September 14 (SeeNews) - Italian construction-to-services company Maire Engineering said on Friday it would complete a 92 million euro ($127.5 million) project for the construction of Albania's second thermal power plant by May 2009.
"The plant will have an installed capacity of 97 megawatts and will produce 800 megawattshours of power annually," Maire Engineering's proposal manager Domenico Dario Talarico told SeeNews.
Maire Engineering was assigned the project in February and started building it in August. The company was selected after winning an open international tender, called in 2004, beating German Siemens, Spanish Iberdrola in consortium with General Electric, and Indian BHEL.
The plant, to be located near the southern town of Vlore, an attractive tourist site on the Ionian Sea, is expected to start generating electricity 12 months after the start of construction work. It will help the country reduce its reliance on hydro resources and alleviate chronic energy shortages. The project is jointly financed by the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and KESH.
The Vlore thermal power facility will be the second of its kind in the impoverished southeastern European state after the smaller thermal power unit near the town of Fier.
During the first six months of the current year, the Fier plant produced 42 GWh of electricity, while all the hydropower plants produced 1,544 GWh. Albania's power imports increased by 197% year-on-year to 1,445 GWh through June.