North Macedonia’s Deputy Prime Minister Fatmir Bitiqi visited on Monday (25 March) a new photovoltaic (PV) power plant in Bitola in the south of the country, developed by North Macedonian state-owned company Strezevo.
“Today I visited the Public Enterprise ‘Strezhevo’ and got acquainted with its operations firsthand. I am pleased to have had the opportunity to see responsible management, an example of how a state-owned company should be managed. I took a brief tour of the new photovoltaic plant which was recently put into operation. In addition to already using water as a renewable energy source with five small hydroelectric power plants, the enterprise decided to take an additional step towards utilising solar energy as well,” said Deputy PM Bitiqi.
“This is a photovoltaic plant with an installed capacity of 500 kW, built with its own financial resources, without borrowing,” Deputy PM Bitiqi noted. “Instead of spending 30 million denars [487,000 euros] on unproductive expenses, management decided to invest in the plant, which will annually produce about 700,000 kWh of electricity.”
“Perhaps this is small in terms of installed capacity, but significant in ambition, in the desire to show that a public enterprise can be successfully managed in a completely different way than what we are accustomed to over the years,” North Macedonia’s Deputy PM further noted.
Strezevo is the first state-owned company in North Macedonia established by the government to build a photovoltaic plant whose electricity will be sold on the free market.
“This plant is just one piece of the energy mosaic from renewable sources in North Macedonia, in which energy capacities with a power of 616.42 MW have been built and put into use in the last 26 months, which is enough to supply electricity to 194,500 households,” said Deputy PM Bitiqi.
