Wind power for clearing the Mongolian air
SALKHIT, MONGOLIA — On a desolate, wind-raked hilltop not far from the Mongolian capital, white-helmeted workers were busily lifting, tugging and erecting 80-meter poles and fitting them with enormous pinwheel-like turbines in Mongolia’s first foray into wind-generated power.
With 31 of these 260-foot, or 79-meter, turbines made by General Electric, the Salkhit, or Windy, Wind Farm will be able to produce 50 megawatts of power when it goes online in early 2013. That is enough to supply Mongolia’s 860-megawatt central grid with approximately 5 percent of its energy needs.
Inside a V.I.P. yurt near the turbines, Hulan Davaadorj, an investment analyst for Clean Energy, a unit of Newcom Group, gave a PowerPoint presentation to a group of visiting businessmen, outlining the details of the $120 million effort. Newcom Group is the company behind the wind farm project.
The eco-friendly plant about 45 miles, or 70 kilometers, from the capital, Ulan Bator, will save Mongolia 150,000 tons of coal and reduce carbon dioxide emissions 180,000 tons annually, Ms. Hulan said. It also brings the latest renewable technology to a country hamstrung by inefficient combined heat and power stations built by the former Soviet Union. Ulan Bator has two main coal-fired power stations, one built in 1965 and the other in 1984.
Harnessing wind power is part of a new policy plan by the Mongolian government, which is looking for innovative ways to diversify into renewable energy, despite a wealth of coal reserves — Mongolia has about 100 billion tons of coal underground.
