Enefit, a subsidiary of Estonia’s energy company Eesti Energia and Nordic Solar, a Danish developer of solar power plants, signed an agreement to sell the production of the 100 megawatts (MW) Moletai solar power plant to the market. The solar farm located in Lithuania started its full-scale electricity production at the end of April and is the largest in the Baltics.
Armen Kasparov, Director of Energy Trading and Portfolio Management at Eesti Energia, said that Enefit is the gateway to the energy market for renewable energy producers. Today, the company’s customers include several solar and wind power producers across the Baltics who sell their production to the market.
“In order to be able to sell the electricity they produce on the market, producers must sign a contract that guarantees the sale of the electricity they do not have and the purchase of the surplus, the so-called open supply. Enefit combines the open supply and power sales contract into one, thus offering larger producers the possibility to sell electricity on the market through Enefit,” he explained.
In addition to market access, the agreement includes several other benefits for producers, including a solar farm production forecasting service, balance responsibility and the possibility to limit production during low or negative price hours through a virtual power plant (VPP).
“As larger solar farms have production volumes in the tens of gigawatt-hours (GWh) per month and high turnover rates, an open supplier can create significant credit risk for the asset owner under normal payment conditions. By contrast, Eesti Energia’s credit rating allows us to offer secure balance sheet management regardless of the company’s production volumes,” said Mr Kasparov.
“We are very pleased with the agreement we have entered with Enefit and with the good collaboration,” stated Nordic Solar’s Chief Investment Officer Holger Bang. “Nordic Solar’s new solar park located in Moletai is Lithuania’s largest solar park to date with a production capacity of 100 MWp. Selling the production to the market based on the balancing agreement is an important part of accelerating the rollout of renewable energy in Lithuania.”
The Moletai solar park is paving the way for an even wider deployment of clean energy and an increase in the share of renewable energy in the market.