The Serbian power sector consists mainly of thermal power plants fueled by domestic lignite and hydro power plants with total installed capacity of 7,500 MW excluding the plants in Kosovo. More than 65% of the electricity is generated by coal-fired power stations with an annual lignite consumption of around 37 Mt. The company in charge for the Serbian power system is public utility “Elektro Privreda Srbije” – EPS and at the moment the only large electricity producer in Serbia. Lignite represents almost 90% of the country’s energy resources, whereas oil and gas represent less than 10%. All active coal mines in Serbia operate within EPS.
The system includes 6 lignite fueled thermal power plants (TPPs) with an installed capacity of 4.260 MW, 9 hydro power plants (HPPs) with a total installed capacity of 2.840 MW. The rest of the system presents CHP plants with the total installed capacity of 387 MW and fueled mainly by mazut (imported from Russia).
Most of the plants have been operational for more than 30 years, with some of them older than 40 years. The balance of electricity production by source and unit, and the fuels use have been established for the base year 2010 and the preceding years 2007-2009.
A public company, the Coal Mining Basin “Kolubara”, is Serbia’s biggest producer of coal. Its main activity, based in the Miocene lignite basin, covers an area of 600 km² with remaining mineable reserves of 2.2 billion tonnes, with an estimated average heating value of 7,600 GJ/tonne. Four open-pit mines operate in this basin —Field B, Field D, Tamnava-East and Tamnava-West— all of which are equipped with the most up-to-date continuous mining systems for overburden removal (49.5 Mm3/year capacity) and facilities for a 27.5 Mt annual production of lignite. The Kostolac Miocene lignite basin, located 90 km east of Belgrade, has remaining reserves of 700 Mt. The lignite is extracted from three open-pit mines —Klenovnik, Cirikovac and Drmno— at an annual rate of 9.2 Mt with 30 Mm3 of overburden.
In Serbia, the underground-based coal mining is made in the Public Enterprise for underground coal mining Resavica (PE UCM Resavica). PE UCM Resavica is a unified Public Enterprise and the production is made in 8 mines with 11 pits, namely: Anthracite Mine Vrška Čuka, Ibar Collieries, Brown Coal Mine Rembas, Brown Coal Mine Bogovina, Brown Coal Mine Soko, Brown Coal Mine Jasenovac, Brown Lignite Coal Mine Štavalj and Brown Lignite Coal Mine Lubnica.
Source Serbia Energy Magazine
