Rudamina PV station is located in the suburbs of Vilnius, 20 km from the city center. This station was built by a private person in 2012 on the landmark owned by the same person. Purpose of this station was to get most of the possibilities of feed-in tariff (FIT) system for commercial purposes. FIT was implemented in Lithuania back in 2009. Legislation at that time allowed developing solar power stations up to 30 kW in very good conditions. Network grid companies were obligated to connect such stations without any fees and obstacles. FIT was guaranteed for 12 years and its level was very attractive making the return of investment (ROI) period as short as 5-6 years. Many private persons and small companies used this “solar” possibility and arranged power stations on land sites and roofs of residential houses and on some commercial buildings. Prices of PV modules dropped down dramatically in 2011-2012, but Lithuanian Government did not succeed to make reduction of feed-in-tariffs in accordance with that change. Due to this, the so called solar “bubble” started to evolve, but new Government after elections stopped such development almost instantly.
Few hundreds of such small (up to 30 kW) power stations are still in operation and Rudamina’s PV plant is a typical case. This station still has guaranteed feed-in-tariff for the next 6 years, but owners are looking for capitalizing PV electricity after that period as well.
Rudamina’s PV station has 120 solar modules produced by E-Ging Company with a total power of 29.4 kWp. The modules are ground mounted with 180 degrees orientation (facing South) and tilted by 40 degrees. Every year the plant produces nearly 29 000 kWh of energy. Such capacity is common for Lithuanian weather conditions. System is equipped with multi-string inverters, irradiance and temperature sensors with effective monitoring system. This allows receiving data of the plant performance and communicating possible malfunctions and other data required for the project very easily.