Turkey launches tender for largest offshore wind farm in the world

The Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources of the Government of Turkey is seeking developers for a 1,200 MW offshore wind farm, intended to be the largest in the world.

The ceiling price for one megawatt-hour has been set as US$8. Applicants will compete in a reverse auction with the project awarded to the lowest bidder. The winner will sign a power purchase agreement (PPA) covering the first 50 terawatt-hours of electricity production following commissioning.

Eligible bids must ensure that 60% of the equipment for the project is produced locally, and that 80% of the engineers employed are Turkish.

Applications to develop the project are invited until 23 October 2018.

The location of the offshore wind farm has not been decided. Earlier this year, three candidate regions were named - Saros and Gallipoli located in the Marmara region and Kiyiköy in Thrace.

The project is part of the government's plan to increase the country's wind and solar capacity by 10,000 MW each over the next ten years.

This project is the first in the offshore wind sector in Turkey, adding the country to a growing list of nations that have initiated projects in the sector this year, challenging the dominance of northern Europe in the implementation of the technology.

In April, India's National Institute of Wind Energy (NIWE) published a Request for Expressions of Interest (RFEOI) for the country's first commercial offshore wind farm, to have a generation capacity of 1 GW. The following month, Taiwan awarded over 3 GW capacity in its first offshore wind auction.

Development of the technology has also notably increased this year in the USA, with 1,400 MW capacity recently awarded to projects to be located off the coast of New England and the announcement of a few projects in development located off the coast of California.