The Estonian renewable energy producer Nelja Energia opened on Tuesday a wind farm in Ciuteliai, Lithuania with a total capacity of 39.1 megawatt and a projected annual output of 108 gigawatt-hours (GWh).
Estonian renewable energy producer Nelja Energia opens Lithuania's biggest wind farm
The company invested around 57.4 million euros in the development of the new wind farm, chairman of the management board Martin Kruus said. «The new wind farm will make an important contribution to the development of Lithuania's renewable power engineering,» Kruus explained in the company's press release.
«Currently we are working on developing onshore wind farms mainly in Latvia and Lithuania, at present we have projects with a total capacity of 170 MW in progress in these countries. In Estonia the erratic energy policy has made the making of new investments in onshore wind farms extremely complicated,» Kruus added.
The wind park, situated in Ciuteliai, 15 kilometers north of the town of Silute in western Lithuania, stretches out on 800 hectares. The farm has 17 wind turbines, each with a capacity of 2.3 MW.
Based on Scandinavian and Estonian capital, Nelja Energia is the biggest wind energy producer in the Baltics. The company has wind farms with a total capacity of 223 MW, including 79 MW in Lithuania. Thus Nelja Energia is one of the biggest Estonian investors in Lithuania, according to the company.
Last year Lithuania accounted for 35 percent of the output of Nelja Energia's wind farms, this year the company expects 42 percent of the output to come from that Baltic state.