IN Brief:
- The 42.2MW Mažeikiai solar farm comprises almost 68,000 bifacial modules across approximately 60 hectares.
- Annual generation of about 45GWh is expected to cover around 7% of the refinery’s electricity demand.
- The nearly €35 million project was delivered by Electrum and received €2.5 million from the EU Modernisation Fund.
ORLEN has brought a 42.2MW photovoltaic plant into operation at its Mažeikiai refinery in Lithuania, adding on-site renewable generation to one of the group’s largest industrial facilities.
The installation is expected to produce around 45GWh of electricity each year for ORLEN Lietuva, covering approximately 7% of the refinery’s annual electricity demand. ORLEN estimates that the generation will reduce electricity procurement costs by about €4 million a year.
The project covers approximately 60 hectares within the refinery grounds and uses nearly 68,000 bifacial photovoltaic modules, each rated at 620W. Białystok-based Electrum delivered the installation, which cost close to €35 million, including €2.5 million of support from the European Union’s Modernisation Fund.
Bifacial modules collect irradiance on both sides of the panel, allowing reflected light from the ground to contribute additional output through the rear surface. The eventual gain depends on ground reflectivity, module height, row spacing, shading, orientation, and local weather conditions, making site design important to the amount of usable energy produced beyond the front-face rating.
At Mažeikiai, the electrical value lies in placing generation beside a large and persistent industrial load. Refining requires substantial electricity for pumps, compressors, process-control equipment, cooling systems, lighting, instrumentation, and supporting utilities, so part of the photovoltaic output can be consumed directly rather than relying solely on export into the public network.
The projected 7% contribution also provides useful scale. The solar farm will reduce imported electricity, but it does not make the refinery electrically self-sufficient. Output changes throughout the day and year, falls to zero overnight, and can decline rapidly with weather conditions, while many refinery loads operate continuously.
ORLEN Lietuva will therefore continue to depend on the wider power system for most of its electricity. The advantage of on-site generation is narrower and more practical: where photovoltaic output coincides with refinery demand, electricity can be supplied behind the site connection and displace part of the volume that would otherwise need to be purchased externally.
Integrating a 42.2MW generating plant into an operating refinery also requires more than installing panels across available land. Direct-current output from the arrays has to be collected, converted through inverters, transformed to the appropriate voltage, and coordinated with the site’s existing electrical infrastructure without compromising process reliability.
Protection, metering, earthing, isolation, switching, and control systems must all be designed around the fact that power can now originate within the refinery as well as arrive through its external supply. Existing protection studies may need to account for the additional generation contribution, while plant controls have to keep the photovoltaic installation within the permitted operating conditions of the site network.
The industrial environment gives maintenance equal weight. Long-term output will depend on inverter availability, module degradation, cabling condition, vegetation control, soiling, drainage, communications, transformer performance, and access for inspection and repair across the 60-hectare site.
The use of bifacial modules adds another performance variable because rear-side generation is particularly sensitive to the physical condition around the array. Changes in vegetation, ground cover, shading, or surface reflectivity can affect yield even where the modules and inverters themselves remain electrically healthy.
ORLEN has attached unusually clear economics to the project, putting annual procurement savings at approximately €4 million against an investment of almost €35 million. Those figures do not amount to a simple guaranteed payback period, because electricity prices, maintenance expenditure, degradation, financing, support funding, taxation, and plant availability will affect the eventual financial return.
The refinery has already received significant capital investment. ORLEN says it has invested nearly €4.5 billion in acquiring and modernising Mažeikiai since 2006, making the solar installation relatively modest beside the wider industrial asset but substantial as an individual on-site generating plant.
The project also illustrates a route being taken across energy-intensive industry as operators look for electricity-cost reductions that do not require fundamental changes to the underlying process. Large factories, refineries, distribution facilities, and industrial estates can offer sizeable daytime loads, established electrical infrastructure, and land or roof area capable of supporting generation.
That approach has limits. A photovoltaic plant cannot guarantee output through periods of low irradiance, and an industrial site still needs sufficient firm supply, network capacity, or other generation to support production when solar availability falls. Storage can increase the proportion of renewable electricity used later in the day, but ORLEN has not announced a battery as part of the Mažeikiai project.
The new installation therefore changes only part of the refinery’s electrical supply, albeit a measurable one. Almost 68,000 modules are now feeding an asset whose electricity demand is large enough to absorb most of the output without pretending that 42.2MW of solar has somehow solved the energy requirements of an oil refinery.
Operational data will show whether the installation reaches its expected 45GWh annual yield and delivers the projected cost reduction. Those figures, rather than installed megawatts alone, will determine how much value the project adds to Mažeikiai’s industrial power system.
