November 26 (SeeNews) - Kosovo plans to open a tender for the construction of a 1,000-megawatt (MW) thermal power plant in early December, Deputy Minister for Energy and Mining Blerim Rexha told Reuters.
The tender for the new project comes after Kosovo abandoned earlier this month a project to build a 2,000 MW coal-fired plant due to lack of investor interest.
"We think this 1,000 megawatts will be sufficient in the next 35 years to satisfy our domestic needs," Rexha told Reuters in an interview released on Wednesday.
"The launch for expression of interest should be in the first half of December this year, in two weeks."
Rexha said the breakdown of unit capacity will be left to the bidders, with the only constraint being the total capacity of 1,000 megawatts.
The government launched its initial tender for the 3.5 billion euro ($5.3 billion) power plant in 2006, aiming to turn the Balkan country from an importer into a regional power exporter. Two consortiums -- Czech power firm Cez and Greece's Sencap -- were left in the race, but had asked the government to improve the offer conditions, Reuters said.
Kosovo is plagued by power shortages. The country's two existing older coal-fired plants, Kosovo A and Kosovo B, are in poor condition and cannot produce the roughly 1,000 MW that Kosovo needs.
The Kosovo A plant, the country's main power generation, falls short of existing environmental standards and will be closed by 2017, Rexha said.