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Serbia is planning two new large hydropower plants

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The Ministry of Mining and Energy will present an energy investment plan worth 17 billion euros. Investments in new power plants include the construction of reversible hydropower plants (RHE) Djerdap 3 and Bistrica, which could have a large share in the transition to clean energy sources.
“We expect that the first large investments will begin to be realized in 2022. There is the construction of large hydropower plants, such as Djerdap 3 and Bistrica, as well as solar, gas and wind power plants. All this will contribute to the stability of the energy system,” said Energy Minister Zorana Mihajlovic.
She emphasized that the Ministry is making a program how in the next 20, 30 years, Serbia will get more capacities that use renewable sources, because it is a question of the competitiveness of the economy.
“If we do not turn to green energy, we will have to pay big taxes, which is why the economy and citizens will suffer. Step by step, we are moving towards that both as a society and as an economy,” Mihajlovic emphasized.
Plans to build reversible hydropower plants (RHE) Djerdap 3, with a capacity of 2,400 MW (megawatts), and Bistrica, with a capacity of 680 MW, have been in existence for several decades, and foreign investors have repeatedly expressed interest in them, but nothing concrete has happened.
The investment in Djerdap 3 is very high and is estimated at several billion euros, and in Bistrica at around 600 million euros. These power plants operate on the principle of pumping water from the lower reservoir or river into the upper reservoir. From there, by a natural fall, through a tunnel, they reach the power plant.
Such a lake, ie a hydro-accumulation, already exists in the village of Zaovine, on the Tara mountain. Reversible hydropower plants produce peak energy and power to cover maximum consumption during the day, in other words they produce the most expensive energy.
They are also a solution for energy from green power plants, when there is too much energy for solar power plants and wind farms. This energy can then be used to pump water into the hydro-accumulation. When their production is lower then reversible hydropower plants can make up for that shortfall and start production very quickly.
Nikola Rajakovic, professor at the Belgrade Faculty of Electrical Engineering and president of the Association of Power Engineers, says that the Bistrica project can adjust a lot of things, as well as that it is practically half-prepared. Djerdap 3, on the other hand, exceeds the needs of Serbia and makes sense as a regional or European project
The natural lake as an upper reservoir already exists, and construction works are not expensive, but there has always been a lack of money for this project.
For Djerdap 3, Rajakovic says that the upper lakes would be built, which is very expensive, but would be good for the needs of the region and Europe, as well as for balancing production from wind and solar power plants. However, it is difficult to estimate how much it would cost.

The Electric Power Industry of Serbia (EPS) states that there is a plan to build a reversible accumulation plant Djerdap 3 on the 1007th kilometer of the Danube. It is predicted that Djerdap 3 will be built in three stages, and the energy equivalent of both accumulations, in that last phase of development, would be around 484 GWh (gigawatt hours), Nova Ekonomija reports.

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