Spanish multinational “Acciona” and Saudi investment group “Swicorp,» signed, on Wednesday, a technical and financial offer and a lease commitment for the construction of a 75-megawatt wind farm in Chenini, Tataouine governorate.
The two groups have agreed to lease the land to install 14 wind turbines of 6 megawatts each in the mountainous area of Djebel Dahar, located 80 km from Djerba.
This will be the first wind farm in the region, with an estimated cost of about 500 million dinars (nearly pound 149 million), according to the technical study.
Construction is expected to start at the end of 2025 and take 18 months. The project to build this park should create 600 jobs, the representative of the Spanish group told TAP.
Once all the administrative and procedural steps have been completed, the Tunisian Electricity and Gas Company (STEG) will purchase the park’s production under the supervision of the Ministry of Energy and Mines, the official added.
In addition, the project partners plan to build a 225-kilovolt transmission line from Chenenni to Tataouine in parallel with the construction of the wind turbines.
The mapping of Tunisia’s renewable energy potential shows that the country has several regions with favourable conditions for the development of wind energy, particularly in the north-east, centre-west and south-west. These regions cover a total area of about 18,000 km² (11% of the total area of Tunisia).
Tunisia has an interesting wind potential estimated at 8000 MW, according to the wind atlas drawn up by ANME and quoted in a study by the German international cooperation agency GIZ on the possibilities of “Power-to-X” (green hydrogen and its derivatives) in Tunisia (April 2021).
This atlas shows that the wind conditions are good (speed higher than 7 m/s at 60 m height) in the region of Nabeul, Bizerte and in the central area of Kasserine, Tataouine, Medenine, Gabes.
The wind projects are implemented under the concession regime. The government had launched, since May 2018, pre-qualification tenders for the realisation under concession of wind power plants on two state sites (total capacity of 300 MW) and on private sites (total capacity of 200 MW), as well as five solar PV projects on state land with a total capacity of 500 MWp.
The pre-qualification of applications for the two tenders on state land was completed in November 2018, resulting in the selection of 16 developers for the solar PV projects and 12 developers for the wind projects.
The restricted tender was launched in March 2019, with a commissioning horizon between 2021 and 2023, depending on the projects.
As part of the Tunisian Solar Plan and in order to achieve its energy transition by 2030, Tunisia aims to achieve a wind energy capacity of 1,755 MW.
This objective could be constrained by several factors, including the stagnation of the installed base since 2012, which has led to an erosion of the know-how acquired by operators, and the lack of a reserve of public land to host wind energy concession projects, according to studies.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse