The new plant will supply 10,000 households in Cēsis and the surrouding area with green electricity. 12 million euros of Latvian private capital have been invested in the creation of the new power plant.
Opening the 'C SES' plant was the Speaker of the Saeima, Daiga Mieriņa, who said: "Innovations in energy and business go hand in hand, so I am really happy that today we are opening the largest solar panel park in Latvia so far - Cēsu SES. This is one of the largest renewable energy projects, which marks our country's course in green energy."
With an installed capacity of 19.8 MW, the plant is expected to annually produce at least 20,400 MWh of renewable energy.
"Our goal is to continue to promote the development of renewable energy projects in Latvia, diversifying the energy production basket as much as possible," said Kaspars Melnis, Minister of Climate and Energy.
The solar power plant in Cēsis has been developed with connection distribution infrastructure, so electricity production takes place close to its consumers - residents and companies of the county. "We can be proud that we are among the few counties in Latvia, where the majority of residents and business consumers will produce electricity from an industrial, large scale solar power plant," said Jānis Rozenbergs, chairman of the municipality of Cēsis region.
The owner of the newly opened plant is domestic investment fund "Merito Sustainable Energy Fund I" ("Merito" fund), currently the largest operator of solar power plants in Latvia. Attracting the capital of more than 80 Latvian private and institutional investors, the fund, together with the renewable energy project developer "Saules Energy", has implemented the construction of a seven plants so far in Zilupe, Brenguli, Inčukalns, Carnikava, Kalkūne, Koknese and Cēsis with a total capacity of 63 MW.
More than 33,500 solar panels are located on the territory of the Cēsis solar power plant on an area of 23 hectares. The general contractor of the project was the Latvian company KL Systems.
