Serbia: Drina river HPPs, transit route hub east-west and new 400Kv interconnection

The construction of three hydro power plants on Drina river which is the biggest joint venture agreement of Serbia and Bosnia and Hercegovina still awaits the realization. The investment is estimated at 870MEUR and HPPs will have the power of 320MW.
Beside the planed HPPs two countries plan to connect with high voltage 400Kv connection Bajina Basta Serbia-Visegrad BiH-Pljevlja Montenegro.
Italian government was invited again to consider its engagement into Drina HPPs system and according to Minister of energy Aleksandar Antic new initiative was sent to Italians. Almost 4 years the talks with Italians are lasting but no results. In the meantime Serbian and BiH side tried to find alternative investors, Chinese offered the financing and construction but no progress.
According to Antic the talks with Italians are lasting too much and he expects the reply on the future cooperation on middle Drina river HPPs. Additional Drina river HPP projects are Buk Bjela on upper Drina river and lower Drina river HPPs for which the Czeck Republik investors are interested specially for HPPs Kozluk and Drina 1-2-3.
Middle Drina river HPPs includes the construction of Dubrava, Tegare and Rogacica with estimated annual production of 1200 Gwh. Italy would have 51% share, Serbia 12,25% and the rest for BiH. For Buk Bjela HPP with capacity of 150MW and estimated annual production of 400Gwh an MoU was signed with Italy.
River potentials for HPPs are still being unexplored despite all initiatives from Balkans toward Italy. Local medias claim that Italians are only blocking Chinese investors with existing MoU. There is a compatibility between energy systems of Serbia and Bosnia, which were made earlier as part of one system in former joint country of Yugoslavia. Experts from both countries claim that new HPPs should be managed from one joint dispatch center, production and balancing would be more efficient.
Interconnection Serbia-Bosnia-Montenegro for which EU funded the feasibility prescribes the 48MEUR Serbian investment and Serbian government expects to get EU funding support.
Start of construction of new interconnection should start in 2018. The new cross border connection is expected to boost trading between transit blocks and also export of RES electricity toward Italy. In SEE region there are two major transit routes, from east to north-west and from east-southwest. On east Romania and Bulgaria are big exporters of electricity toward Hungary, Croatia and Italy which are major importers. Bosnia is also an exporter of electricity.
Serbia has a change to become major transit hub for all SEE region electricity interconnections. New cross border interconnection Serbia-Bosnia-Montenegro should enable primarily the electricity exports toward Italy.

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