TIRANA, April 26 – Norway’s Statkraft says it is preparing to sell electricity from its new Banja hydropower plant in central Albania and monitoring steps by the Albanian government in liberalizing the energy market. The announcement comes as the Devoll hydropower project, one of the country’s largest foreign investment, has reached a major milestone with the start of the filling of its Banja reservoir.
“While technical preparedness is going at full speed, Statkraft is also preparing for the sale of energy from the Banja HPP. In this context we are closely monitoring the steps taken by the Albanian government for liberalizing the energy market towards a much needed Albanian power exchange,” said AsbjornGrundt, a Statkraft senior official responsible for the company’s international hydropower activities.
The wholly state owned Norwegian company expects its Banja HPP trial run to take place next August once the filling has reached an operational level. Reservoir filling will be achieved by taking the water level from 112 metres to 175 metres above the sea level.
Preparations for the Banja HPP also included the construction of new roads and bridges as well as 15 replacement homes for the relocation of project affected households.
The Banja dam project was initiated in the mid-1980s during the communist regime but dropped in the early 1990s.
The new modern Banja HPP has a total installed capacity of 66 MW and annual energy production of 255 GWh.
In addition to theBanja HPP, the Devoll Hydropower project also consists of the 185 MW Moglice hydropower plant under construction, expected to be operational by end 2018, 50 km of high voltage transmission lines and over 100 km new and refurbished roads.
Albania’s fragile electricity sector is projected to get a boost by 2018 when two new hydropower plants by Norway’s Statkraft are expected to increase the country’s wholly dependent electricity generation by around 20 percent. The Banja and Moglice HPPs, part of the Euro 535 million Devoll Hydropower project, are being built on the Devoll Rover, about 70 km southeast of Tirana.
Devoll Hydropower, a €950 million project, was set up as a 50/50 joint venture between EVN and Statkraft after the two companies won in 2009 a 35-year concession to build three hydropower plants on the Devoll River. In 2013, Statkraft acquired EVN’s 50 per cent share and is now 100 per cent owner of the company and the construction project.
The Devoll hydropower project is currently the first large scale public-private-partnership investment in the country and one of the largest hydropower investments in the Balkans. With a total capacity of 243 MW, the Devoll river project will generate approximately 700 GWh of renewable, environmentally-friendly energy each year and increase the current electricity production in Albania by approximately 17 percent. It will supply more than 300,000 Albanian households.
