Power cuts a thing of the past, say KESH, OSSH

TIRANA, Sept. 7 – Power cuts that have plagued Albania’s electricity system for the past 20 years will soon be a thing of the past, and the country will no longer be a net importer of electricity, energy officials say.
KESH, the state-owned power producer will no longer import electricity at all, and if needed, this will be done through the newly-privatized OSSH power distributor.
Leonard Beqiraj, the deputy minister of energy, told the Albanian media the large reserves of water at power dams and new projects being currently constructed will help end Albania’s unhappy relationship with power cuts.
Small private producers also have contracts to sell KESH about 80 million kWh of energy per month. While KESH itself by the end of August has a 130 million euro windfall, of which 84 million are derived from energy exports. With these high production numbers and export figures KESH is implementing a better financial outcome that has ever achieved as a company.
Another huge element in stabilizing the power supply will be the completion of the Tirana-Podgorica line which will solve all technical problems of exporting and importing electricity, the head of OSSH, Sokol Ramadani, told the private Alsat television station.
The construction of the Podgorica line, the start of work on a similar connection line with Kosovo, the completion of the new dispatch center project as well as the online connectivity of substations to the transmission system will bring things to European standards.
“We are close to being fully part of the European system with regard to electricity transmission,” says Ramadani.
The Tirana-Podgorica interconnection line is the largest investment in the current transmission system. About 35 million euros have been invested in the project through a loan by German development bank KfW.