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Eesti Energia will build a solar power station on the roofs of the production and warehouse facilities of OÜ Puidukoda, operating in Mulgi Parish, Viljandi County, and will supply the company with solar power for the following 25 years. The construction of the power plant is financed by Enefit Green, the renewable energy company of Eesti Energia, which will remain the owner and maintainer of the solar power station. The power station will be covering 11% of the annual electricity consumption of Puidukoda’s production.

According to the Board Member of Eesti Energia, Andres Sutt, the energy company offers its customers a carefree and simple solution for implementing solar power. “The opportunity offered by us helps our business clients to be eco-friendly without additional investments and to direct their resources into their core business. However, the renewable energy company of Eesti Energia, Enefit Green is responsible for the construction, operation and maintenance of the solar power station,” Sutt explained.

According to the CEO of Puidukoda, Kristjan Saks, they were instantly in favour of the idea of local and green energy production, because it combines well with the principles and business philosophy of the company: "We wish to be a company producing high value added products from renewable resources with low environmental impact. We apply eco-friendly principles in other areas as well. For example, we produce wood briquettes and pellets from emerging wood waste, in addition to the use of wood residue for heating our production buildings."

Puidukoda is focused on the production and marketing of higher value added planed softwood material. The company has a modern and flexible fully automated production line from sorting to sawing, planing and filming, which was launched in 2004, and reconstructed and renovated in 2010.

The production capacity of the solar power station consisting of 1670 solar panels being installed on the roof of Puidukoda’s production building is planned to be 451 kW. The system will cover 11% of the annual electricity consumption of the whole company and occupies the area of three roofs, which is 2800 m2. Currently, necessary preparations are taking place for the construction of the solar power station to begin. The station starts operating in the end of the summer.

"We chose Eesti Energia as our partner, since it is a large and reliable company, with whom we have had a long and good cooperation. The opportunity of being able to purchase energy from the solar power station installed on our rooftops with long-term fixed price and without network fees was very appealing to us, because electrical energy is the third largest cost item of our production inputs and forms quite a large part of the product’s final price,“ Saks notes.

Eesti Energia offers its business clients two options for producing electricity from sunlight. "In the first case, the customer is able to choose similarly to Puidukoda, the unique complete service solution, where Eesti Energia installs the solar power station on the company’s building or property and sells produced electricity to the company to cover its consumption. Eesti Energia’s renewable energy company Enefit Green will remain the owner and maintainer of the solar power station,” the Chairman of the Board of Enefit Green, Aavo Kärmas explains. According to him, the complete service solution is suitable for business clients, whose annual electricity consumption is more than 500 MWh and who own free roof or ground space of over 2000 m2. The second option for the client is to purchase the solar power station from Eesti Energia in “turnkey” principle. Eesti Energia will help the company find a suitable technical solution, obtain the necessary equipment, deal with the installation of the solution and preparations preceding it.

Distributed power generation is a rapidly growing global trend, which complements the existing central electricity production with local production units near the place of consumption. The goal of establishing solar power generation stations at customer locations is to increase the share of local electricity production in Eesti Energia’s production portfolio. The strategic aim of Eesti Energia is to produce 40% of electricity from renewable and alternative sources by 2021.