Alibunar WPP

completed

The Project will be developed by Electrawinds (Serbia) a wholly owned subsidiary of Electrawinds, a renewable energy company based in Ostend Belgium that has developed wind energy projects throughout Europe (Belgium, Italy, France, Bulgaria and Romania) as well as South Africa. Including solar and biomass generation assets, the company has an installed capacity of 256 MW.Electrawinds is proposing to develop a 42 MW Wind Farm (21 turbines each of 2 MW) on a 450ha site between the village of Vladimirovac and Alibunar in Vojvodina Province, north east Serbia. The project site is located in an area designated for wind farm development under the 2012 Spatial Plan for Alibunar Municipality and design and development schemes proposed by the company have followed the requirements of the 2012 Detailed Plan of Regulation for Alibunar Municipality.The site design and layout comprises three lines of turbines running in a north–easterly / south-westerly alignment. The distance between the towers in each row will be between 400-500m and the rows will be separated by 700-800m. The distance from the most easterly row of turbines and the A70 trunk road will be at least 250 m (Serbian requirements for safety setback are minimally 210m). Each turbine will have a foundation “footing” of between 12-20m radius. Tower height will be maximally 100m (with an additional 49m blade radius sweep), and the project site will additionally contain supporting road infrastructure and facilities. All on site cabling will be underground. The Alibunar site will be connected (via underground cabling) to an existing 110kV transmission line that lies approximately 1km to the south of the site and a new 4ha substation will be constructed at this site. Electrawinds (Serbia) is working with the electricity distribution company “EMS” to improve and upgrade substation capacity and will pass ownership of the substation to the agency when it has been constructed.The landscape in and around the project site comprises flat or gently undulating land and the current land use at the wind farm and substation sites is for arable crops (primarily corn and wheat). Surrounding land use is also primarily for arable agriculture. Soils are sandy and free draining and agricultural land quality across most of the site is graded as 5-6 (poor). The site contains no natural habitats, water bodies or other features of ecological significance. The Deliblasko Sands (Deliblatska Pescara) “Important Bird Area” lies approximately 2.5 km south of the site and is separated from the wind farm by intensively farmed agricultural lands.The wind farm site is bounded to the immediate south by the A70 Trunk road and to the north by an unpaved road and rough grazing (known locally as the Volovski Put). The town of Alibunar lies 5km to the north east and the village of Vladimirovac lies 2.5 km to the south west. There are no houses or habitation on or adjacent to the wind farm site.