Turkey’s first hydro-solar hybrid power plant Lower Kaleköy comes online

Cengiz Holding added an 80 MW solar power plant to its Lower Kaleköy hydroelectric unit of 510 MW in eastern Turkey, integrating them into a hybrid power plant. The photovoltaic component is the largest complete facility of its kind in the country, as the government-backed 1 GW project in Karapınar is still under construction.

Two hundred thousand solar panels were laid at the banks of the Murat river in Bingöl province, just below the 88-meter high Lower Kaleköy dam. Cengiz Holding managed to install the photovoltaic unit of 80 MW in just six months and connect it to the hydropower plant.

Lower Kaleköy or Aşağı Kaleköy was the sixth-largest private system of its kind before adding the solar facility. President of Cengiz Holding Energy Group Ahmet Cengiz said it is Turkey’s first and the world’s second-largest hybrid power plant.

Cengiz: Lower Kaleköy is the world’s second-largest hybrid power plant

The new component, spanning 110 hectares, is the largest complete solar power plant in the country, as the government-backed 1 GW project in Karapınar is still under construction.

The project in the country’s east was implemented in cooperation with Özaltın Holding. “We, as a group, will focus on renewable energy sources in the coming period. We want to increase the number of hybrid power plants in the short term,” Ahmet Cengiz stated.

The hydroelectric station with electricity generation capacity of 500 MW was completed in February.

He pointed out that the solar power plant has more than one million meters of cable. The executive noted the hydropower plant project started in 2016 and that the combined capacity is equivalent to the consumption of 400,000 households.

Lower Kalekoy has mechanical power of 510 MW and electricity generation capacity of 500 MW. The dam is 945 meters long and ten meters wide. The powerhouse has three turbines of 155.5 MW each and one 33.5 MW unit.

The dam was finished in December 2019. The first unit was commissioned in May of last year and the hydropower plant reached full capacity in February.