Private investors queue at Transelectrica

ENEL, E.ON, CEZ, Iberdrola, Petrom are just a few of the investors that have started energy generation projects, with Transelectrica (Romanian national grid company) currently analysing investment projects with an overall capacity of around 28,000 MW (the power of 70 nuclear reactors in Cernavoda), worth over 30 billion euros.
The most sought after counties are Constanta, Tulcea, Galati and Iasi, with most investments targeting wind power farms. In all, the projects even exceed the installed capacity of the electricity generating facilities currently operating on the Romanian market, according to Transelectrica data. The over 28,000-MW capacity could be achieved by building the 127 projects, which Transelectrica presents in a plan on prospects of the power transmission grid in the 2008-2012 period.
"The list of projects we considered includes those investments whose solution studies on connecting to the network are finalised. These solution studies are analyses made by investors in order to see if there is still room in the network for the investment and what solutions they propose to integrate the project into the network. The solution study does not require a technical permit to connect to the network, it is just a step towards securing this permit. This is one of the many documents needed when investing on the energy market," explains Dan Preotescu, network planning manager within Transelectrica. Despite intentions to set up new electricity generation facilities, a lot of projects could remain only on paper.
Transelectrica itself does not think wind power projects with a capacity of more than 1,500 MW will start to operate by 2012, with the capacity to reach around 3,000 MW by 2017. The data basically suggest that only 15% of the projects announced, which amount to over 20,000 MW, will be up and running by 2017.
Several factors stand in the way of these projects coming to life. They include the difficult access to financing, as well as the very high costs entailed by such a project, considering that an investment in 1 MW of wind power amounts to 1.2-1.5 million euros.