The new unit of Lietuvos Elektrinė (Lithuanian Power Plant, or LPP) will operate for around 30 days after last week’s trial run of 72 hours as part of testing program launched in February.
The unit, switched on on Wednesday, operated at a 320 MW capacity on Thursday, Ernesta Dapkienė, head of communications at Lietuvos Energija, told BNS.
“Spain’s Iberdrola bears full responsibility for any potential breakdowns since we have not taken the facility over as yet. The new unit is now being supervised by Iberdrola’s experts together with Lietuvos Energija workers, who are being trained and are getting ready to take over the supervision tasks,” Dapkienė said.
Lietuvos Energija planned to take over the new unit at the end of September, she said adding that the facility would also need the approval of the State Territorial Planning and Construction Inspectorate.
According to Dapkienė, the new trial was part of the project completion process. The new 455 MW unit should remain in operation for about a month.
The new unit of LPP, which was built by Spain's Iberdrola together with its Lithuanian partners, is Lietuvos Energija's largest project so far. Unit Nine will have an efficiency of more than 58 percent and will be able to meet some 20 to 25 percent of the country's power needs.
The price of electricity produced at the Elektrėnai plant is as high as 0.40-0.43 litas (EUR 0.12) per kilowatt-hour due to increased natural gas prices. This is three times as high as the average price for electricity in the market.
