Auvere generated 874 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity in the first six months of 2024, accounting for 34 percent of Estonia's electricity production.

Eesti Energia says the scheduled maintenance is required to ensure the continuous functioning of the plant's equipment, and is expected to be completed by early September.

The Auvere plant is run by Enefit Power, a subsidiary of state-owned generator Eesti Energia.

Eesti Energia itself said Thursday: "Modernization and heat exchanger replacements carried out last year at the plant significantly improved the plant's reliability and helped achieve good production metrics." Despite that, it is down for the next couple of months.

The Auvere power plant is Eesti Energia's newest oil shale-fired power plant, completed in 2016, yet it has frequently seen maintenance down time.

With a capacity of 300 MW, the plant has also rarely been in production in summertime in any case, due to the rising cost of CO2 quotas and the presence of cheaper wind and gas power plants generating to market at that time of year.

Enefit Power says the plant exceeded 90 percent reliability in the first half of this year, meeting the company's expectations.

This target was achieved partly due to the replacement of external heat exchangers, the company reported.

"Analyses conducted in cooperation with research institutions and the work carried out helped eliminate construction and design errors and reduce the likelihood of unexpected failures," Andres Vainola, Enefit Power board chair, said

In addition to oil shale, the Auvere power plant also uses alternative fuels, such as timber and wood waste and offcuts, and also retort gas, a byproduct of liquid fuel production.

The latter has "half the CO2 impact compared with oil shale."" Vainola added.

The power station is separate from the under-construction oil shale plant, also at Auvere.

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