Serbia’s Minister of Mining and Energy Dubravka Đedović Handanović signed an agreement on Monday (29 January) that finalises the financing for the construction of a 66 megawatt (MW) capacity wind farm in Kostolac (northern Serbia).
The project is financed by a loan from German development bank KfW, the EU, and Serbian state-owned power company Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) which is developing the project.
“The agreement we signed today for a grant of 30 million euros represents an important step in the realisation of the project to build the first EPS wind turbine, the ‘Kostolac’ wind farm, completing the financial structure for a project worth 144 million euros,” said Minister Đedović Handanović. “The production of this power plant, with its 20 wind turbines, will be sufficient to supply around 30,000 households with green energy. The wind farm will be located on the site of depleted surface mines and the disposal sites of the Kostolac thermal power plants and mines.”
The “Kostolac” onshore wind farm is set to consist of 20 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 3.3 MW. The farm is estimated to cover the annual power demand of around 30,000 households. As noted by Germany’s Ambassador to Serbia Anke Konrad, the farm’s annual production of around 187 gigawatt-hours (GWh) is expected to replace about 95,000 tons of coal needed for the same power demand.
“We expect the ‘Kostolac’ wind farm to be connected to the grid and start delivering green energy to our citizens in the first half of 2025. In the same period, EPS’s solar power plant ‘Petka,’ with a capacity of 9.75 MW, should be completed. All three new power plants in Kostolac – TPP Kostolac B3, Wind Farm Kostolac, and SE Petka – are part of significant investments in the energy system that we plan to complete in the coming years, before EXPO 2027,” Minister Đedović Handanović added.
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The minister said that the EU and Germany are key partners in Serbia’s energy transition. “Serbia and Germany have established a climate partnership to support our country in implementing the EU Green Agenda. We successfully cooperate with Germany, especially in the district heating sector, introducing OIE, and developing the transmission network, which has invested 1.5 billion euros in the energy sector since 2000,” she said.
Minister Đedović Handanović noted that with financial support from the EU, Serbia is implementing some of the country’s “most important” energy projects, including the gas interconnection with Bulgaria and the Trans-Balkan corridor. “We are particularly grateful for the non-refundable aid of 165 million euros we received last year, primarily for assisting energy-vulnerable consumers and investing in the distribution network.”
