Montenegro Awards Eight Concessions for Small Hydro Power Plants

Montenegro opened last year a tender to award concessions for the assessment of 43 sites and the subsequent construction of hydropower plants, cutting later the number of sites to eight. Each small power plant would have an installed capacity of up to 10 megawatts.

“We will have more precise information after further detailed estimates but, having in mind that one megawatt costs some one million euro ($1.5 million) or more, we can assume that the value of the contracts signed today is over 10 million euro,” Montenegrin Economic Development Minister Branimir Gvozdenovic told a news conference after the signing ceremony.

“The planned small hydropower plant projects would cut power imports by at least 25%,” Gvozdenovic said, adding the government will soon open another DBOT tender for small hydropower plants.

Montenegro imports over a third of it’s annual power consumption, which exceeds four billion kilowatt hours. Gvozdenovic said this year alone the country will spend some 130 million euro to import 1.65-1.7 GWh.

The concession contracts, signed on Friday, have a maximum period of 30 years. They include four phases – assessment, design, building and operation, as on one location could accommodate more than one plant, depending on the assessment results.

The concession contracts were granted to the following companies, as listed by the government: Hidroenergija Montenegro and Bosnian-registered consortium Haider Extreme Energy were contracted for two locations each, while Montenegro’s Kroling, Austria’s Energie Zotter, and a further two Montenegrin companies, Dekar and Bast, each got one location.

($=0.6829 euro)