A €165 million wind farm has been inaugurated in eastern Serbia in a Slovenian-Serbian joint venture that is one of the biggest renewables projects in the former Yugoslavia.

The Slovenian company Alfi Renewables, acting through its Alfi Green Energy Fund, secured half of the funding for the Krivača wind farm, which makes it one of the largest Slovenian investments in Serbia.

Its Serbian partner MK Group invested the other half, with both relying on bank loans.

The 105.6 megawatt wind farm is to produce 310 gigawatt hours annually, which is enough to meet the demand of around 75,000 households, Alfi Renewables said after the inauguration on 15 May.

The farm near the town of Golubovac comprises 22 wind turbines in a 56 square kilometre area.

As part of the project, 30 kilometres of new roads, 40 kilometres of power lines and a new substation have been built.

Slovenian energy company Petrol had been developing project until the end of 2021, but then Alfi Renewables took over.

Alfi Renewables is owned by former Petrol managers Tomaž Berločnik, Rok Vodnik, and Janez Grošelj. To invest in renewables, it founded the Alfi Green Energy Fund, which has pooled €104 million from Slovenian investors.

MK Group is owned by Miodrag Kostić, one of the wealthiest Serbs, which owns the bank Gorenjska Banka in Slovenia.

The two investors took out loans from a consortium of four international banks, Erste, NLB, Raiffeisen and the Austrian Development Bank, which Alfi Renewables said is one of the two changes the project brings to development of the green energy ecosystem in the region. The other is that a long-term contract to sell electricity was concluded with the Swiss company Axpo.

Meanwhile in Slovenia, investors have been facing opposition from local communities and environmentalists in their plans to build wind farms. There are currently only three wind turbines in Slovenia, of which only two are in operation.

To change that, the government has decided to offer subsidies to municipalities for the construction of wind turbines. They will be eligible for a lump-sum payment of €200,000 per megawatt.

A wind turbine with a rated capacity of one megawatt is to be built in the south of the country after all.

DEM, a hydro power plant operator that is part of the state-owned group HSE, recently announced a €2.5 million contract with Hmezad TMT to build the Mali Log wind turbine which is to generate enough electricity for all households in the Loški Potok municipality.