First Serbian Water-Powered Plants

The first hydro-electrical power plant in the Balkans began producing energy in Serbia in 1900. The second, built in 1903, has virtually never stopped working to the present day.

By Vanja Savić
Photo by Milan Melka

Thanks to the patents of Nikola Tesla, the first hydro-electrical power plant in the world became operational at Canada’s famous Niagara Falls in 1895. At the same time, preparations were underway for a similar feat in Serbia. The project was carried out by Tesla’s friend and admirer Djordje Stanojević, who had already introduced electrical power in Belgrade, making the Serbian capital one of the first capitals in Europe to be illuminated in this way.

(Hydroelectric power station Užice on the River Đetinja)

This physicist and later Belgrade University rector was behind the waterdriven power plant on the Djetinja River in the city of Užice in 1900. Three years later, the first kilowatts of electricity were made by another plant on the Vučjanka River that supplied the city of Leskovac.

The first hydro-electrical power plant in the Balkans, located near Užice’s Old Town, operated until the 1970s, when its flow was interrupted by work for the construction of the Belgrade-Bar railway. The power plant on the Djetinja River was the world’s second hydro-electrical power plant, and the first in Europe constructed according to Tesla’s design, involving polyphase alternating current. It was fully restored in the year 2000 and has since been producing electricity for lighting the streets of Užice.

The hydro-electrical power plant on the Vučjanka River has never stopped working since 1903. It is a diversion type of hydropower facility with water intake, water bearing storage, penstock and draft tube. In 2005, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an organisation whose membership numbers 365,000 scientists from about 160 countries, put Vučje on its Milestone List that constitutes 64 major world entries and only 15 European ones. The list also contains Benjamin Franklin’s Work in London from 1757-1775, Volta’s Electrical Battery Invention from 1799, the Transcontinental Telegraph from 1861, Alternating Current Electrification from 1886, Marconi’s Early Wireless Experiments from 1895, the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer – ENIAC from 1946, First Transatlantic Transmission of a Television Signal via Satellite from 1962, Transmission of Transatlantic Radio Signals from 1901 and a small number of other projects of importance to science.

(Hydroelectric power station Vučje on the River Vučjanka)

Working for many years on the possibility of constructing electrical power plants in Serbia, especially those using water flows, Djordje Stanojević (1858–1921) has scrupulously studied the hydro-electrical potential of rivers in Serbia. It was thanks to him that the first hydro-electrical power plants were built in the country. They include the Užice on the Djetinja River, Vučje on the Vučjanka, Niš on the Nišava, Veliko Gradište on the Pek, Vlasotince on the Vlasina, Ivanjica on the Moravica and Zaječar on the Timok. He also designed the Belgrade thermo-electrical power plant and had a hand in the first demonstration of radio in Belgrade in 1908. The bust of Djordje Stanojević has been put up next to Belgrade’s Beogradjanka Palace on Masarikova St.