Bosnia's Elektroprivreda BiH connects Podvelezje wind farm's substation to grid

Bosnian state-controlled electricity producer Elektroprivreda BiH [SAJ:JPESR] said it has connected the newly-built 110/30kV substation for the future 48 MW Podvelezje wind farm to the grid.

The 9.5 million marka ($5.7 million/4.9 million euro) project for building the substation also included the installation of 40 kilometres of underground cables to connect it to the planned 15 turbines of the wind farm, Elektroprivreda BiH (EPBiH) said in an e-mailed statement on Thursday.

It added that the contract for the project design, construction, equipment and putting into operation of the substation and the power cables was signed with Croatian company ABB, which hired Bosnian subcontractors to implement the project.

EPBiH also said that the concreting of the foundation for the first 10 wind turbines has been completed, and the concreting of the remaining 5 is in progress.

The wind farm is being built near the southern town of Mostar by a consortium comprising Croatia's Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy and Denmark's Siemens Wind Power A/S, both units of Spanish engineering company Siemens Gamesa.

The Podvelezje wind farm is expected to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2021, with an estimated annual electricity production of some 130 GWh.

EPBiH has signed a 30-year concession contract for the project with the government of Bosnia's Herzegovina-Neretva Canton. The project will be financed by a loan from German development bank KfW and EPBiH's own funding. EPBiH said earlier that the KfW loan will be in the amount of 65 million euro ($77 million), whereas EPBiH will invest 3 million euro.

(1 euro = 1.95583 marka)

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