Solar plant Gaziantep is now largest operational PV park in Turkey

Solar plant Gaziantep that consists of 25 photovoltaic sub-units, each 1 MW, has been connected to the grid in Islahiye in the Gaziantep southeastern province in Turkey. It is the largest operational solar plant in the country at the moment.

Wagner Solar GmbH, Germany’s company, and Turkish INO SOLAR have jointly accomplished installation of 25 MW PV project in Turkey’s Southeastern Anatolia Region, the company from Colbe said in the statement.

INO SOLAR developed this project for a group of land owners near Islahiye in the Gaziantep province. The solar plant was envisioned to consist of 25 unlicensed sub-units. Under the Turkish law, solar photovoltaic projects under  1 MW in size don’t need a license from the government.

The project was realized in two steps. The first 5 MW block was commissioned last year. Next 20 MW units were accepted by local grid operator TEDAŞ over a month ago and are now connected to the grid.

The installation relies on photovoltaic modules provided by German manufacturer SolarWorld and string inverters from SMA. Wagner Solar’s “TRIC flex four” ground mount systems were produced at a Turkish extrusion plant. Wagner Solar was also responsible for the engineering and installation of the mounting system and complete DC side.

Earlier this fall, Turkish solar association Günder reported that in the first half of the year the newly installed photovoltaic power in the country was around 550 MW, reaching cumulative installed PV capacity of over 1.5 GW. Of this capacity, 1,491.7 MW is represented by unlicensed PV plants, pv-magazine reported.

At that point, another 500 MW was expected to be installed by the end of this year.

The German maker of solar and wind-powered energy facilities Juwi completed a series of small solar power plants of a total power of 19.7 MW at three sites in Turkey less than a month ago. The small solar plants which do not require licenses since they each have less than one MW of installed power were built within two separate projects in the towns of Konya and Nevşehir in Anatolia and the town of Burdur in the southeast of the country.