By USAID | Serbia

Thursday, May 10th 2012 was a special day for the small village of Gornja Dragusa located near Blace in southern Serbia. On that day the President of Serbia (Mr. Boris Tadic), the Minister of Agriculture, the American Ambassador and Mr. Steve Dvorak from Chilton, Wisconsin all arrived in town for the inauguration of a newly completed biogas plant at the dairy farm owned and operated by Lazar Dairy. The event, which was widely reported by the media in Serbia, represented the culmination of a two year process to design, build & put into operation an American designed biogas plant that will provide the national grid of Serbia up to 1MW of electricity from a renewable source.

The process began in late 2009, when the USDA organized a visit to Serbia for Steve Dvorak, the President of DVO Inc., a biogas design company from Wisconsin, to present their tech- nology to potential customers in Serbia. Local USDA staff con- tacted the Serbia Agribusiness Project to invite dairy and meat companies to Steve’s presentations, and to organize dairy farm visits so Steve could assess the appropriateness of individual dairy farms for use of the DVO technology. During his visit to Lazar’s dairy farm Steve found an excellent site, and rough es- timates of the waste material available indicated that Lazar could achieve considerable cost savings, and that a biogas plant would pay for itself within two to three years.

By the time the dignitaries arrived on May 10th, along with the more than 250 invited guests, the biogas plant was ready to go. Following short speeches the invited dignitaries went into the electrical control room and the President and the Ambassador pressed the button together to start the generator and send Lazar’s renewable electricity into the Serbian national electrical grid. The generator does not start instantly, but after a minute or so everyone heard the noise of the generator as it started up, and then the guests took a walk through the generator room to see the machinery in action. It was an impressive sight for eve- ryone there to see the generator and the mass of pipes and control wires neatly arranged in the generator room.

^{The picture above shows the President of Serbia (speaking), the US Ambassador to Serbia (right), the Serbian Minister of Agri- culture (left), and Steve Dvorak from Wis- consin (center) speaking to the assembled guests at the inauguration of the Lazar Dairy biogas plant. Approximately 250 people attended this important event.}