Russian nuclear giant building wind farms using western technology despite sanctions
Joint venture of Enercon unit has ended turbine manufacturing but Rosatom’s NovaWind is pressing on in bid for 'wind technological sovereignty'
The renewables arm of Russia’s Rosatom is continuing to build wind farms using technology licensed from Enercon subsidiary Lagerwey, despite the impact of economic sanctions on the nation's energy sector.
The nuclear giant’s 160MW Kuzminskaya wind farm in Stavropol recently started to feed power into the grid, with the company boasting it hadn’t suspended construction despite sanctions pressure, and supposedly managed to replace western components with its own parts.
“By now, it has fed the first 100MW of electricity into the national power grid,” NovaWind CEO Grigoriy Nazarov said.
“We managed to rearrange our supply chains within a short time, having replaced the withdrawn technology with Russian know-how and supplied our production facilities with necessary parts and components.
“Kuzminskaya is our first wind farm fully built with the new supply chain strengthening technological sovereignty of the wind power sector.”
Enercon through its Lagerwey unit has a 50-50 joint venture with Novawind called RedWind, which despite a decision last year to pull out of Russia the German manufacturer so far hasn’t been able to exit through a sale.
“We are not involved in these activities in Russia and there are no new supply contracts for components,” Enercon’s global head of corporate communication, Felix Rehwald, said.
“The plants, which are based on old Lagerwey technology, are being built in Russia under a license agreement concluded with NovaWind at the time, which cannot be terminated unilaterally.”
Rosatom for Kuzminskaya used the 2.5MW model, but it is not clear whether it will also use the 4.5MW technology.
Nor is it known from where Rosatom now sources the components to produce the turbines after Enercon stopped supplying NovaWind.
“The remaining delivery of components to Russia, which still resulted from the existing old contracts, was reduced to a minimum and is almost completed. All export activities were subject to a strict embargo,” Rehwald said.
Enercon due to the sanctions against Russia has also ended any technical support to RedWind or NovaWind.
The German OEM doesn’t produce Lagerwey turbines anymore itself, but has incorporated its technology into current Enercon turbine models.
Rogue Russian units
Russian units going rogue have caused problems for other players in the wind sector, and even caused friction between Nordic players.
Fortum last year had impairment losses related to its Russian exit topping $1bn, while Vestas has withdrawn from its significant investments in Russian manufacturing.
Italian utility Enel last year said it would sell its entire 56.43% stake in subsidiary PJSC Enel Russia for about €137m ($148m) to Russian buyers Lukoil and the Gazprombank-Frezia fund.