According to Serbian media, power utility EPS spent around 25 million euros on emergency electricity imports in the past three days, following the shutdown of all units at TPP Nikola Tesla A and one unit at TPP Nikola Tesla B due to wet, low quality coal.
The fact that one the three days was Sunday, when consumption is lower, has to be taken into account, but also electricity imported by transmission system operator EMS for balancing purposes due to low wind-based electricity production was not included in the sum. EPS paid for electricity from its own resources, not from the state budget.
Serbia was importing electricity even before the incident, for example, on Saturday 11 December, imports amounted to between 100 and 200 MW per hour, which amounts to 450,000 euros, since the prices reached 270 euros/MWh during peak hours.
It is estimated that some 3.2 million euros was spent on electricity imports on Sunday, 9 million euros on Monday and 13 million euros on Tuesday.
At the moment, two units of TPP Nikola Tesla A are still out of operation.
