Operations at the coal-fired thermal power plant Ugljevik were halted shortly after midnight on 12 January after the facility ran out of adequate coal supplies. The shutdown was carried out in a controlled manner, following an assessment that fuel availability was no longer sufficient to ensure safe operation of the unit.
Management said that severe weather conditions had disrupted mining activities, preventing the extraction and delivery of enough coal to keep the plant running. The generating block was therefore taken offline under a planned procedure, and parent company ERS was officially informed that no electricity would be supplied to the grid during the day.
The outage once again exposes deep-seated structural problems at the largest electricity producer in the Republic of Srpska. TPP Ugljevik has been grappling for months with unreliable coal supply, primarily because mining has still not started at the Ugljevik-Istok 2 exploitation field, which is meant to secure the plant’s long-term fuel base.
This delay continues despite the RS Government having already paid more than €90 million toward the takeover of the company Comsar. The total cost of the acquisition is expected to reach €124 million, raising fresh doubts over the effectiveness and timing of the investment.
Coal shortages have repeatedly forced the plant offline in recent months, intensifying concerns over system reliability. The situation deteriorated further around ten days ago when a 270-ton excavator overturned at the open-pit mine, adding to the disruption of already strained extraction operations.
Taken together, the fuel shortfall, delayed access to new mining fields and recent technical incidents underline the fragile condition of one of the region’s most important thermal power plants, at a time when energy system stability remains critical.