Recording yet another milestone in the diversification of its clean energy business, the Russian state atomic energy corporation Rosatom announced last week that its Kuzminskaya Wind Farm, located in the Stavropol Krai region of the country, has begun supplying electricity to Russia’s power grid.
A Rosatom statement said the wind farm, with an installed capacity of 160 MW, consists of 64 wind turbine generators. NovaWind is the Rosatom subsidiary responsible for implementing wind energy projects.
“As confirmed by the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, 68 percent of the wind farm equipment is sourced locally,” the statement said.
“Kuzminskaya is our eighth wind farm in southern Russia and the sixth in the Stavropol Krai. We did not suspend its construction despite the sanctions pressure. By now, it has fed the first 100 MW of electricity into the national power grid. Kuzminskaya is our first wind farm fully built with the new supply chain strengthening technological sovereignty of the wind power sector,” NovaWind CEO Grigoriy Nazarov said.
“The commissioning of Kuzminskaya, the sixth straight wind farm in the Stavropol Krai over the last few years, is yet another step Stavropol has made towards the green energy development in a partnership with Rosatom. As soon as late 2023, the share of wind, solar and hydro in Stavropol’s energy mix will surpass 12 percent. The new capacity commissioned is our joint contribution to Russia’s technological sovereignty and decarbonisation of the economy,” Stavropol Governor Vladimir Vladimirov said.
With green energy, the Stavropol Krai reduces its carbon footprint by 900,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year by giving up on conventional energy sources and the region will cut down its annual carbon dioxide emissions by 1.3 million tons by 2025, the Governor added.
As on date, NovaWind has commissioned 880 MW of wind power capacity, the statement said. By 2027, Rosatom will put a total of about 1.7 gigawatt (GW) of wind capacity in operation.
Low-carbon power sources already account for nearly 40 percent of the Russian energy mix. With the share of wind and nuclear power growing, low-carbon generation will only expand in the future. the statement added.
