2016-08-11
New wind farm connected to the grid
Litgrid has connected 24-turbines wind farm to the transmission grid in Šilutė district. The first megawatts from the new 60 MW wind farm have already reached the grid and its customers.
A 330 kilovolt (kV) transformer substation had to be constructed in Šilutė district to enable successful integration of the new wind farm into the Lithuanian electric power system. The new Šyša substation is designed for securing a reliable operation of the transmission grid in Western Lithuania.
“Wind farms remain the most rapidly developing electricity generation sources in Lithuania. Renewal of the grid is necessary in order to ensure successful integration of the wind farms. The substation in Šyša was built in such a way that connection of another large wind farm would be possible in the future”, says Daivis Virbickas, Litgrid’s Chief Executive Officer.
The CEO emphasises that further development of wind farms in Lithuania must be planned very carefully, considering the capacity of the grid and the power reserves available.
During the first six months of 2016, wind farms with the installed capacity of nearly 120 MW were connected to the western part of the transmission grid. A 73.5 MW wind farm, the largest in the Baltic countries, was put into operation in Pagėgiai district in February. At the beginning of June, a permit to generate electricity was issued to a wind farm in Mažeikiai, with the wind power capacity of its 24 turbines totalling 45 MW.
Another wind farm with the 8.5 MW total capacity of three turbines is scheduled to be connected to the grid by the end of this year. This will be the first wind farm connected to the transmission grid in Eastern Lithuania.
At present, 15 wind farms are connected to the Lithuanian transmission grid. Last year they generated 0.65 terawatt (TWh) of electricity, which accounts for 14 % of electricity produced in Lithuania. In 2015, the demand for electricity in Lithuania was 10 TWh.