Eesti Energia’s production assets are ready for desynchronisation


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The power plants, wind farms, and Estonia’s largest storage facility operated by the Eesti Energia Group are ready to support the smooth synchronisation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania with the Continental European frequency area next weekend.

Estonia, together with Latvia and Lithuania, is making its energy system more secure by connecting to the European frequency area, being ready at all times to guarantee the balance between electricity generation and consumption. An important role in this is played by the power plants operated by Enefit Power in Estonia, Enefit Green’s wind farms in Estonia and Lithuania, and Estonia’s first large-scale storage facility, completed in Auvere. Also, IT solutions such as the virtual power plant, which enables the company to participate in frequency markets with the assets in its portfolio.

According to Kristjan Kuhi, Member of the Management Board of Eesti Energia, the company completed most of the preparations required for providing FCRs already last autumn. As a result of intensive efforts in recent months, the Auvere storage facility is now ready to support the electricity system.

‘All of Eesti Energia’s designated production assets are ready to support the smooth transition of Estonia and the entire Baltic region to the Continental European frequency area,’ confirmed Kuhi. ‘I am pleased that, despite a very tight schedule, our large-scale storage facility has reached readiness and will help support the stability of the electricity system after desynchronisation while balancing electricity price fluctuations caused by non-dispatchable renewable energy.’

Eesti Energia is the largest provider of manual and automatic frequency restoration in Estonia, and the company’s production units are capable of meeting the requirements of the European frequency control platform for providing both the manual frequency restoration reserve (mFRR) and the automatic frequency restoration reserve (aFRR).

In the past year alone, the company added 455 MW of new assets to the virtual power plant, bringing the total to 2,100 MW. Of this, the capacity of dispatchable assets was increased by 290 MW to a total of 700 MW.

The Narva power plants play a crucial role in the event of electricity network desynchronisation, as Enefit Power’s generation capacity accounts for 85% of Estonia’s dispatchable generation capacity.

Eesti Energia has been providing the mFRR service to Elering since the establishment of the joint Baltic mFRR market in 2018 and the aFRR service to the Finnish market in cooperation with Elering since 2021.