Majority of Serbian 20 GW renewables pipeline in early stage

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Majority of Serbian 20 GW renewables pipeline in early stage

Date: May 19^th 2023

Author: Maja Žuvela

Category: En.vision

Topic: Electricity , Renewables , Energy policy , CO2 emissions , Economy , Ecology , En.vision

The Serbian TSO Ems is considering the requests of 20 GW of renewable energy projects for grid connection by 2030, with only 5% in the late development stage, according to a document seen by Montel.

Solar and wind projects are responsible for 18.5 GW of this capacity, which is more than double Serbia's overall installed capacity to date.

These projects are aiming for completion by 2027 but only 5%, or 889.3 MW, have reached an advanced development stage, while the remainder are in a “hibernation phase”, Nenad Jovanovic, an advisor at the engineering group LDK Consultants, has written on his LinkedIn account.

“A high number of these projects are actually the result of hyper-production of applications without elaborated stages of grid connection,” he said.

According to the Ems document, the grid connection application for the Bistrica reversible hydropower plant now entails 700 MW of capacity, which should be online in 2030. Under the previous plan, the project, which the power utility Eps was developing, was supposed to have 628 MW.

The Bistrica and the 2.2 GW Djerdap 3 hydropower plant in south-eastern and eastern Serbia, respectively, are considered pivotal in providing a stable balancing reserve for the larger deployment of intermittent capacity. However, the document does not include the Djerdap 3, which according to earlier plans could also offer an additional 200 MW of solar and 200 MW of wind capacity.

Capacity building

According to newly-adopted amendments to Serbia’s renewables legislation, developers are expected to install on-site energy storage capacity to avoid delays in grid connection.

Ems has recently invited bids for support in the preparation of system studies for the connection of renewables to the transmission grid. It has also signed a three-year contract with the Australian company Energy Exemplar to use its Plexos simulation modelling software to inform future investment decisions concerning the expansion and upgrading of Serbia’s transmission system.

“Modelling future energy scenarios and the long-term effects of greater investment into alternative energy will help Serbia to improve energy security and affordability and to integrate renewable energy storage,” Energy Exemplar said in a statement on Thursday.

Nebojsa Vucinic, the head of the development directorate at Ems, was cited as saying that new software will enable Ems to test “scenarios around supply and demand, storage, pricing and integration of new forms of energy” and assess the impact across long term asset investments.