Electro-mechanical rehabilitation of the Fierza hydroelectric power plant (DKTI)

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As part of the project, rehabilitation measures are to be carried out at the Fierza hydroelectric power plant (HP) in northern Albania. The Fierza HPP is one of the three large state-owned hydroelectric power plants along the Drin cascade: Fierza, Komani and Vau I Dejes. With an installed capacity of 500 MW and an average annual production of 1,328 GWh, it produces around a quarter of the domestically generated electricity. Due to the difficult financial situation of the entire energy sector, there has been insufficient investment in the state-owned electricity generation infrastructure in recent decades, meaning that important maintenance and expansion investments have not been made. The Fierza hydroelectric power plant was built more than 40 years ago and is now in a precarious condition, which sometimes leads to supply bottlenecks with significant negative effects on the economy. Generation failures have to be compensated for by expensive electricity imports from abroad and the technical losses of around 4% lead to a significant monetary loss and additional greenhouse gas emissions. The project is intended to address the most pressing problems with two very outdated turbines and four generators, thereby extending the service life of the HPP by at least 30 years and increasing its reliability, efficiency and capacity. The investment will ultimately make a positive contribution to ensuring that private households and companies can be supplied with electricity reliably and cost-efficiently and that high electricity import prices do not increasingly impact either end-user prices or the state budget, thereby weakening the power balance. The project sponsor is the state-owned electricity generation company KESH. The target group of the project is all consumers connected to the electricity grid.