Oil and gas company Lukoil has commissioned a 20MW PV plant that features heterojunction (HJ) modules from Hevel and has been constructed at a refinery in Russia’s southern Volgograd region.
Russian solar cell and module manufacturer Hevel also carried out engineering, procurement and construction work on the plant. According to Lukoil, more than 70% of the equipment used at the project was produced in Russia.
Constructed on 17 spare pieces of land with a total area of around 50 hectares, the project will generate 24.5 million kWh of electricity annually.
Lukoil’s Volgograd refinery now hosts two PV plants, after the company inaugurated a 10MW installation there in 2018.
Hevel’s modules are also being installed at Russia’s largest solar project, a 116MW plant in Kalmykia, in the south of the country, that is being brought forward by a joint venture between the Russian Direct Investment Fund and Finnish utility Fortum. The first, 78MW phase is due to be commissioned in Q4 2021.
Hevel announced in December that it was awarded 40MW of solar projects in a renewables auction in Kazakhstan, building on its 248MW solar portfolio in the country, which includes the company’s largest operational plant, with a capacity of 100MW.
The manufacturer last year expanded its annual module production capacity to 340MW, equivalent to around 841,000 modules.
