Estonian offshore wind developer seeks geotechnical survey services

Enefit Green, a renewable energy developer based in Estonia, has issued a call for tenders for geotechnical surveys at the project site of its Liivi offshore wind farm, located ten kilometers off the island of Kihnu in the Estonian part of the Gulf of Riga.

The call was published on July 8 with the deadline for submission of proposals set to July 26.

Enefit Green acquired full ownership of the 1 GW Liivi offshore wind project from Eesti Energia, the state-owned energy company and Enefit’s majority owner, in March 2023.

In April 2021, Enefit signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Ørsted to jointly develop large-scale offshore wind opportunities in the Baltic countries, including the Liivi project.

However, as the Latvian government rejected Ørsted’s application for an offshore wind area in Lativian waters, citing the need to find a suitable location for the joint project between Latvia and Estonia (ELWIND) in 2022, the Liivi project continued with Enefit (and Eesti Energia until 2023) as its owner/developer.

The 1 GW Liivi offshore wind farm will also be interconnected to the Latvian national grid.

The project consists of between 50 and 70 wind turbines and export cables leading to the mainland in the Häädemeeste area and to Latvia when a cross-border connection is established.

Enefit plans to have the Liivi offshore wind farm built by 2030, subject to obtaining all necessary approvals.

The EIA programme for the 1 GW project was approved in 2021, and the EIA surveys at the site in the Gulf of Riga started in 2022 with the first seabed surveys, wind measurements, and bird surveys already carried out.

At the same time, the developer is working on a preliminary design of the offshore wind farm which will contain all the components and alternatives considered for the project.

In January 2024, the Estonian Ministry of Climate approved the environmental impact assessment (EIA) report for Enefit Green’s other project in the country, the 1.1 GW Hiiu (or Loode-Eesti; English: North-Western) offshore wind farm, located some 12 kilometers north of Estonia’s second-largest island, Hiiumaa.