KARACHI, Dec 23: President Asif Ali Zardari is set to inaugurate the country’s first windmill power project in Jhimpir in Thatta district on Monday.

With the inauguration the Fauji Fertilizer Company Energy Ltd’s installed project, 50 megawatts would be added to the national electricity transmission system, said project director retired Brigadier Tariq Aezaz on Sunday.

Briefing journalists at the site in Jhimpir, he said that the project was financed by local banks because of attractive-energy and people-friendly policy of the government.

In reply to a question, he said that the project was completed within a year with 33 German-made turbines with each capacity of 1.5MW.

Earlier, the country manager of the Zorlu Energy Pakistan Ltd, Syed Mumtaz Hasan, said that their model project was already generating 6MW, which was being diverted to the Hyderabad Electric Supply Corporation, while a 50 MW project was ready for operation.

He said that the Zorlu could develop more wind energy project to generate electricity from the renewable source of energy.

In total, more than 106 MW would be included in the national power transmission system from the next month, said the chief executive of the alternative energy development board (AEDB), Arif Allaudin. He said that the wind corridor in Thatta had a potential to generate 50,000 MW.

He said that as many as 24 projects had been identified for the generation of the wind power, and many companies had been approaching the AEDB for developing these projects. He said that the work on some of these projects was already going on while others would be launched after formal procedures.