Central Asia’s largest solar park introduced into operation in Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan on Wednesday brought online the "SES Saran" solar park, a 100-megawatt (MW) capacity facility that is the largest of its kind in Central Asia.

Located on the outskirts of Saran City in the Karaganda region, the power plant covers a surface of 164 hectares and consists of around 307,000 solar panels.  A total cost of the project is 137 million U.S. dollars.

Located in the electricity-constrained southern part of the country, the Project will help reduce dependence on electricity import from other regions (mostly coal fired plants in the north) and reduce associated transmission losses.

Kazakhstan now has two solar plants.  

The first large scale photovoltaic (solar PV) power plant was introduced into operation on May 1, 2018.  The solar PV plant with a 2-megawatt (3,500-kilowatt hour) annual capacity has been constructed in the Batyr village, Munailin district in the area of 36.05 hectares.  A total cost of the project is 1.2 billion tenge (equivalent to 3.5 million U.S. dollars) and it was financed under the Joint Business Development Support Program “Business Roadmap 2020.”  

Currently, 85.5% of Kazakhstan’s electricity comes from coal-fired plants and 8.7% from hydroelectric sources.  The coal fired plants are located in north coal producing regions.  Hydroelectric facilities are located mostly along the Irtysh River.  The southern regions of Kazakhstan do not have an enough energy resources and electricity consumption is covered by import from Kyrgyzstan. 

According to Kazakhstan Solar PV Market Outlook 2015 – 2025, Kazakhstan is very promising emerging market for photovoltaic (solar PV) energy investments amongst CIS countries,.

With the introduction of support mechanisms to the legislation in 2009, 2010, 2012 with the subsequent amendments in 2013 and newly approved feed-in-tariff (FIT) in June 2014, Kazakhstan photovoltaic energy market is supposed to start growing in next years.   

Kazakhstan has also adopted at the end of August 2013 a new feed-in tariff law – “On Supporting the Use of Renewable Energy Sources” – that provides support to renewable energy producers.  The EBRD has worked with the Ministry of Industry and New Technologies and the Ministry of Environmental Protection to help develop various aspects of the new legislation, beginning with the model for determining the feed-in tariffs.  The cost of the program is estimated at 1,100 billion tenge (equivalent to € 5.3bn).

Investors and project developers in Kazakhstan have announced investment intentions to put into operation by 2020 for over 1,750 MW (1.75 GW) wind projects and over 700 MW (0.7 GW) solar PV projects.