Wind power in Greece - current situation future developments and prospects

This paper describes the current status of wind power in wind Greece focusing on the future developments and prospects. The exploitation of the verified wind potential of the country faces significant difficulties (public acceptance licensing, environmental, financing etc) resulting in considerable delays. Most of the applications for new wind farm installations refer to three specific areas of high wind potential in the Greek mainland. Due to the geographical distribution and the size of wind farms (10 to 40 MW installed capacity), wind integration in these areas will be highly concentrated and the wind farms will be connected mainly to the high voltage network. Since the areas of interest are connected to the bulk transmission system through weak transmission corridors there are specific plans for reinforcing the network in order to alleviate constraints and accommodate future wind farms. The expected impact of the large wind penetration will impact significantly on the ESI and the new challenges arise are also reported