Kosovo's grid operator KOSTT has revealed that a 150 MW solar park will be built soon, in the municipality of Gjakova, in the southwestern part of the country.

The CEO of KOSTT, Mustafa Hasani, and the director of Solar Energy Group Europe sh p k, Egbert Schnuse, signed, this week, an agreement for the grid connection of the solar plant, which is planned to be connected to the 110 kV transmission network through a new 110 kV line with a length of about 6.5km, the network operator said in a statement.

The plant is scheduled to begin commercial operations in 2022. No further details were revealed on the project. When built, the plant will be Kosovo's first large scale solar park.

The Kosovar government has made several attempts to support small sized and utility scale solar in the past. These efforts, however, have produced little results to date. In December, for example, Kosovo's State Aid Commission (KNSH) deliberated that the feed-in tariff scheme for PV installations not exceeding 3 MW in size, introduced by the country's Office of the Energy Regulator (ZRRE) in late November, was not complying with European state aid regulations.

Kosovo had just 7 MW of installed PV capacity at the end of 2019, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency. The country recently raised its renewable energy target to an additional 400 MW of capacity by 2026. That would be enough to meet a quarter of its power demand and would reduce dependence on aging coal-fired power plants.

Most of Kosovo’s electricity is supplied as imports or from two lignite-fired thermal power plants, the 40-year-old Kosovo A Power Station (with a 345 MW generation capacity) near Pristina, and the upgraded, 27-year-old Kosovo B Power Station (540 MW) in Obili?.

This article is reproduced at pv-magazine.com