The wind park in Cerová, western Slovakia. (source: SME - Marko Erd)
Wind energy is one of the least-harnessed renewable energy sources in Slovakia. While neighbouring Austria uses hundreds of turbines to generate electricity, in Slovakia there is currently only one wind park, near Cerová in western Slovakia, with four turbines.
“Wind energy is still almost completely absent in Slovakia and the development of geothermal energy is also very complicated,” Ján Karaba, director of the Slovak Association of Sustainable Energy (SAPI), told The Slovak Spectator.
But he praised a recent amendment to the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Act approved by parliament which he said “opens the way for small wind power plants and generally improves the EIA part of the permitting process”.
More turbines in the pipeline
Several wind park projects are being prepared in Slovakia by Greenenergy, which is behind the wind park in Cerová, by the state-owned company supplier SPP, or by other companies.
Renewable energy
In 2023, a total of 27.49 TWh of electricity was produced in Slovakia. Of this, less than 23 percent was produced using renewable sources. Traditionally, hydroelectric power plants have dominated renewable power generation, with a share of over 17 percent of the whole market. This is followed by biomass (3.36 percent), photovoltaics (2.21 percent), other renewable sources (0.32 percent) and wind power (0.01 percent), based on data from the Short-Term Electricity Market Operator (OKTE). The Regulatory Office for Network Industries (ÚRSO), which calculates the share of electricity produced from renewable sources based on different legislation, put production in 2023 at 27.5 percent.
