Albania Facing Electricity Shortage Following Low Production

Rising demand coupled with falling supply of electricity is threatening an electricity shortage across Albania in coming months, experts have warned.

Besar Likmeta

Tirana

Data published by Albania’s Institute of Statistics, INSTAT, shows that electricity consumption in Albania grew by 8.7 per cent in the first six months of 2011, compared to the same period of the last year.

However, production was 45.1 per cent lower when compared to the same period in 2010, due to lower rainfall in the country’s hydroelectric power stations, which account for approximately 98 per cent of the total production of electricity and are susceptible to changing weather patterns.

The lack of supply forced Albania’s Power Corporation, KESH, to import 1452 GWh of electricity in the first six months of 2011, nearly ten times more than the 177 GWh imported during the same period of 2010.

Faced with a revenue shortfall and a recently introduced austerity package, the country cannot afford costly electricity imports facing again the risk of extended power shortages, which plagued its grid in the past decade.

A drought that engulfed the Balkans in the summer of 2007, sliced KESH’s ability to generate electricity from its hydropower plants leading to forced power outages, which in some areas of the country lasted up to 16 hours a day

Only one year earlier, the Ministry of Finance estimated that power shortages in 2006 cost Albania 1 per cent of GDP growth.

Simon Uzunov, a leading energy expert at the Vienna Energy Community Secretariat, a institution established between the European Union and other countries to extend the EU internal energy market to South East Europe, notes that the southern part of the Balkan region, suffers from a lack of electricity generation capacities, which could be tackled through a series of measures.

“Short-term there is a need to provide substitution options for electricity; this is demand-side efficiency, which includes the insulation of buildings and substitution of heating with other energy sources,” Uzinov told Balkan Insight.....................................

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/albania-doing-little-to-quell-growing-demand-for-electricity