History
Since 1870, the coal production has begun in Serbia. Fourteen years later, the first electric lighting in Serbia was furnished in the military office building in Kragujevac. On 6 October 1893, the first Serbian power plant in Belgrade started with the production of electricity.[9]
In 1900, the first alternating current hydroelectric power plant Pod gradom in Užice on the river Đetinja went online. This power plant is still operating. The first alternating current transmission line from hydroelectric power plant Vučje to Leskovac, with the length of 17 km, went online three years later.[10][11] In 1909, hydroelectric plants Gamzigrad in Zaječar and Sveta Petka in Niš began to build.[12] Two years later, the hydroelectric power station on the river Moravica in Ivanjica was put in the operation.[13]
In Belgrade, the power plant Snaga i Svetlost was built in 1933, being one of the largest in the Balkans at that time.
The establishment of the Električno preduzeće Srbije followed in 1945. Between 1947 and 1950, the hydroelectric power plant Sokolovica and coal power plants Mali Kostolac and Veliki Kostolac, the first power stations to be built in Serbia after the Second World War.[14] In 1952, the underground mining of the coal field Kolubara had started. Four years later, coal power plant RB Kolubara went in operation. A year earlier, the hydroelectric power plants Vlasina and Zvornik have been connected to the power grid. In the period from 1960 to 1967, hydroelectric power plants Bistrica, Kokin Brod and Potpeć were under construction.
In 1965, Združeno elektroprivredno preduzeće Srbije was founded. The coal-fired power plant Bajina Bašta began with the production of electricity a year later. The two largest power plants in Serbia, the hydroelectric power plant HPP Đerdap I at the Danube river and the coal power plant TENT, went into operation in 1970. Twelve years later, the pumped storage plant Bajina Bašta was built, and in 1990 the hydroelectric power station Pirot was put into operation.
In 1991, the company was reorganized and changed name to Elektroprivreda Srbije.
During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, many power plants have been severely damaged. With the establishment of the UNMIK administration in Kosovo on 1 July 1999, the company lost its access to the local coal mines and power plants, including Kosovo A and Kosovo B power plants.[7]
Since then, government-owned Elektroprivreda Srbija by political decision continued to pay off earnings to all of Kosovo-based EPS companies - EPS Surface Mining Kosovo, EPS TPP Kosovo and EPS Elektrokosmet.[15] However, all these employees are not working in Kosovo-based power plants, and are only occasionally and indirectly employed by EPS throughout the rest of Serbia.[15] As of May 2009, there was a total of around 7,000 such employees which were working only on paper and receive regular earnings.[16] As of June 2017, that number was cut to 4,539 employees.[15] As of August 2022, a total of 3,300 employees worked for these three companies.[17]
Following the stabilization of the country after war, in 2004 EPS was again a member of the European interconnected system UCTE.
Company operates in the current form since 1 July 2005. Then, the electric power transmission division of EPS was split from the company and established as its own public enterprise, named Elektromreža Srbije (EMS).[18]
Since 2007, EPS has prepared plans for the construction of new power plants and the expansion of existing plants to increase generating capacity and meet growing consumption demand.[19]
EPS de facto holds a monopoly on the electricity market in Serbia. Since 1 January 2013, the Serbian electricity market has been open to other companies with the expectations to be completely liberalized in the coming years.[20] Since then, EPS has continued with further reorganization for better company's effectiveness. In 2014, EPS was split into two subsidiaries - EPS Distribucija Belgrade and EPS Trgovanje Ljubljana. In June 2021, the distribution system section of the company "EPS Distribucija" was split from the company, and continued to operate as an independent company named "Elektrodistribucija Srbije d.o.o. Beograd".[21]
In April 2023, the Government of Serbia decided to transform the company from the state-owned enterprise to a joint-stock company – offering 36.5 million of shares, each worth 10 thousand dinars (at the time, 85.26 euros each), for a cumulative worth of stock at 3.112 billion euros.[22]
