Mongolian Wind Energy Sector Development
The responsibility for conducting renewable energy studies and research works have transferred to the Renewable Energy Institute (REI) which was subsidiary of the former Ministry of Fuel and Energy around 1980s was an important event for the development of this sector.
As result of the intensive activity of The Renewable Energy Institute the very first factory which manufactures small-sized wind turbine with 50W capacity. Thus, the MONMAR LLC has started solving the essential electricity needs of herder families live in Gobi desert and steppe areas that have considerable wind energy resource. Another private company called Malchin has got an idea from this initiation and started to import small-sized wind turbines with 100W and 150W capacities for People’s Republic of China and is distributing to herder families living in South-Gobi (Umnugovi) aimag (province).
In year 2000 the Renewable Energy Institute reorganized as Renewable Energy Corporation and its activity was extended to conduct various other activities such as to provide a power supply solution for the school dormitories, hospitals and telecommunication offices located in the soum centers (administrative unit in the rural area) by using grant aid fund provided by foreign donor countries and in the frame of the international projects. For these solutions, it has chosen a wind turbine system with 2kW to 5 kW capacity in the Gobi desert and steppe areas. For the mountainous areas it decided to use a solar-wind hybrid system which consists of small-size wind turbine with 1.5 to 2 kW capacity and a solar PV system with 2 kW capacity. The Renewable Energy Corporation has started to conduct wind energy resource assessment study for the first time in Mongolia.
Furthermore, it has developed “The wind energy resource atlas of Mongolia” through implementation of a project in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the United States of America (NREL). It was determined by this study that the wind energy resource of Mongolia was estimated about 2,552 terawatt hours (billion kWh).
The National Renewable Energy Program was approved by the Parliament in 2005 and the Renewable Energy Corporation was reorganized National Renewable Energy Center a state owned factory. Based on the fact that the diesel fuel price in the market has increased dramatically and the developed wind resource map was available the Government of Mongolia has decided to utilize renewable energy resources for the electricity supply in centers of 10 soum centers that are located far away from the centralized grid system and installed wind-diesel, solar-wind hybrid systems in those locations. In implementation of these projects mainly wind energy systems with 80-100 kW installed capacity, solar PV systems with 30-40 kw installed capacity and diesel systems with 60-100 kW capacity were used.
Although, the National Renewable Energy Center has worked as a consultant in implementation of these projects in fact the contractors were not professional technical companies with a sufficient experience and knowledge. Contractors have selected renewable energy devices incorrectly and the design was made inappropriately and as a result the power supply of those soum centers could not been solved completely. Therefore, the work to connect those soum centers to the centralized grid has started again.
Newcom LLC has started to conduct the wind energy resource assessment study in accordance with the international standards.
The Renewable Energy Law was approved in 2007 and the legal environment for utilization of renewable energy resources has improved. Based on the result of wind energy resource assessment campaign Newcom LLC has initiated a project to establish a 50 MW wind farm at Salkhit mountain site in collaboration with several foreign organizations. As a result, about 31 pieces of wind turbine generators with each of capacity is 1.6 MW will be installed within the wind farm and it will be connected to the grid of central energy system of Mongolia by a 28 km long double circuit 220 kV overhead high voltage transmission line to the Nalaikh substation point.
Therefore, the Salkhit wind farm’s electricity generation will improve power supply in the central region of Mongolia and will reduce the amount of electricity importing from Russian Federation. The wind farm is expected to be put into operation at the end of this year. Taking idea from the Salkhit project, some other companies have been working to establish wind farm in other sites particularly th
