Bulgarian National Electricity Company (NEK) announced that it has successfully completed the rehabilitation of unit 1 of hydropower plant Belmeken. The unit has power output of 75 MW in generator mode and 52 MW in pump mode.
NEK said that works on the plant’s unit 2 are currently ongoing and should be completed in August, after which, the rehabilitation of unit 5 will start.
Rehabilitation works are already underway on other two HPPs of Belmeken-Sestrimo-Momina Klisura cascade – HPP Sestrimo and HPP Momina Klisura. In April, the rehabilitation of unit 2 of HPP Sestrimo has been completed and the plant currently operates at full capacity of 240 MW. The rehabilitation of both units of HPP Momina Klisura has been completed and the plant operates at full capacity of 120 MW.
At the moment, the total available capacity of the Belmeken-Sestrimo-Momina Klisura cascade in generator mode is 660 MW (out of a total of 735 MW) and in pump mode 104 MW (out of a total of 104 MW).
In mid-2018, NEK said that it has signed a 19.9 million euros worth contract for the rehabilitation of three of its hydropower plants with a consortium comprising of the Czech company CKD Blansko, Croatian Koncar-KET and Slovenian Rudis. The statement from the company said that the contract will be partially financed with a 11.5 million euros grant from the Kozloduy International Decommissioning Support Fund (KIDSF). The tender includes all activities and components of the engineering service such as design, manufacture, delivery, installation, designer supervision, setting, testing and commissioning of the facilities regarding the three HPPs – HPP Momina Klisura, HPP Sestrimo and pumped-storage HPP Belmeken.
