Construction of SHPP in Serbia still largely in planning stages – New cadaster to provide amended list of potential locations in 2019

In February 2019, Serbia should get a new cadaster of small hydro power plants, which will include all potential construction locations across the country. It will replace the currently valid document from 1987, which contains 856 potential locations. It is not yet known how many of them the new cadaster will contain. What is known is the Serbia currently features slightly over 80 SHPP and that the old cadaster has largely failed to meet its purpose in the thirty years of its existence.

Let us remind that a notice of construction of 317 SHPP in free locations defined by spatial plans of local self-government units was issued back in 2013. Some of those locations were also listed in the said cadaster, and potential investments were estimated at over EUR 500 million. The state boasted at the time that it had received as many as 1,380 offers by investors, and the then minister of energy, Zorana Mihajlovic, set 2015 as the deadline for the construction of most of those SHPP. However, neither of the said locations had been realized by 2015. The situation has apparently not changed since.

We have not gotten a direct answer to the question of how many of the offered locations have been realized so far from the Ministry of Energy, even after several months of waiting.

According to the current assistant to the minister of mining and energy, Milos Banjac, based on the notice of the locations, non-binding memorandums of understanding were signed at the time with potential investors for the construction of 317 SHPP, “but the investors interested in certain locations hadn`t even performed basic location inspection before applying, so it often happened that they ran into unforeseen obstacles”.

– The resolving of property-legal affairs proved to be an unsolvable problem for a large number of investors – Milos Banjac explains for eKapija.

At the time, eKapija published the full list of potential investors, along with the locations they had applied for, as well as the final list of investors the Commission had proposed for the signing of the trilateral memorandum of understanding, which contained 213 of the 317 offered locations. As our portal reported at the time, there were no applicants for 65 locations, there were 9 applications for non-listed locations and 39 locations were excluded from the list.

The new cadaster, the preparation of which was initiated by the Ministry of Mining and Energy early this year, might encompass those locations as well.

According to the information we got at one municipality, the ministry has filed a request to local self-governments to submit data on potential locations so that those that will make up the future cadaster would be chosen. It is now up to the municipalities to submit the requested data.

Following the public procurement procedure, it was decided for the future cadaster to be prepared by a consortium headed by the company EPTISA Spain. An agreement worth EUR 1.4 million was signed with them, as eKapija learned at the competent ministry. The preparation of the new SHPP cadaster is 90% financed through pre-accession funds, whereas the remaining funds are to come from the state budget. The realization of the project started this February, and the deadline period for the preparation of the document is two years. This means that the new cadaster should be completed by February 2019.

The future SHPP cadaster should be a binding professional foundation for the preparation of planning documents in the sense of projecting potential locations for the raising of small hydro power plants, Banjac explains for eKapija.

– The document should serve as the basis for the preparation of bylaws in the field of issuing energy permits, for the purpose of reliable estimation of planned power plant project from the aspect of efficiency of use of the hydro power potential – Banjac says.

Once it is prepared, the new cadaster will replace the current document, which was made in 1987. This thirty-year-old document, which contains 856 potential locations for the construction of SHPP with 450 MW of total power and the annual production of 1,590 GWh, has largely failed to serve its purpose.

Several years ago, the company Srbijavode inspected around 600 locations from this document and found that at least a fifth of them were on dry land. Only around 60 locations were suitable for raising dams, whereas the rest were located in the middle or national parks or were owned by citizens who either didn`t want to sell their property or required large amounts of money for them.

Since the hydrology characteristics of the waterways have changed considerably in the past years, the new cadaster should address this issue.

– All the relevant institutions have been included in the preparation of the new cadaster, and the data presented in it will therefore be more up-to-date and reliable. As a result, we will get a number of potential locations – our interviewee says.

Srbijavode has its own SHPP “cadaster”

According to the Register of Preferential Producers of Electricity, SHPP have been built in 82 locations in Serbia so far, with the total installed power of around 40 MW. In 2017 alone, 13 power plants have been built, with the total installed power of 6.8 MW.

The public water management enterprise Srbijavode has its own register of SHPP and issued water management acts. According to this document from September 2017, several types of water management acts, such as requirement opinions, requirements, authorizations and permits, have been issued in the country for over 600 locations.

As the enterprise explains for eKapija, until the Law on Planning and Construction and the Water Law were amended in 2014 and 2016 respectively, water requirements and water authorization were issued as part of the procedure of the preparation of the project documentation, whereas water permits were issued for all the built SHPP. This document defines the conditions, the manner and the volume of water intake for the production of electricity.

– The amendments to the Law on Planning and Construction abolished the water authorization, and the water permit is no longer a requirement for the issuing of the exploitation permit, so Srbijavode only registers issued water permits for the purpose of calculating compensations for the exploitation of water land – Veljko Dimitrijevic, assistant to the director for technical affairs at Srbijavode, says for eKapija.

According to this register, water permits for 54 SHPP, with the total installed power of 34 MW and an estimated annual production of around 152 GWh, were issued until June 2017.

As our interviewee explains, some of the locations from their register match those from the 1987 cadaster, and it is not yet known whether they are to be included in the new document.

Environmental aspect as opposed to profit

Professor Tina Dasic of the Faculty of Civil Engineering in Belgrade believes that the preparation of the new SHPP cadaster is good news, but that the environmental aspect needs to be taken into consideration in the process.

– The aspects of the integration of SHPP in the environment, that is, the ecological and the social surroundings, need to be analyzed much more seriously. I`m afraid that some environmental damage has already been done, and the preparation of the new cadaster is therefore an opportunity for all the aspects of the construction and the integration of SHPP in the environment to be examined in more detail so that the construction of those power plants which might harm the environment, while producing very small energy benefits, should be avoided – Dasic says for eKapija.

Srbijavode also agrees that there are great reservations regarding how ecologically acceptable this project is, as the construction of HPP brings into question the realization of the water management and environmental protection strategy.

It should be reminded that Serbia is obligated to have 27% of its electricity produced from renewable sources by 2020.

Katarina Stevanovic

Ministarstvo rudarstva i energetike Republike Srbije

JVP Srbijavode Novi Beograd

Građevinski fakultet Beograd

EPTISA SOUTHEAST EUROPE DOO BEOGRAD

EPTISA Spain

cadaster of small hydro power plants

SHPP

mini hydro power plants

small hydro power plants

construction of SHPP in Serbia

SHPP cadaster

renewable energy sources

RES

ecology

Register of Preferential Producers of Electricity

Milos Banjac

Veljko Dimitrijevic

Tina Dasic

Zorana Mihajlovic

hydrology characteristics of water ways

register of SHPP and issued water acts

water acts in Serbia

Law on Planning and Construction

Water Law

protection of water ways

water permits in Serbia

water requirements in Serbia