Bosnia's Vranduk HPP to be commissioned in Nov 2019

The 19.6 megawatt (MW) Vranduk hydro power plant (HPP) in Bosnia is planned to be commissioned on November 11, 2019, the country's power utility Elektroprivreda BiH [SAJ:JPESR] said on Monday.

Works on the plant, which were launched in September by a joint venture of Austria’s Strabag and Croatia’s Koncar - KET, are progressing according to plan, EPBiH said in a statement.

Currently, the companies are working on the cofferdam which will allow to divert the water of the river Bosna so works can begin on the pit excavation, i.e. the dam's foundation, EPBiH noted.

Vranduk - Elektroprivreda BiH's first post-war HPP construction project - is expected to generate 100 GWh of electricity per year, increasing the share of renewables in Bosnia and Herzegovina's power output and reducing carbon dioxide emissions, the utility said earlier.

The turnkey construction contract worth 112.3 million marka ($63.5 million/57.4 million euro) was signed between EPBiH, Koncar and Strabag in January 2016.

In November 2014, Bosnia's power utility said it received five final bids in a tender for the construction of the plant. Bids were filed by a consortium of Slovenia’s Riko and Bosnia’s Euroasfalt, a joint venture of Strabag and Koncar inzinjering za energetiku i transport (Koncar - KET), Turkey’s Cengiz Insaat Sanayi ve Ticaret, China’s Dongfang Electric Corporation and Italy’s Cooperativa Muratori & Cementisti.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank have lent a total of 63.5 million euro ($70.2 million) to finance the project, EPBiH said earlier.

(1 euro=1.95583 Bosnian marka)

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