The Elektrėnai Power Plant or Lithuania Power Plant ( lt, Lietuvos elektrinė) is an 1055 MW electrical

generating station A power station, also referred to as a power plant and sometimes generating station or generating plant, is an industrial facility for the generation of electric power. Power stations are generally connected to an electrical grid. Many pow ...

near

Elektrėnai Elektrėnai () is a city of about 11,000 inhabitants in Lithuania; since 2000 it has been the capital of the Elektrėnai Municipality. It is situated between the two largest cities in Lithuania – Vilnius and Kaunas. History Elektrėnai is one ...

, Lithuania, about west of Lithuania's capital,

Vilnius Vilnius ( , ; see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Lithuania, with a population of 592,389 (according to the state register) or 625,107 (according to the municipality of Vilnius). The population of Vilnius's functional urb ...

. It is operated by Lietuvos Elektrinė, a subsidiary of

Lietuvos Energija Ignitis Group (Ignitis grupė AB; former name: Lietuvos Energija UAB) is a state-controlled energy holding company located in Vilnius, Lithuania. Its subsidiaries are involved in power and heat generation and distribution, natural gas trade and di ...

The plant was built in stages between 1960 and 1972. The Strėva River was dammed to supply it with cooling water, creating the Elektrėnai Reservoir. As of 2008 the plant comprised eight units fired with

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

, heavy fuel oil, and a bitumen-based fuel known as

Orimulsion Orimulsion is a registered trademark name for a bitumen-based fuel that was developed for industrial use by Intevep, the Research and Development Affiliate of Petroleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), following earlier collaboration on oil emulsions with ...

, imported from

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

. It was designed as a

base load The base load (also baseload) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week. This demand can be met by unvarying power plants, dispatchable generation, or by a collection of smaller intermittent e ...

plant, and generated about 10 TWh per year until 1992. Its operations were then reduced to about 5% of its capacity, since it acted only as a reserve in the Lithuanian power system. In 2012 9th block had been opened. After the shutdown of the

Ignalina nuclear power plant The Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant ( lt, Ignalinos atominė elektrinė, IAE) is a decommissioned two-unit RBMK-1500 nuclear power station in Visaginas Municipality, Lithuania. It was named after the nearby city of Ignalina. Due to the plant's sim ...

in 2009, the plant became the primary source of Lithuania's electrical power. Since the plant does not meet

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...

environmental guidelines, a number of improvement projects have been proposed. A flue-gas desulfurization project was completed in September 2008. In December 2007, Economy Ministry Undersecretary Arturas Dainius announced that a new 400-MW combined cycle unit would be built at the site as well. The cost of the new unit was estimated at 252 million euros; 57% of the funding will be supplied by the

, 33% by the plant, and the remaining 10% by the National Ignalina Decommissioning Fund. In 2012 9th unit had been opened, which cost in total 377 million euros. The plant also supplies

district heating District heating (also known as heat networks or teleheating) is a system for distributing heat generated in a centralized location through a system of insulated pipes for residential and commercial heating requirements such as space heating a ...

to the town of Elektrėnai, established in 1962 to support its workers. An interesting feature is that two of the three chimneys of EPP serve also as electricity pylons.

Footnotes

References

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - Executive Summary of Environmental Impact Assessment - Environmental and Related Technical Upgrading of Lithuanian Power Plant
{{DEFAULTSORT:Elektrenai Power Plant Natural gas-fired power stations in Lithuania Oil-fired power stations in Lithuania Buildings and structures in Elektrėnai Power stations built in the Soviet Union