DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Ukraine’s largest private energy company DTEK said on Wednesday it plans to invest 450 million Euros ($468.59 million) to expand a wind farm near the Black Sea coast, boosting its capacity.
DTEK, most of whose thermal generation capacity has been damaged or destroyed by Russian bombardments, said it would expand its Tyligulska Wind Power Plant from 114 MW to 500 MW.
The company, which is owned by Rinat Akhmetov who is Ukraine’s richest man, said it had reached a financing deal with lenders for the purchase of 64 wind turbines from Danish manufacturer Vestas.
DTEK said 370 million euros of the investment would come from bank loans backed by the state-owned Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO), while DTEK was financing the rest.
“The commitment is the largest private sector investment in Ukraine since (R)ussia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and the biggest ever private investment in Ukraine’s energy sector.”
“At full capacity, Tyligulska will produce 1.7 TWh of electricity a year – providing enough electricity to power 900,000 Ukrainian homes,” it said, adding that the planned completion date was in late 2026.
Most of DTEK’s generating capacity had traditionally been in its network of thermal power plants, which have been bombed intensively by Russia during the three-year war in Ukraine.
DTEK said last summer that 90% of its thermal generation capacity had been knocked out.
The Tyligulska wind farm, which came online in May 2023, is situated 400 kilometres south of Kyiv in the Mykolaiv region.
($1 = 0.9603 euros)
(Reporting by Max Hunder; Editing by Alexander Smith)
