Serbian Government has appointed Miroslav Tomasevic as the Acting Director of power utility EPS. Previously, he held the position of Executive Director for Electricity Production at the company.
Tomasevic was named by the as the most likely candidate following the resignation of Milorad Grcic from the position in mid-January. Although Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said that the new Acting Director will be appointed as soon as possible, it took a month and a half, but the decision was expedited since the start of the Ukrainian conflict, as Serbia fears the shortage of energy resources.
Grcic handed in his resignation after the series if incidents at Serbia’s largest coal-fired TPP Nikola Tesla. In mid-December all six units of TPP Nikola Tesla (TENT A) and two units of TENT B were shut down for several days due to the issues with coal EN supply. Namely, low quality coal, mixed with mud due to the season’s first snowfall, caused the forced shutdown of the units. In the following days EPS was forced to import about a quarter of the national consumption at extremely high prices. Following the incident, President Vucic said that Grcic should hand in his resignation.
In late December, two units of TPP Nikola Tesla B were temporarily out of operation, following two minor incidents. Namely, unit B1 was shut down due to a fire incident, while a day after, unit B2 was also taken offline after the explosion at the coal pulverizer.
TENT still has issues with coal supply, which prevents simultaneous operation of all of its units. Thus, EPS is forced to import expensive electricity. The level of imports somewhat dropped in February due to mild temperatures.
