The day after the director of the Secretariat of the Energy Community, Janez Kopac, announced that taxes on carbon dioxide emissions would be introduced in the Western Balkans by 2025 at the latest, Electric Power Industry of Serbia (EPS) announced a tender to analyze the possible use of locations for solar power plants.
As stated in the technical specification of the tender, the aim of the study is to create preconditions for the construction of solar power plants (SPP) on the facilities and land that EPS has at its disposal.
The documentation reminds that the Sofia Declaration on the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans from 2020 is an obligation to start the green energy transition, but also that one of the decisive factors in favor of faster development of RES are CO2 emission fees.
– EPS emits about 30 million tons of CO2 per year and high additional costs for the CO2 emission tax would, from the moment of their creation, have a great negative impact on the business of EPS. That is why EPS has a vital interest in increasing the share of renewable sources as much as possible and reducing the reliance on coal before the moment of the obligation to pay CO2 emission fees – it is written in the tender documentation.
It is added that in the past few years, the technology of solar panel production has advanced in terms of increasing efficiency and installed power without increasing dimensions, and that their price has been reduced at the same time, and that the construction time of solar power plants is significantly shorter than hydro and wind power.
Also, RHMZ data state that the number of hours of solar radiation on the territory of Serbia is between 1,500 and 2,200 hours a year, which places Serbia in the group of countries with suitable conditions for the use of solar energy.
– As it is necessary to provide space for the installation of panels for the construction of solar power plants, and EPS has locations and facilities on the territory of the whole of Serbia, it is necessary to identify potential facilities and locations suitable for the construction of solar power plants – the tender states.
It is pointed out that in countries that gradually replace the production of electricity from coal with other types of energy sources, a trend of using land belonging to mines and power plants (landfills, ashtrays) for the installation of solar and wind power plants has been noticed.
– EPS has large areas of this land, and surface mines and landfills are suitable for the installation of RES due to the availability of large areas of land owned by the company, the availability of necessary infrastructure and machinery and expertise and availability of existing, trained workforce.
It is also added that it is necessary to analyze other possible locations that are in the function of EPS and are not owned by EPS and examine the possibility of building SPP through a contract of use, as well as identify plants that are in the function of EPS production and supplied with energy from networks, and consider installing solar panels in order to reduce energy costs.
From the previous solar projects of EPS, it is stated that the HPP “Bajina Bašta 2017” put into operation a photovoltaic power plant “Brana Lazići” with a capacity of 330 kW, that the construction of a solar power plant was prepared at the tailings dump at PK “Ćirikovac” in Kostolac “with a capacity of 9.95 MW, and that EPS has started the project of the solar power plant “Srednje Kostolačko ostrvo” with a capacity of about 100 MW in the zone of Kostolac coal basin which is currently an active dump of ash and slag from thermal power plants, so its closure and remediation is a prerequisite to continue activities on the construction of this solar power plant.
It should be reminded that in May, EPS announced a tender for the analysis of conditions for the construction of solar power plants on the ashtrays of TPP Morava and TPP Kolubara A, and in October for the research of the location for the construction of SPP within TPP Kolubara B, eKapija reports.
