By 2030, EPS JSC will have invested more than three billion euros in green energy investment projects, of which more than two billion in renewable energy projects and around one billion euros in the construction of new and revitalization of existing hydro power plants - said Aleksandar Jakovljević, Executive Director for Investments and Development at EPS.
At the panel "New Projects for RES" at the conference "Auctions and Projects for Renewable Energy Sources - the Road to Green Kilowatts", he pointed out that EPS is intensively planning investments to ensure energy security and secure electricity supply, and that the construction of the Kostolac wind farm and the Petka solar power plant is approaching completion. Jakovljević also said that a project to build 1,000 megawatts of solar power plants with battery storage is being developed, and preparatory activities are also underway intensively for the construction of the Pumped-storage HPP Bistrica, which is one of the key projects for ensuring an increasing share of RES in the upcoming period.
Rade Mrdak, advisor to the Minister at the Ministry of Mining and Energy, stressed that the vision is for Serbia to have 11 gigawatts of green energy on the grid by the end of 2040. He said that two rounds of auctions have been completed so far, and that through the three-year auction plan, the energy system will receive 1,300 MW of green energy from private investments, which will contribute to the decarbonization of the electricity sector.
- The second round of auctions has recently been successfully completed. The result is ten new green power plants, investments of EUR 782 million, while the offered quota of 424.8 MW has been exceeded, and the capacities to be built are 645 MW. The new solar and wind power plants will contribute to greater energy security because the produced green energy will remain in Serbia and will not be exported to other markets - said Mrdak.
The Minister's advisor pointed out that, thanks to investments in the RES sector, Serbia will have provided a new 3.5 GW of green energy by the end of the decade and that almost every other megawatt-hour of electricity produced will come from renewable energy sources.
Davor Pupovac, Head of the Market Analysis Department at EPS, said that the first auctions for EPS were a great experience and that electricity purchase contracts were signed with almost all the winners from the first auction.
EPS is the only company in Serbia that offers secure placement of this energy and can balance energy from RES. Everyone who participated in the second auction signed a preliminary contract with EPS in order to be more competitive at the auction, and the journey from the first to the second auction was a learning period for both EPS and market participants - explained Pupovac.– EPS is changing the way it plans, because we are already predicting what the amount of production from RES will be. Last year it was 2 GWh from the old feed-in tariff system. In 2027 it will be as much as 4 TWh and this changes the way EPS plans and manages both on an annual and daily level. The need for optimizing day-ahead and planning is changing on daily basis and EPS has taken steps to improve management in that operational area.
