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By Libya Herald reporters.
Tripoli, 17 January 2016:
The first giant blades for the wind farm at Emsalata have been unloaded at Khoms . . .[restrict]and trucked to the construction site near the town .
Libya’s first wind farm will eventually have 16 wind turbines on top of towers 71 metres high. Each turbine will be driven by three 40-metre long blades each weighing eight tons. These are being taken to the site on special trucks.
Eventually the turbines are expected to generate at total of 27 megawatts, equivalent to 70 percent of Emsalata’s present power consumption.
The project, originally for 50 megawatts, was planned before the revolution. However in 2012, the El-Kib government gave priority to an already-scoped 60 megawatt wind farm at Derna, which was abandoned early in 2013 because of rising security concerns. There was also to be a 120 megawatt wind farm at Al-Muqrun and another for 50 megawatts at Tarhouna as part of the country’s drive into renewable energy.
Last August the Emsalata Council pressed GECOL’s renewable energy division to revive its local scheme. The state electricity company has not yet published details of the cost of the reduced-capacity project nor from where the wind turbines have been bought.
GECOL meanwhile has launched a new campaign, initially focused on Tripoli, to get customers to pay for their electricity. When the company first tried to address the issue, in 2012, it admitted that its metering and computer systems were inadequate and that bills were often estimated. Moreover, when households refused to settle their debts, collecting the money through the courts was a long and difficult process. [/restrict]
