In Electric Power Industry of Serbia coal in currently produced within two basins, i.e. on 5 open cast mines (Field B, Field D, Tamnava – West Field and Veliki Crljeni – Kolubara Mining Basin and Drmno – Kostolac Mining Basin), while another two open cast mines in the Kostolac Mining Basin (Cirikovac and Klenovnik) are being decommissioned.

The annual overburden and coal production is about 100 million m3 and 37 million tons, respectively.

Overburden and coal are excavated in the Kolubara Mining Basin by the use of 17 bucket wheel excavators, 1 bucket chain excavator, 23 draglines, 15 spreaders and self-propelled conveyers and 117 drive stations with some 80 km of belt conveyers.

The age of the bucket wheel excavators used on EPS open cast mines is highly unfavorable (average age is higher than 25 years), while most of the excavators (especially on Field D OCM) have already been in operation for more than 150,000 hours, with some 200 million m3 of material excavated. For this reason, the forthcoming period will see comprehensive revitalization and modernization of the coal and overburden equipment.

The existing maintenance system should be improved by adopting and applying new and efficient maintenance trends, such as predictive and proactive maintenance. This essentially involves on-line (rotation equipment state monitoring – temperature, vibrations, noise) and o -line diagnostic methods.

To control and manage the operation of the systems employed at the EPS open cast mines, production processes management will be harmonized and modernized.