Azernews.Az

By Aynur Jafarova

Using renewable energy sources in Kazakhstan is expedient for the local power supply, Kazenergy Association CEO said on January 22.

"The use of renewable energy sources in Kazakhstan in the current stage is economically reasonable, primarily for the local, decentralized power supply," Aset Magauov told Trend Agency.

He went on to note that wind power, hydro energy, and solar energy have the greatest prospects in Kazakhstan.

"Nevertheless, this potential is constrained by the following factors. In the first instance, it is the relatively high cost of power generation in comparison to conventional energy, the 35-50 tenge/ kilowatt/hour solar energy compared to 10-15 tenge/ kilowatt/hour coal energy. The second factor is the necessity of having a significant amount of flexible capacities. The third one is the underdeveloped network infrastructure," Magauov said.

This means the use of renewable energy sources in Kazakhstan is expedient for local power supply, he added.

Renewable energy, commonly called alternative energy, is an alternative to fossil fuels, and comes from natural sources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished.

Experts believe that Kazakhstan has to turn to alternative energy sources by 2030, as the traditional sources are being exhausted and their prices are on the rise. They say about 20-30 percent of the domestically consumed energy can be saved by using alternative energy.

Kazakhstan is viewed by the CIS countries as a promising market for wind and solar energy.

The share of alternative and renewable energy in the energy basket of Kazakhstan will reach 50 percent by 2050. Today, about 85 percent of Kazakhstan's electricity comes from coal-fired power plants, and close to 9 percent from hydroelectric power plants.

A leading Germany company ecap Solutions GmbH is planning to construct six solar power plants in Kazakhstan in 2014 -2016.The capacity of each new solar power plant stands at 50 MW.