Auvere power plant will remain offline until mid-November

Estonia’s Auvere power plant will remain out of service until mid-November after inspections found additional defects, ERR reports.

The plant was initially expected to be shut down for about two weeks after a fault in an ash discharge pipe was discovered in early October. Eesti Energia said in a market notice on Thursday that the plant would be unavailable until November 16.

Enefit Power board chairman Raine Pajo told ERR that, after the initial defects were found in the boiler’s ash discharge pipes, the company carried out an additional inspection of the boiler system with four external expert companies.

The inspection also found defects in the boiler’s gas ducts. These channels, which are several metres in diameter, carry hot flue gases through the boiler’s heat-exchange surfaces and onward to cleaning equipment and the chimney.

Pajo said ash carried along with gases during oil shale combustion had damaged the ducts’ inner surfaces over the years. The damage does not necessarily pose an immediate risk of a breakdown, but the company decided to repair the ducts before winter to reduce risks.

Other power plants have replaced the capacity supplied by Auvere, and the impact on prices during the repair period has been minimal, Pajo said. The plant was last taken out of service for unplanned repairs in January and February this year.