Nocaj Solar Plant Near Sremska Mitrovica Ready to Build

Turkish company Fortis Energy says its solar project near Nocaj, close to Sremska Mitrovica, has reached ready to build status. The plant is designed for 270 megawatts of capacity with 72 megawatt hours of battery storage, which would make it by far the largest solar power plant in Serbia by planned output. Commercial operation is scheduled for the second quarter of 2028.

The announcement came alongside news of a contract Fortis Energy signed with the German group Schletter, a maker of mounting systems for photovoltaic panels. According to the company, the deal was signed by Fortis Energy president Mehmet Burak Uckardes and Schletter group CEO Danijel Rem. It covers the supply of panel mounting systems for solar plus battery projects across southeastern Europe, and Fortis Energy says the partnership could expand to additional projects down the line.

Sources differ on the exact scope of that contract. Balkan Green Energy News reports that Schletter is supplying mounts for “more than 300 megawatts” of projects, while the same outlet puts Fortis Energy’s entire ready to build portfolio in southeastern Europe at 375 megawatts of nominal capacity and 112 megawatt hours of storage. The gap likely comes down to the Schletter contract not necessarily covering all three announced projects at full scale.

Besides Nocaj, a second project called Green has also reached ready to build status, also in Srem, west of Nocaj, with a capacity of 30 megawatts and commercial operation planned for the fourth quarter of 2027. The third project sits outside Serbia: the Erseke solar plant in Albania, rated at 75 megawatts with a 40 megawatt hour battery, also targeting the fourth quarter of 2027 for start of operations. For all three, the company says, key administrative procedures are complete, land rights are secured and grid connection agreements are signed, meaning the projects now move into equipment procurement and construction itself.

How much electricity would the three plants produce

Fortis Energy estimates the combined annual output of all three plants, in Serbia and Albania together, at around 494 gigawatt hours. The company compares that figure to the annual consumption of roughly 141,000 households, with an estimated cut in carbon dioxide emissions of 317,000 tons per year. The battery storage systems at Nocaj and Erseke are meant to shift delivery over time: storing part of the power generated during the day and feeding it into the grid in the evening, when demand is higher.

Sources list the Nocaj plant’s capacity both as 270 megawatts and as 270 megawatts peak, meaning the installed peak output of the panels, while the actual power delivered to the grid is typically somewhat lower.

If Nocaj is built as announced, it would far surpass Serbia’s current record holder. The country’s largest operating solar plant today is DeLasol in Lapovo, running since 2023 at 9.9 megawatts. That means a single project near Sremska Mitrovica would have nearly 27 times the capacity of the existing leader.

Fortis Energy says its development pipeline exceeds 3.5 gigawatts, and that it has already delivered more than 800 megawatts across seven countries. The company positions itself as an investor building what it calls green baseload capacity, a combination of solar, wind and battery storage meant to let variable output from sun and wind be used even in the hours when the sun is not shining.

For Serbia, building the Nocaj project would also mark the country’s first large scale battery storage system paired with a solar plant of this size. Projects of this type announced in Serbia so far have generally stayed in the tens of megawatts, so a plan for 270 megawatts with a 72 megawatt hour battery would be an unprecedented jump for domestic solar investment of this kind. The next step, according to the company, is procuring the remaining equipment and starting construction itself, which is also when it will become clearer whether the timeline in the announcement can hold.