They want to build hydro power plants on dry places - Rivers ran out of water or changed current at most of offered locations

Check of 600 locations where Serbia invited investors to build mini hydro power plants showed that at least fifth of them is located on dry places. Only 60 places is convenient for the construction of dams at small water currents and the rest is in the middle of national parks or in the possession of citizens who do not want to sell their property or ask up to EUR 10.000.

This situation is because of documentation 28 years old is. Namely, list of locations for construction of mini hydro power plants was done on the basis of real estate registry in 1987!

- Recently, the government has called investors to invest in construction of 856 small hydro power plants and we have seen approximately 600 place where it should be built - Veljko Dimitrijevic, technical manager at Srbijavode says.

- We have been in the field for months and saw only ten percent of locations is convenient for dam construction which would produce electrical energy onwater. In large number of cases it turned out electric power plants can be built but this would completely dry the river and halt water supplying for the environment. In fact we would turn 3.000 km of water currents into canals!

Small water currents are important for Serbia since, if they would be used properly, they could generate electricity for 10.000 gigawatts annually. It is approximately 4,7% of total electricity production in our country. Due to bad list, we are now getting only 35 gigawatts of installed power.

Many investors showed the largest interest in locations of the South and West Morava, the Ibar and the Gornja Drina.

Favorable prices

Mini hydro power plants have the status of benefited producer which means that the Electric Power industry of Serbia is obliged to buy electricity from them at incentive prices.

This is a part of national policy to which our country obliged in 2006 when it signed the contract with the Energy community of Europe.

This is how we took over commitment to increase by 2020 portion of renewable energy sources from current 21,2% to 27% in gross final consumption and 10% of renewable energy sources in the form of biofuel and traffic sector.