Energy, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business

According to Andres Taukar, head of the Utilitas plant, the turbine was brought in from Germany's MAN Hamburg plant. "A turbine is the heart of the plant and for us it means reaching an important stage. Now we will continue with construction works which will be finished in late autumn. In October we plan to activate the plant and start producing heat," Taukar said in a press release.

He added that the main fuel of the new plant are wood chips and therefore most of the heat sold in Tallinn will be made from non-fossil fuels. The share of non-fossil fuels in the production of thermal energy for Tallinn is to be raised from the present more than 40% to 80% by 2017.

Vao 2 plant is situated near Tallinn, in Vao. The cogeneration station using Estonian wood chips and peat as fuel will have a thermal output capacity of 76.5 megawatts and an electrical output capacity of 21 megawatts. It will be able to sell some 350 gigawatt-hours of thermal energy per year, which corresponds to 19% of total consumption by the remote heating network of Tallinn. The electric energy produced by the plant will cover the electricity consumption needs of some 50,000 remotely heated apartments.

Working at full capacity, the plant will use 530,000 cubic meters of wood chips annually.