In Finland, municipal energy utility Lahti Energia Oy has announced that its Kymijärvi III bio-heating plant currently nearing construction completion, has produced and supplied the first heat to the city's district heating network. The plant, which will be completed shortly, will be tested for operation over the next six months before commissioning.
August 6, 2019, marks an important day for Lahti Energia’s EUR 180 million Kymijärvi III project as the new biomass-fired heat plant supplied the first heat to Lahti’s district heating network.
The testing and commissioning work of the new plant has so far been carried out without actual production. Now the plant is officially producing district heat for the first time, said Esa Tepponen, Project Manager at Lahti Energia’s Kymijärvi III.
The reliability of the new bio-heating plant over the next six months will be tested in many different ways. The purpose is to ensure that the plant operates reliably and in an environmentally friendly manner with designed fuels, power and load. If all goes well, the plant is ready to take responsibility for heat production together with Kymijärvi II at the end of the year.
Proceeding according to plan
According to the company, the Kymijärvi III bio-heating project, which began in 2014, has proceeded as planned. Most of the installation work on the plant has been completed, and during the summer the site has entered the commissioning and testing phase. This is the final stage of work before the new plant is completed. During the spring, when installation work was at its peak, more than 500 people were working on the Kymijärvi III project. Now the workforce on site has fallen to well below 200.
A long and nationally significant project is nearing completion and the Lahti energy translation is ready to fire. Lahti will soon produce Finland’s most environmentally friendly district heating. This is a great climate act for Lahti Energia, the City of Lahti and for each of our heat customers, says Arto Nikkanen, Production Manager, Lahti Energia.
The Kymijärvi III bio-heating plant is fuelled using certified sustainable woody biomass: woodchips and by-products from the forest industry. The heating plant will reduce Lahti Energia’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 600 000 tonnes per year as it will replace the coal-fired Kymijärvi I plant that was started up in the 1970s in time for the city’s European Green Capital 2021 celebrations.
The district heat capacity of the plant will be approximately 190 MW and the project employs around 1 000 man-years. The plant is estimated to create about 80 new permanent jobs in the harvesting and transportation of wood.
