Bosnia may be seeing a major upgrade of its hydroelectricity production potential. The country's largest power utility, Elektroprivreda BiH, announced it is seeking concessions for the purpose of building two hydropower plants worth in total around EUR750 million. The two plants would be built on the Drina river, bordering Serbia. Elektroprivreda BiH is hoping to cooperate with its counterpart in Serbia, EPS (Elektroprivreda Srbije), to jointly develop and build the future hydropower plants. The state concession commission is expected to reply in month's time, and if positive, the reply will immediately invoke negotiations with Serbia's EPS. The project, once completed should produce about 300 MW of power.
Drina river has a lot of untapped hydropotential. So far there are only two major hydropower plants on the river, leaving plenty of potential to be used through further hydropower plant development. It runs through deep canyons, making accumulation reservoirs much easier to build. There have been plans for hydropower development on the Drina river in the previous decades, but have so far been kept on the shelf.
The Bajina Basta dam and hydropower plant with power output totalling 315 MW, the biggest such construction on the Drina river.
Among the postitive sides of this initiative is also the face that the new projects will bring jobs for many people, currently fearing unemployment, or already unemployed, due to the economic recession, and other local ecnomic factors (the region's economies are in development, and have been hit harder by the recession, than other South East European countries).
On a separate note, Serbia's EPS has agreed with the Republic of Srpska's power company EPRS (Bosnia has three entities – Bosnian, Croat and Serb – therefore three major power companies), to jointly build four hydropower plants on the upper flow of the Drina river. The joint venture would be an investment of about EUR450 million, and would produce in total some 800 MW.
According to Elektroprivreda BiH General Manager, Amer Jerlagic, the two projects are not going to overlap and will allow for a separate approach. It remains to point out that Bosnia is one of the few countries in the region capable of exporting energy, while most of its neighbors depend on imported energy for anywhere between 30% and 50% of their total energy consumption.
"Natural motion" of the tides around the North West of England and North Wales may be used to generate renewable energy, according to researchers. University of Liverpool and Proudman Oceanographic Laboratory carried out the study, with results that show a possibility that four barrages stretching across estuaries at the Solway Firth, Morecambe Bay, the Mersey and Dee rivers could actually be able to provide about half the region's electricity needs.
