Krnovo
Context of the project
Krnovo is a wind farm located in Montenegro, at an altitude of over 1,500 meters in the middle of the Krnovo mountain plateau in the country’s central region.
Coming online in 2017, the facility comprises 26 GE turbines with a total capacity of 72 MW, and is both the first wind farm developed in Montenegro and the first foreign investment in the country’s renewable energies.
Montenegro – at the time highly dependent on fossil fuels, and notably coal – had an energy deficit. The Krnovo wind farm supplies a sustainable alternative to initiate the country’s energy transition by providing power to up to 5% of Montenegro’s inhabitants. It is thus participating in the integration of renewable energies in the Montenegrin energy mix: by 2018, over 40% of the country’s domestic electricity consumption came from clean energy sources.
Wind on the mountainside
The Krnovo site’s geographical location makes it particularly unique. Sitting among the mountains of central Montenegro, access is limited – particularly during the winter – and indeed construction had to be suspended for four months over the winter.
To supply the national grid with the electricity generated by the wind farm, 25 kms of OverHead Lines (OHL) were installed. However, this was complicated because of the dense forest surrounding the site and its distance from roads, between cliffs and mountains, making them inaccessible by truck.
While Akuo was considering transporting the equipment by helicopter, local players used to finding their way around these unique areas suggested bringing in the OHL equipment by donkey to facilitate the transport process.
In the end, roads were built to enable the blades to be delivered to the construction site, using strategic itineraries enabling inhabitants’ journey time to the villages to be significantly reduced.
“Sharing know-how with local communities enabled us not only to meet the challenge the site’s geographical location represented, but also to create long-term cooperation with those communities and to unite our strengths and skills to achieve a common objective.”
The Krnovo wind farm has also participated in the development of nearby villages thanks to the construction of a new road considerably reducing the time required to access high-altitude villages and by providing the village with electricity.
Jobs for local residents were created both on the Montenegrin subsidiary’s administrative side and on the construction site itself, enabling these locals to contribute their knowledge of the area, thus allowing French renewable energy expertise and Montenegrin regional knowledge to be pooled.
