Innar Kaasik, Member of the Management Board of Enefit Green, noted that the construction of a new wind park in Lithuania is another step in increasing renewable electricity production. "Enefit Green works every day to ensure that we all have enough electricity produced from renewable energy in the future. Increasing the use of green electricity daily, for example in transport, housing or agriculture, is the easiest way to reduce the CO2 footprint. It is also a key long-term solution against high electricity prices," commented Kaasik.
Enefit Green has renewable energy projects that it is gradually developing in all its home markets – the Baltics, Finland and Poland. "Lithuania is a strategically important market for us regarding the increasing wind energy production. Our wind parks in Lithuania already produce nearly half of Enefit Green's total wind power production. In addition to the construction of the Šilale II wind park, we are developing two more new wind parks in Lithuania," Kaasik noted.
Enefit Green can also share good news from Estonia in the first half of the year. The company completed the acquisition of the Purtse wind farm development in Ida-Virumaa. Enefit Green is continuing to develop the Purtse wind farm, with a target completion date in 2023.
For context, the 557 gigawatt-hours of renewable electricity produced during the first six months would provide sufficient electricity to cover the average consumption of nearly 169,000 homes for a year.
Enefit Green's half-year production results were affected by weather conditions. The first months of the year were frosty and calm, and the first half of the summer was tropically hot.
"Calm weather has affected the production of wind parks, but again provided an opportunity to carry out scheduled maintenance work. Estonian and Polish solar parks have shown decent production in summer with tropical heat and cloudless skies. This is due to high reliability and digitalization. All our solar parks are connected to a unified digital system, which provides comprehensive information on production, downtime and faults,” explained Kaasik.
In addition to renewable electricity, Enefit Green produced 321 gigawatt-hours of heat in the first half of the year. The output came from the Iru and Paide cogeneration plants in Estonia and the Valka and Broceni cogeneration plants in Latvia.
Enefit Green is a renewable energy subsidiary of the Enefit Group, currently owning a total of 22 wind parks, 38 solar power plants, 4 cogeneration plants, a pellet plant and a hydroelectric power plant in four markets – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The company produced a total of 1.35 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2020.