Turkey: New Regulation On Connection Of Wind Power Plants To Wind Power Monitoring And Forecasting System

The Regulation on Connection of Wind Power Plants to Wind power Monitoring and Forecasting Center (the "Regulation") published in the Official Gazette on February 25, 2015 and numbered 29278, has entered into force on the date of its publication in the Official Gazette.
 
The purpose of the Regulation is to regulate the procedures and principles: (i) for the connection of wind power plants to wind power monitoring and forecasting center (Rüzgar Gücü İzleme ve Tahmin Merkezi) ("WMFC") (ii) for the obligations of the licensees to complete the necessary connection procedures and (iii) for utilization and pricing of the monitoring and forecasting services provided by the WMFC.
 
The main issues regulated under the Regulation may be summarized as follows:
 

• The connection to WMFC is obligatory for any wind power plants with a production capacity of at least 10 MW. The wind power plants which commenced operation before the publication date of the Regulation are also subject to the Regulation and are obliged to complete the WMFC connection procedure until 31 May 2015, as regulated under the Temporary Article 4 of the Electric Network Regulation.¹ For the plants which have not yet commenced operation, the producer shall apply for the WMFC for connection at least 30 days before its application for temporary acceptance of the plant. Additionally, the producer shall also establish and complete a proper infrastructure (e.g. for scada systems and wind power analyser) as defined in the annex of the Regulation before applying for the WMFC connection.
   
• The producer will be provided with two types of data from WMFC: (i) spontaneous monitoring data, and (ii) forecasting data (up to 48 hours) of its own plant.
   
• The producer may access the monitoring data of its own plant free of charge and may access  the forecasting data of its own plant by paying the service fee. As per the Regulation, the service fee for the year 2015 is TL 1,200 (appr. USD 477.) ²

Footnotes

1  Electric Network Regulation published in the Official Gazette dated 28 May 2014 and numbered 29013 (Mükerrer).

2 The amount indicated in USD is calculated based on the FX selling rate of the Central Bank of Turkey, published in its official website on 27 February 2015, which is 1 USD = 2.5123 TL.

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