Iru Power Plant is a co-generation power plant in Iru village,

Maardu Maardu (german: Maart) is a town and a municipality in Harju County, Estonia. It is part of Tallinn metropolitan area. The town covers an area of 22.76 km² and has a population of 16,170 (as of 1 January 2021). The Port of Muuga, the l ...

Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and t ...

. It is owned by Enefit Green, a subsidiary of

Eesti Energia Eesti Energia AS is a public limited energy company in Estonia with its headquarters in Tallinn. It is the world's biggest oil shale to energy company. The company was founded in 1939. As of 2014, it operates in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, F ...

. The plant has a heating capacity of .Cornerstone Laid by Eesti Energia and the CNIM Group for the Waste-to-Energy unit at Iru Power Plant
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History

The first unit of power plant was commissioned in 1978. In the beginning it operated as a boiler plant. In 1980, it was converted into co-generation power plant.

Old units

The power plant has three power units with capacities of 80 MWe, 110 MWe and 17 MWe. The primary fuel of the units 1 and 2 is

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 carbon ...

and reserve fuel is

fuel oil Fuel oil is any of various fractions obtained from the distillation of petroleum (crude oil). Such oils include distillates (the lighter fractions) and residues (the heavier fractions). Fuel oils include heavy fuel oil, marine fuel oil (MFO), bu ...

, unit 3 mixed municipal waste. Total installed capacity is of electricity, 661.5 MWth of hot water and 162 of MWth steam. In co-generation mode the heating capacity is 398 MWt. It supplies heat to Maardu, and the

Lasnamäe Lasnamäe is the most populous administrative district of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia. The district's population is about 119,000, the majority of which is Russian-speaking. Local housing is mostly represented by 5–16 stories high panel bl ...

and central districts of Tallinn.

Waste-to-energy unit

In 2006, Eesti Energia started preparations for construction of a waste incineration unit with capacity of 50 MW of heat and 17 MW of electricity. Construction started in 2010. It was commissioned on 16 June 2013. The unit processes up to 220,000 tonnes of mixed municipal waste per year. The unit was built and technology was provided by

Constructions industrielles de la Méditerranée CNIM is a French equipment manufacturer and industrial contractor operating on a worldwide basis. The group supplies products and services to major public and private sector organisations, local authorities and national governments in the environ ...

(CNIM). The general construction was carried out by Merko Ehitus, with the incineration grate supplied by Martin GmbH and the system for the treatment of waste gas by LAB, a subsidiary of CNIM. The unit cost about €105 million.

Trivia

The director of Iru Power Plant from 2002 to 2004,

Kersti Kaljulaid Kersti Kaljulaid (; born 30 December 1969) is an Estonian politician who served as the fifth president of Estonia between 2016 and 2021. She was also the first and only female head of state of Estonia since the country declared independence in ...

, the first woman to lead a power plant in Estonia, became the fifth President of Estonia in 2016, and the first woman to be President since the country declared independence in 1918.

References

External links