ASTANA (26 February, 2019) - Trina Solar, the leading provider of total energy solutions, supports Kazakhstan’s green economy strategy.
As Kazakhstan continues to commit to clean energy goals with regulatory improvements and new projects being built, Trina Solar is offering its support. Executives from Trina Solar will be at the Central Asia Renewable Energy Summit 2019 in Astana (27-28 February).
“The Kazakhstan government has a roadmap to generate three percent of the country’s power generation through solar and wind by 2020,” says Trina Solar senior sales director for Asia Pacific and the Middle East, Jun-Heong Ku.
In terms of renewable energy overall, including hydro, the country aims to have renewables account for 50% of the country’s power generation in 2050, says Ku.
Kazakhstan is currently very dependent on fossil fuels – coal, gas and oil – for its power generation.
In terms of renewable energy, the biggest contributor is hydro. In 2017, hydro accounted for 2,730MW, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. Solar only accounted for 59MW, it says.
Ku says: “Solar will definitely play an important role in future, however, because there is huge potential for it in Kazakhstan. There are areas in the south of the country – in and around Almaty, for example – that receive 2,200-3,000h of sunlight a year.”
Many of Kazakhstan’s coal-fired power plants are in the north of the country, near where the coal mines are, which is very far away from Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty in the south-east corner of the country.
“Kazakhstan is huge in geographic size, but the problem with transmitting electricity via extensive networks, spanning hundreds of kilometers, is there is transmission loss. Over long distances, the electricity power loss can be as much as 30%,” says Ku.
The benefit of solar energy is it is a reliable and affordable source of electricity, says Ku, adding that solar farms can be built in a relatively short time-frame and can be built closer to where consumers are, leading to far lower transmission loss, greater reliability and better energy security.
Trina Solar is promoting, in Kazakhstan, TrinaPro which is an integrated, ‘all-in-one’ solution for utility-scale projects, namely solar farms.
TrinaPro is an integrated solution because it includes all the key components: solar panels, trackers, inverters, mounting system, etc.
The system, which is designed to withstand the harshest environments, comes with product warranties backed by Trina Solar.
Solar modules from Trina Solar have been popular with solar farm developers and investors for years. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) has given Trina Solar a top rating, for bankability, three years in a row. Bankability refers to the willingness of financial institutions to provide a term loan to a project using a specific module brand.