Croatia got its biggest wind farm “Danilo” near Sibenik, with 19 generators, with installed capacity of 43 megawatts. Wind turbine generators were put into operation during the summer and it is expected to produce 100 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year.
The investor is a company “RP Global Projects”, part of the holding “RP Global”, which is in Croatia decided to invest in 2001 when the state passed a package of energy legislation and thereby created favourable conditions for attracting investors.
Croatia is the first country in the region that will produce electricity from wind. Serbia, Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot still count on kilowatts of wind.
-Project is designed in a way that meets the most stringent environmental criteria, and the most modern technology is used on it – said director of the company RP “Global” Croatia, Bojan Rescec during commissioning of the wind farm, in June of this year.
Rescec explained that it took a lot of perseverance and struggle with bureaucracy in order to put the wind farm into operation. Analysis, studies, elaborates and “expert basis with the aim of the project optimizing” lasted for the entire eight years. As he says, the success is the result of years of investment, effort and a lot of enthusiasm – It is a long process – from Preliminary analysis of connection options (PAMP) and issuing Preliminary energy consent at the location permit stage, pre-agreement on accession, Study of optimal technical solutions of connection (EOTRP) in phase of construction, the agreement on connection, until internal review of HOPS and final issuing of connection approval (EES) and the agreement on the network use, after which the infrastructure is permanently surrender to the ownership and management of the HOPS. The electricity purchase is contracted with HROTE (Operator) by Agreement on the electricity purchase for 14 years.
HOPS, Croatian operator for transfer is the contractual partner in the part of the network connection. Each investor is required to build the network connection and thus to ensure the placement of the produced energy.
RP “Global”, an investor in wind farm “Danilo”, is an independent power producer and it is active in France, Poland, Portugal, Chile, Peru and Georgia, and the headquarters of the company in Vienna.
Croatia insufficiently encourages the energy sector
According to a study recently published by the European Commission, Croatia is a country in the EU which invests at least in the energy sector. The most developed countries also are the countries that invest most in energy. From 2008 to 2012, Croatia has subsidized the energy sector with only 30MEUR.
Study crashes prejudices that Europe invests most in renewable energy. According to the report from the European Commission, the most was invested in energy consummation, in the form of various tax incentives and subsidies. Considering the energy sources, the most incentives are given to the solar power plant, then the wind power plants, coal, biomass, nuclear power plants, gas, and finally, to the hydro power plants.
Croatia has only recently become a member of the EU and as such it is quite behind when it comes to investing in renewable energy. Experts in Croatia emphasize that the key mistake that Croatia is not timely strengthen its industrial base which would follow the development of RES sector and acquired reference at home, because this way mainly promotes the use of foreign technologies and products. It seems to be still the most invested in fossil fuels, no matter how such information is not transparent.
