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The board of Eesti Energia signed and issued to General Electric the Provisional Acceptance certificate of Auvere Power Plant, which means that the operation of the power plant will pass over from the constructor to Enefit Energiatootmine, the subsidiary of Eesti Energia. The contractual warranty and reliability period of Auvere Power Plant will last for two years. The power station is able to cover over a quarter of Estonian electricity consumption with domestic fuels.

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“The construction of Auvere Power Plant has been a complex, long and intense project. This is a unique power station, which will provide electricity for the next two generations in Estonia. In addition to oil shale, it is possible to use biomass, peat and oil shale gas as fuel at Auvere Power Plant. All these are domestic fuels. Although the acceptance of the station has been delayed, the technical bottlenecks have been eliminated by today. The station is running as planned and complies with all environmental requirements. I am very pleased that we have come to the endpoint of the construction in cooperation with General Electric,” Hando Sutter, the Chairman of the Board of Eesti Energia said. “I would like to thank the teams of General Electric, Eesti Energia, as well as our other partners, that have made a maximum contribution to the completion of this industrial investment very important for Estonia,” Sutter thanked the project team.

“Reaching today’s milestone is a tribute to the partnership that we have with Eesti Energia,” said Matthias Schweinfest who leads Projects for GE’s Steam Power business. “Together we have a lot to be proud of as this plant has the technology to be flexible enough to burn a number of fuels helping to deliver a significant amount of reliable power to people across Estonia.”

The new power station is the most competitive production unit of Eesti Energia’s large scale power industry. “Thanks to its efficiency, Auvere is able to access the regional Baltic Sea electricity market with its production in the biggest number of hours. Wind and solar power production are being developed more and more, and it is also done by Eesti Energia. At the same time, weather-independent and controllable electricity production capacities such as Auvere Power Plant are still needed to ensure security of supply,” Sutter said.

As to the latest tests, Auvere Power Plant passed the 28-day reliability test, efficiency and emissions tests, and at the beginning of July, the last network test of Elering was successfully carried out as well. All tests have given a positive result.

Auvere Power Plant is able to cover more than 25% of Estonian electricity consumption, that is ca. 2.2 TWh per year. The average annual electricity consumption of Estonia is 8 TWh. The 300MW capacity of Auvere Power Plant will partly compensate older electricity production capacities finishing work in 2019, after the closure of which, close to 600 MW of capacity will disappear from the market. At the same time, Auvere will probably be the last station of its kind in Estonian electricity production history, because according to the expectations of the owner, Eesti Energia will fully focus on the cogeneration of oil and electricity in the field of the large-scale power industry in the future.

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Auvere station is capable of using various domestic fuels: oil shale to the extent of 100%, biomass to the extent of 50%, peat to the extent of 20% and oil shale gas to the extent of 10%. Auvere Power Plant is able to produce almost 1 TWh of renewable energy within a year.

In August 2017, General Electric finished the installation works of a new ash filter for Auvere Power Plant, which ensures that the air emissions of the station remain within the regulated limits even when the station operates at full power. The dust emissions of the station are twice as low as in the older power stations of Eesti Energia.

The contract for the construction of the power station was sealed in January 2011. The total investment made in the construction of Auvere Power Plant was 610 million euros, which is 28 million euros less than initially planned.

Auvere Power Plant was connected to the power grid for the first time in May 2015 and since then the station has produced a total of 4.3 TWh of electric power.