US-Italian consortium Excelerate Energy-Renco will lease a mobile oil-fired thermal power plant with a capacity of up to 130 MW following a call from the Albanian power utility KESH.
Following the declaration of an energy emergency in October KESH issued a call for expression of interest to determine opportunities for the power plant to become functional and interconnected to the Albanian transmission grid.
KESH said they received two expressions of interest from Excelerate Energy-Renco and US-based Distributed Power Solutions.
The former was accepted while the latter was refused as it did not comply with the provisions of the call.
Renco is involved in consulting, engineering and construction within the energy sector while Excelerate Energy has a number of floating LNG terminals.
In January, US Ambassador to Albania Yuri Kim said US company Exxon could be set to bring LNG to the power plant.
Kim said, “another big American company called Exxon is looking at bringing in LNG into Vlora, which is currently a thermal power plant, but that will be converted.”
The call states that the entity wants to lease the facility for a period of one to three years. The third party should also provide maintenance and operation services for the duration of the contract and in line with the requirements of KESH. Requirements include operating on light and heavy fuel oil.
It must also be “fit to be deployed” near Vlora’s existing thermal power plant, so it can easily use the existing interconnection infrastructure.
Reasons given for the call include needing more power for the public supply obligation, creating a reserve capacity to guarantee power supply security, complementing electricity generated by hydro and thermal resources, and creating surplus revenue.
The Narta Power Plant sits in Vlora on one of the region’s most pristine beaches. Since its construction and completion in 2005, it has not generated a single watt of power and has been plagued by issues with its cooling system.
