Financing of $100 million Mongolian Wind Farm

Construction has begun in Salkhit Uul on Mongolia's first ever wind power scheme. Mott MacDonald (UK) supported the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and FMO as lender’s technical advisor on the scheme which is being developed by Newcom LLC, a Mongolian investment company.

This is the first ever power project developed within Mongolia and will cost in the region of around US $100 million. The project will include an onshore wind farm and will be an independently developed project. The project will include 31 General Electric 1.6 XLE wind turbine generators to give a capacity of 49.6MW. The green energy created from the wind farm will be passed into the Mongolian central grid.

This project is hoping to promote opportunities within the private sectors to invest in the country's energy sector through green energy. The project will also help reduce the impact of power generation in Ulaanbaatar, which is one of the world’s most polluted cities.

Mott MacDonald’s project director Clare Rhodes-James said: “This is a particularly challenging project as the Mongolian environment is quite extreme, with winter temperatures dropping to -50°C and summer temperatures rising to 50°C, while there can also be large diurnal temperature variations. The project is also the first renewable power project to connect to the Mongolian grid, and represents an exciting challenge to the grid operator.”

Marc Buiting, senior investment officer at FMO added: “Mott MacDonald is one of the few engineering firms to fully understand how to analyse and report on bankability issues, as demonstrated on the Salkhit project. They also displayed a very welcome open attitude on areas of uncommon ground for any participant involved in the project, such as the cold-weather conditions and their impact on technology and construction management.”

Mott MacDonald is monitoring construction of the wind farm which is scheduled to finish by the end of 2012. The consultancy will continue to provide operations monitoring support for up to three years following completion.