In Western Hungary, close to the Austrian border, the first turbine of a wind farm is operational and provides the public lighting costs of the village of Vep (3000 inhabitants). The project company has a two step extension plan: first to in-stall three more turbines of altogether 4.8 MW (second phase), and then 16 turbines of 32 MW (third phase). The managers of the project aimed at proving that it is possible to use renewable energy in the village of Vép and that this kind of locally available energy can also be used for a community purpose.
This is why the project managing company was established which was able to launch the investment using resources from tenders.
Electricity generated in the wind farm is fed into the public utility electricity network. The owners have taken on a commitment saying that they would settle the complete bill for public lighting for the village of Vép from the income derived from the sale of the generated electricity. The trial operation of the wind turbine started in mid-June 2005, and the technical acceptance was scheduled for 4th September 2005.
Investment milestones:-
2002 – The idea was born, wind measurements, gaining support of village residents
2003 – Submitting bid for design tender (West Pannon Regional Development Council)
2004 – Ending design
May 2004 – winning bid of PHARE CBC
January 2005 – public procurement
June 2005 – surveys in village concerning acceptance of wind energy and construction of wind farm
4th September 2005 – technical acceptance
2006 – agreement with village on footing public lighting bill.
In Hungary the use of wind energy is traditional (windmills), but usage of wind for electricity
producing was not characteristic until last years. Until the end of the twentieth century usage of wind-energy was only possible using low-power wind converters, which operated water-pumps, inductors or water-fans. But researches confirm that it is worth to build wind power plants for electricity producing, with aware place choice.
According to the European wind sorting Hungary is a moderately windy area. The windiest
month is March, the less windy month is October, but the wind climate of Hungary is relatively equalized. The spatial inequality of wind is significant. The most suitable area of the country for using wind-energy are the northwest and the southeast regions (Radics, 2004). The geographical environment of Hungary is not ideal, but there are more advantages of usage of wind-energy, so Hungary has to exploit the wind-energy potential.
According to a survey (MPOMRI, 2006) made by Median for Callis Energetics in January 2006 wind is a ‘popular’ renewable energy-source.
 91% of the population of Hungary support building of wind power plants, and 85% would support it even if the price of electricity would increase 1.5%