Enefit Green produced 94.7 GWh of electricity in September, which is 67.9% more than in the same period last year.
September's production result was most affected by the 54.6% increase in wind energy production to the level of 72.5 GWh, which was supported by 14.7 GWh of production from the new wind farms under construction and completed this year (ca 57% of the increase in the volume of wind energy production). Wind energy production was also supported by better wind conditions than last year in Estonia, where the average wind speed in Enefit Green's wind farms in September reached 6.0 m/s compared to 5.0 m/s a year ago. In Lithuanian wind farms, the wind speed was stable at 5.6 m/s compared to last year.
Significant electricity production volume growth was also recorded in the cogeneration (+127% y-o-y in September) and solar (+153%) segments. In cogeneration, the main reason was the low base level, which was caused by the prolonged production shutdown of the Iru power plant last September. In the solar energy segment, most of the growth was provided by new solar farms that started production this year.
In the third quarter as a whole, electricity production increased by 37.0% to 259.1 GWh. Main driver was the volume growth of wind energy production (+31.3% y-o-y), followed by the solar energy and cogeneration segments. Similarly to the previous quarter, new wind and solar farms (+38.1 and +14.9 GWh, respectively) contributed a strong 53 GWh to electricity production.
Innar Kaasik, Member of the Management Board and Head of Production at Enefit Green, commented: "In the last quarter, we had serious challenges with the availability of the wind farms, especially in Lithuania. In several Estonian wind farms, we carried out major maintenance works on wind turbine blades and replaced gearboxes in two wind farms. At Šilute wind farm in Lithuania, a significant substation failure had to be repaired and the main bearing of a wind turbine was scheduled to be replaced at the Mockiai wind farm. The maintenance works were very extensive in this quarter, but we proved that our production team together with our partners can quickly and efficiently solve many simultaneously arising availability challenges."
In September, thermal energy generation more than doubled to 47 GWh compared to last September, which, similarly to electricity production, was caused by a low base last year. For Q3 as a whole a 36.9% y-o-y growth to a volume of 114.8 GWh was recorded in thermal energy generation.
Pellet production decreased by 17.5% y-o-y to 8.8 thousand tons in September, and in the third quarter as a whole by 2.2% to 38.3 thousand tons.
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