Renewable energy integration is essential for mitigating climate change and ensuring long-term energy security. However, the transition requires overcoming complex technical, economic and policy barriers. Thus well planned investments in transmission infrastructure, a synchronised policy support and cross-border engagement are essential to tackling challenges and creating resilient energy systems across the Western Balkans.

To help the regional partners in modernising their transmission networks to support renewable integration and to fully benefit from the larger regional electricity market, CONNECTA 2 carried out a comprehensive assignment, resulting in:

• Capacity analysis;
• Electricity Market and Balancing assessment;
• Regulatory and Policy analysis;
• Risk analysis; and
• Final report on the gap analysis for the power transmission infrastructure in the Western Balkans.

The objective was to:

• Identify gaps in the Western Balkan power transmission systems that hinder large-scale integration of renewable energy sources;
• Analyse the connectivity of electricity transmission systems in the Western Balkans with neighbouring countries within the TEN-E networks;
• Evaluate the status and capacity of the high-voltage transmission networks in the Western Balkans and propose necessary upgrades or new infrastructure to support planned renewable generation capacity as part of their power system decarbonization strategies.

A key value of the analysis lays in the approach which provides a multidimensional perspective where findings and recommendations address not only the necessary infrastructure investments in transmission lines, substations and storages but also market and balancing, regulatory and policy issues as well as risk analysis with regards to investments, environmental, climate and social dimensions. Additionally, the time horizon for these in-depth analyses is up to 2040 and considers both short-term and long-term development needs.

Download Gap analysis here.