First Albanian Day held in Energy Community

TIRANA, September 13 – The Albania government will invest more than 400 million euros in the electricity distribution, transmission and generation, Economy and Energy Minister Dritan Prifti has said. The comments were made in Vienna last week when the first Albanian Day took place at the Energy Community. Led by Dritan Prifti, the delegation brought together 11 decision makers representing the Ministry, and energy operators. Initiated by Director Neykov, the Albanian Day was first of its kind. It brought all the opinion leaders of a Contracting Party around one table with the aim to assess the implementation of the Acquis as laid down in the Treaty. The Secretariat said it intends to host similar days for all the Contracting Parties.
Firstly Minister Prifti outlined the development of the Albanian energy sector. As a next step, the Secretariat described the pressing issues sector by sector. Through out the presentations, special focus was put on the situation in Albania. Finally, the Albanian Ministry and Energy regulatory Entity (ERE), presented the situation from their point of view.
In comparison to the situation in 2000, “Albania has done a good job in reforming its energy sector”, stated Prifti. Following the privatisation of OSSH, Czech company CEZ has done a remarkable work in improving the management and investing in metering system. He stressed that Albania is one of the rare countries to supply electricity 100% from hydro. As a result, it is Albanian’s intension to provide renewable energy to its European partners, particularly to Italy, including the possible construction of an underwater cable to Italy considered of particular strategic importance.
“We will continue to be champions in renewable energy, but we are also looking for other ways to use energy”, state Minister Prifti. In the area of gas, Albania has a good legislation, but no gas. It is therefore investigating the possibilities of natural gas exploitation, building of a LNG terminal or bringing in the liquid gas. The Ministry estimates an electricity gap of 900 to 1000 MW for the next decade. The Secretariat expressed its satisfaction with Albanians transmission capacities. It also views the present generation infrastructure as well processing. If the ongoing generation projects were all realized, Albanian capacity could be doubled.
Yet, the greater the new capacities, the more important a well functioning market becomes. Liberalisation means that the price of energy is determined by the cost of production. The question raised by DSO is whether this is possible without power purchasing agreement, especially in the area of new renewable energy. The Secretariat also pointed out to the pressing need to increase energy efficiency and thereby to reduce the consumption. Presently, the energy consumption increases hand in hand with the energy prices in Albania.
According to the ministry’s energy policy and investments document, modernization and expansion of the national energy sector, in order to guarantee the security of energy supply, is among Albania’s key objectives towards further social and economic development, and EU integration.
A specific feature of the Albanian Power System is its limited interconnection capacity of power transmission system with neighboring systems,
The lack of alternative energy sources as the natural gas, is another particular feature of the country, which are causing a heavy reliance of the energy supply on imports, where in dry seasons like 2007, account for over than 50 % of Albanian electricity demand.
Based on defined objectives, there are necessary additional generation capacities of 900-1000 MW both in thermo and hydro basis, to be developed by 2020.
Albanian and foreign companies have filed during this year requests to build 51 hydropower plants and 8 wind farms, an investment of 692 million euros with an installed capacity of 590 MW, the Energy Minister says.
The investment on the small hydropower plants under concession contracts is estimated at 258 million euros, with installed capacity of 215 MW.
Meanwhile, the wind energy projects, worth 434 million euros are expected to have a production capacity of 375 MW.