/LONDON, August 19, 2026, 10:00 BST, RENEWABLE MARKET WATCH™/ ESM has selected the Chinese POWERCHINA Jiangxi Electric Power Construction Co., Ltd. to build two new photovoltaic power plants with a total capacity of 30 MW in Oslomej and Bitola, according to official contract award notices published on the electronic procurement portal of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development – EBRD. ESM in North Macedonia is the Elektrani na Severna Makedonija, the state-owned public electricity generation utility.
The contracts with the Chinese company are worth a total of 27.7 million euros, and the projects are a continuation of the transformation of old coal locations that began in Oslomej in 2018. The project is divided into two lots. The first one envisages the construction of Oslomej 2 with a capacity of 10 MW , as a supplement to the existing solar power plant within the former coal mine in REK Oslomej. The contract value for this lot is 12,048,433.76 euros.
The second contract concerns the construction of a 20 MW photovoltaic power plant in Bitola, near REK Bitola, with a value of 15,652,222.48 euros. This brings the total value of the two contracts to around €27.7 million. The contracts with POWERCHINA Jiangxi were signed on 24 June 2026, and according to information released by the EBRD, their planned completion date is 13 August 2027.
The new power plants are part of the ESM Solar PV Transition project, for which the EBRD provided a €25 million loan, while the European Union supported the project with an additional €5 million grant through the WBIF. According to the project documentation, 10 MW are planned on part of the depleted mine in Oslomej, and the remaining 20 MW near REK Bitola.
The new 10 MW in Oslomej is a continuation of a process that began more than eight years ago. The first concrete steps toward the transformation of the former mine in Oslomej began in 2018, when the then ELEM presented a project to construct a large photovoltaic power plant on the mine’s degraded surface. On January 10, 2018, the company publicly presented the concept of using the former coal site to generate electricity from solar power.
The project also entered into a procedure with the EBRD that same year. The bank announced the project in September 2018, and in November the general procurement notice for the construction of a 10 MW photovoltaic power plant at the depleted REK Oslomej mine was published . The project was approved in December 2018, and the loan agreement with the EBRD was signed on 4 January 2019. In April 2019, the international tender for construction was announced, and in November 2019, ESM signed the construction contract with the Turkish company Girişim Elektrik.
The first 10 MW Oslomej 1 photovoltaic power plant began production in April 2022. It was the first solar power plant owned by ESM and was built on the site of a depleted coal mine. The EBRD assessed the project as a pioneering example with the potential to demonstrate how coal regions in the Western Balkans can gradually transition to renewable energy production. In parallel with this investment, ESM opened a second, significantly larger transformation cycle for Oslomej through a public-private partnership, adding an additional 100 MW of solar capacity.
On June 16, 2021, agreements were signed with the Turkish Fortis Energy Electric and the Bulgarian Solarpro, which envisaged the construction of two photovoltaic power plants of at least 50 MW each at the site of the old mine. It was the model applied in Oslomej that the EBRD singled out as one of the region’s pioneering approaches. The bank pointed out in 2022 that the tenders for solar projects were among the first in the Western Balkans to be developed with market exposure, i.e., to wholesale electricity prices, one of which was the PPP tender for 100 MW in Oslomej.
With the new 10 MW Oslomej 2 power plant, for which the contract has now been signed with POWERCHINA Jiangxi, the initiated model enters another phase. At the same time, the construction of 20 MW in Bitola means that the concept of installing new renewable capacities on and in the immediate vicinity of traditional coal-fired energy complexes is expanding from Oslomej to ESM’s largest production complex – REK Bitola.
For more information and answers to your questions about the solar, wind and energy storage market in North Macedonia and related content, you may read here: you may read here: Western Balkans Solar Photovoltaic (PV), Wind and BESS Power Market Outlooks 2025 ÷ 2034
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