Member Article

It has been reported recently that EPS Distribucija has successfully obtained a building permit from the Ministry of Construction Transportation and Infrastructure for the EUR 1.13 billion project of constructing a new electrical substation – along with accompanying office space – near Autokomanda in Belgrade. The Vozdovac municipality's extensive Land-Use Plan has considered this construction upfront for its central zone, since it has been under power supply problems for some time now, with no easy solutions for them due to the highway being in close vicinity, presenting a significant physical barrier.

The municipality's central zone presents an alluring location, with plenty of important facilities such as embassies, residential buildings, the newly refurbished Prokop railway station, as well as both of the largest football stadiums in Serbia – all of which will be benefiting from the substation in question. Further benefits will also be created as soon as the construction of a nearby shopping centre is completed, with reports of the construction site for the Belgrade Waterfront complex also to be relying on additional energy security from this substation in the near future.

Nebojsa Radovanovic, EPS Distribucija's Director of the Sector for Planning and Investment underlined the difficulties associated with finding a cost-effective solution in looking for a location that's adequate for the construction of a substation in the city's centre, because the taking of similar locations for this purpose often depends on the demolition of older buildings that were there beforehand – effectively undermining an efficient implementation of such a project.

At the same time, this is also the reason why the construction of this substation has been in the pipeline for almost thirty years without coming to fruition, since there was a number of locations in that period of time that were close to fitting the purpose, with none of them fulfilling all of the necessary preconditions.