Shareholders of Bosnian power utility EPBiH have approved the selection of a Chinese consortium as a partner for the construction of 450 MW unit 7 at its coal-fired thermal power plant Tuzla.
According to the statement from EPBiH, Chinese Gezhouba Group Company Limited and Gunagdong Electric Power Design Institute, as well as EPBiH itself, will jointly invest in the construction of a new unit, as the project is funded through a loan provided by Chinese ExIm Bank and EPBiH own funds. The construction period should take 56 months and the selection of a partner will be official once it is approved by the Parliament of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH).
Last month, FBiH Government has decided to provide guarantees for a loan agreement between EPBiH and Chinese ExIm Bank, which will be used for the construction of unit 7 at TPP Tuzla and tasked the Ministry of Finance to sign all the necessary documents. At the same time, Executive Director for Capital Investments at EPBiH Senad Salkic said that in the best case scenario, the construction of unit 7 could start in September this year, which means that it would be completed in March or April 2022, after which a six-month trial period should start. Therefore, unit 7 at TPP Tuzla could be put into operation in early 2023.
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, but will most likely continue to operate until 2020. When unit 7 is completed, it will provide almost a quarter of electricity produced by EPBiH.
