Five qualified companies on tenders for steam power plants

Total of five companies have qualifed on the tenders for strategic partnership in construction of Steam Power Plant "Kolubara B" and the third block in Steam Power Plant "Nikola Tesla B" - the Electric Power Company of Serbia (EPS) announced today.

According to the announcement, the conditions for participation in the tender for construction of "Kolubara B", with two blocks of 350 MW each, have been met by companies "Edison" from Italy, "ČEZ" from Czech Republic, German "Energie Baden-Wirtemberg" (EnBW) and US "AES".

In addition to these four companies, German "RWE" has also qualified for the strategic partner of EPS in construction of the third block of 700 MW in Obrenovac-based Steam Power Plant "Nikola Tesla B".

According to EPS' announcement, in addition to the qualified bidders, Chinese company "SMES" also applied for participation in the tenders, but it failed to meet the qualification terms.

The Minister of Energy of Serbia, Petar Škundrić, said in April that about 1.6 billion EUR should be invested in construction of those new units for production of electric power, of which total power will be 1,400 MW.

According to some earlier statements of the representatives of EPS, the share of EPS in the ownership of new facilities can not be smaller than 20% and bigger than 49%.

The qualified bidders should submit technical and financial bids for aforementioned joint investments with EPS.

EPS announced at the end of March that the letters of intent for participation in the tenders announced on January 20th had been submitted by 53 companies, 14 of which had been world-famous power companies.

According to some earlier announcements by EPS, the names of strategic partners for construction of "Kolubara B" and the third block in TENT should be known by the end of the year.

The first block of 350 MW in Kolubara should be put in operation in 2014, the second in 2015, while the units in Obrenovac-based power plant "Nikola Tesla" should start producing electric power in 2016.

Announcement of the tenders for strategic partners for construction of new blocks had been postponed since 2006.

Construction of Steam Power Plant Kolubara B commenced in 1988, and it was stopped three years later. Over 300m EUR have been invested in that project to the date.