com
* Learn more about the World Bank cleantech fund in detail
* View the World Bank’s energy slide show
* Read “World Bank to Fund Its First Smart Grid Project in Turkey” on earth2tech
* Read more Smart Grid stories on GE Reports
* Read more Energy Financial Services stories on GE Reports
* Read more renewable energy stories on GE Reports
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