TIRANA, May 28 – The favorable hydro situation turned Albania into a net exporter of electricity during the first quarter of this year as ample domestic production allowed the country to meet its domestic needs and export or exchange about a third of its excess electricity generation.
The improved situation comes as the country has been facing heavy rainfall since late 2017 after one of the worst droughts in decades almost paralyzed the country’s domestic electricity generation in the second half of last year and Albania’s state-run electricity operators handled costly imports of about €200 million, something that temporarily put them in dire financial straits. The heavy rainfall also caused floods throughout the country, in what has become a chronic issue for Albanian residents along rivers in the past few years as climate changes have made rainfall more intense.
Albania is a net importer of electricity, with imports depending on the domestic hydro-situation and ranging up to 40 percent of the country’s needs such as in last year’s critical situation.
A report by the country’s state-run statistical institute, INSTAT, shows Albania’s main three state-run hydropower plants and more than 100 smaller privately-run HPPs generated 3,212 GWh of electricity in the first quarter of this year, almost double compared to the same period last year, as heavy rainfall filled up the almost empty reservoir of big HPPs and caused flooding across the country.
The sharp hike in domestic production cut electricity imports to a mere 114 GWh and allowed the country’s state-run operators to increase gross exports by six times to 1,204 GWh. Albania’s gross exports also include electricity exchanges with Kosovo, whose domestic electricity generation relies on lignite-fired power plants allowing Albania to provide electricity to Kosovo during its peak production and get it back during summer or autumn when water flows are at their minimum levels curbing the country’s electricity generation.
Built in the 1970s under communism, the three state-run HPPs on the Drin River Cascade generated about two-thirds of domestic electricity generation. The remaining 35 percent was generated by more than a hundred privately-run HPPs including one by Norway’s Statkraft which has already made operational one HPP and is about to complete its second larger one by the end of this year. The Banja and Moglice HPPs, part of the €535 million Devoll Hydropower project, are being built on the Devoll River, about 70 km southeast of Tirana.
While electricity generation significantly improved, grid losses in the outdated distribution network in huge need of investment did not follow the same pace.
INSTAT data shows grid losses, a third of which still include thefts, rose to about 600 GWh in the first quarter of this year, accounting for 28.2 percent of electricity fed into the grid, down from 25 percent for the whole of 2017 and 29.4 percent during the first quarter of last year.
Meanwhile, electricity consumption by households, businesses and state-run institutions rose by an annual 6.9 percent during the first quarter of this year.
Grid losses hit a record high of 50 percent in early 2013 when the operator was brought back under state control following a failed short-spell privatization by Czech Republic’s CEZ.
More than 50,000 household and business consumers continue to pay their accumulated unpaid electricity bills over the 2007-2014 period in monthly instalments, says state-run OSHEE distribution operator.
The accumulated debts are being collected under a late 2014 nationwide electricity reform that made the collection of household and business debts compulsory and electricity thefts punishable by prison in a tough nationwide campaign that is estimated to have halved grid losses and lifted state-run electricity operators out of collapse.
