Executive Director for Capital Investments at Bosnian power utility EPBiH Senad Salkic said that the company is fully satisfied with the specified conditions for the financing of the construction of unit 7 at thermal power plant Tuzla, which are the result of last week’s negotiations in China.
EPBiH has received a letter of intent from the Chinese Exim Bank with specific conditions of credit arrangement, in which the Bank accepted EPBiH’s proposal that the maturity of the loan should be 20 years. Salkic said that he expects that loan agreement will be oficially signed in November, but the Parliament of both China and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina have to ratify the agreement first.
According to him, tenders for preparatory works could be published by the end of the year, and the works should start in spring 2017. If everything goes according to plan, construction of the unit could be finished in five to five and a half years, which means that unit 7 at TPP Tuzla could be operational in 2022 at earliest.
TPP Tuzla has 6 units with overall output of 715 MW. New unit 7 will be replacement capacity for units 1 and 2 (32 MW each), which have already been shut down and units 3 (100 MW) and 4 (200 MW) which should be put out of operation in 2018. The future unit 7 will have 450 MW of electric output combined with 300 MW of heat output, with annual generation of 2.75 TWh. When unit 7 is completed, it will provide almost a quarter of electricity produced by EPBiH. Total investment in unit 7 is over 722 million euros, of which 85 % will be obtained through a loan and 15 % will be financed by EPBiH’s own resources, transmits Serbia-energy.eu
