Turkey's Electricity Generation Capacity

How much electricity does Turkey produce in a year?

According to the website of the Turkish Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, electricity consumption in 2023 is 330.3 TWh and electricity generation is 326.3 TWh.

I think we are buying 4 TWh of energy from outside.

On the same website, it is stated that as of the end of January 2024, the installed capacity in our country reached 107,271 MW.

1 terawatt means 1 million megawatts.

However, the unit of annual electrical energy production is stated as terawatt hours, while the unit of installed power is stated as megawatts. One is a unit of energy and the other is a unit of power.

Normally, with 1 MW of power, you get 1 MW of energy in 1 hour.

In this case, with 107.271 MW of installed capacity, you would expect to get 107.271 MWh of energy in one hour.

In this case, since there are 24 hours in a day, we can think that 8760 times this value of MWh energy can be produced with a capacity that operates continuously in 365 days.

If we calculate, we find that the capacity is slightly less than 939.7 TWh. 

This is the ratio of our electrical energy production to installed capacity:

326.3 / 939.7 = 34.7%.

Is this a good ratio among the countries of the world?

For example, for comparison, the installed capacity in China in 2021 was 2.4 TW. In the same year, electricity generation was 8534.3 TWh.

Our formula:

Ratio= (Production) / (Installed power x 8760 hours)

In this case, our rate is: 8534.3 / (2.4 x 8760) = 40.60%. 

Higher than us!

Let's look at another example.

The installed capacity in the US in 2023 was 1,277 TW. In the same year, electricity generation was 4017 TWh.

4017 / (1,277 x 8760) = % 35,90

This is a little higher than ours, but it is more or less the same.

This means that electricity generation is about one-third of the installed capacity. This is probably due to the fact that dams can only generate a certain percentage of the installed capacity with annual rainfall.

There may also be drawbacks in operating coal and natural gas power plants at full capacity. Perhaps the turbines are rested at certain intervals.

This ratio, which we can call the efficiency ratio, can be increased at least to the Chinese level with some investments.

***

Let's talk about our place in the world in terms of electricity generation.

In fact, I can say that we are not doing badly at all.

In the list of the top 20 countries in the world ranking, which we entered in 2008, we have risen to the 15th country level as of 2022.

Of course, this ranking is the ranking of total electrical energy production.

Unfortunately, we are not even as good as Finland in per capita production. Although Finland is quite low in the country ranking in total production (almost one-fifth of our production!), the electricity energy it produces per capita is three times ours.

This per capita value is proportional to the per capita national income of countries. 

It is also an indicator of comfort. It is also a value in line with the technology index.

Of course, especially in recent years, we prefer to obtain electricity from natural gas power plants. I have written articles on this subject before, and this is due to the more controlled production of energy from natural gas power plants.

Nevertheless, electrical energy obtained from natural gas power plants is a form of production whose foreign currency output is quite expensive depending on natural gas prices.

On the other hand, Turkey, which is in the midst of an industrial breakthrough, needs to increase its production capacity and make investments in installed capacity.

In the world, electric power generation has started to shift towards green energy.

Okay, we are not China, but even China's electricity generation in 2021 is 26 times higher than ours.

The United States of America, which was once the clear leader, has not been able to make a proper increase in its production from 2008 to 2022. Its production of 4118 TWh in 2008 only increased to 4287 TWh in 2022. It has already reduced its electricity production in 2023.

I don't know what the reason for this is, maybe they have shifted some really high energy demanding productions out of the country. 

For example, Egypt stands out as the favorite country this year.

Also, India has been making some technological investments in recent years. 

India has cheap labor, and Egypt has cheap energy resources with the natural gas deposits recently discovered in the Mediterranean and on its coasts.

Therefore, America may be looking at it as why should I produce in the US, if there is the opportunity to produce much cheaper outside the US, it is preferably more logical to exploit these cheap resources.

Nevertheless, electricity generation per capita in the US is over 12 thousand KWh, which is close to 4 times ours.

Even in Russia, electricity generation per capita is twice as high as ours.

The country with the highest electricity generation per capita is Iceland, which is 15 times more than us. It is around 55 thousand KWh.

Am I surprised? No!

I recently wrote about Iceland's geothermal energy capacity. They convert this capacity into electricity to a great extent.

Norway ranked second in the list, with per capita electricity production in Norway above 25 thousand KWh. 

It seems that they managed to enter the list in second place, probably thanks to the electrical energy they obtained from the oil resources in the Arctic Ocean.

So, if extracting oil works, how about Iran?

3750 KWh per person!

So this has nothing to do with having energy resources!

It has to do with how much the people in power use the country's resources for the benefit of the people. 

Turkey, as an energy poor country (I exclude geothermal energy!) produces almost as much electricity as Iran.

If it had oil resources like Iran, who knows what capacity it would reach.

***

In the end, we are not in a very bad position in terms of electricity production, but we are not very good either.

Does energy production solve everything? To be honest, I don't think that would work either. Yes, energy production is a good thing, but there is the income distribution part of it. There is the welfare of everyone. And balancing all these things depends on those in power changing their perspective.

Coming back to electricity, I think we have a long way to go.

With the commissioning of the nuclear power plant, our capacity and production will increase a bit more. However, the fact that we are dependent on foreign sources of energy, especially natural gas, and that the nuclear power plant is controlled by the Russians means that we are heavily dependent on foreign sources of energy, and this is not a good thing!

We need to turn to national energy sources as soon as possible and I think the best potential in this regard is geothermal energy.

I think you have realized this once again with Iceland's championship.

In my opinion, we need to accelerate investments in this field.

We need to double our current electricity generation capacity to reach even the level of Russia!

Love and respect to everyone from Moscow.