Localisation of wind industry in a start up country with the example of Pakistan

Abstract

At the moment there is a tremendous growth of wind power usage worldwide. But nevertheless in many countries, like in Pakistan, even good usable wind power potentials are not exploited. Problems can occur due to the following reasons: policy, institutional, regulatory, financial and fiscal, technological knowledge, economical, and corruption. A lot of problems have already been solved by the Government of Pakistan by introducing incentives for private investors in the year 2006. These measures include free access to the electrical power grid, guaranteed feed-in tariffs, tax exemptions, facilitation of company foundations, and the possibility of wheeling. Currently unsolved problems for investments in wind energy production are political stability, legal security, and corruption, which cannot be solved on a short run.Due to the incentives there is a high demand of large scale wind turbines, but there are none available at the Pakistan market. This is a big chance for a possible domestic Pakistan wind energy converter production. There are three possibilities to obtain the necessary know-how. First to make and own development of wind turbines, which requires a long lead time, high investments and involves a high risk of failure because of no experience. Second the takeover of external developments in the form of technology transfer, which has low risk involved because of the experience of the licensor and is cheaper than the alternatives. And finally joint company development, which is currently not possible because there are no potential partner companies at the market.Technology transfer of wind turbine technology and core components can help the start up of wind energy use in Pakistan. Approximately 2/3 of the total production costs result from the fife core components blades, gearboxes, generators, towers, and electrical cabinets. Therefore to save money it has to be focused primarily on these components. On the other hand the own production is also interesting because a lot of them suffer from shortages. Already for little lots money can be saved with a local Pakistan production of blades, towers, and electrical cabinets. For bigger series of wind turbines also the implementation of gearboxes and generators are interesting.