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The end-October launch timeline is about two months later than originally planned. 

Operation of the 610-mln-euro plant situated in northeastern Estonia was halted in mid-May due to a leak in a heat exchanger. Later on, the delay in the restart of the plant has been caused by faults in superheaters.

"After the performance of the summer maintenance works and the completion of ongoing emergency repair works, we are planning to start the Auvere plant at the end of October. Dependability indeed is lower than expected and faults in superheaters, which are currently being repaired, have caused long standstills," spokesman for Eesti Energia Priit Luts told on Monday.

Since the Auvere plant came to a halt due to a malfunction in an external heat exchanger in mid-May, it has been in operation for just over a week. In mid-July it was expected that the malfunction will be eliminated by the beginning of September and it will be possible to relaunch the plant then.

Eesti Energia CEO Hando Sutter said the plant's dependability has not been of the sort that warranty terms require.

"The reliability of [Auvere power plant] has not been what was set out in warranty terms. It has been much lower and our contract and warranty period today ensure that the elimination of these faults will be covered by General Electric, and that unscheduled disruptions will also be compensated," Sutter said at a press conference presenting the second quarter results of Eesti Energia at the end of July.

The CEO said that talks are currently being held with GE and expressed hope that a part of the contractual penalties will be included in this year's financial report.

The warranty period runs for two years from when the plant was handed over to Eesti Energia, that is until August 2020. Sutter said that hopefully, the parties will have managed to overcome all initial difficulties by that time.

General Electric (GE), which struggled to hand over the Auvere power plant to Eesti Energia, has so far paid 106 mln euros' worth of contractual penalties due to the delay to cover the loss of revenue in connection with the power plant not being able to operate at full capacity on time. The penalty being talked about now arises from the dependability requirement, as each %age point that the plant's performance falls short of the warranty requirement has been assigned a financial value in the warranty terms.  

Luts said that the size of the contractual penalties cannot be talked about at this point as the information is confidential and negotiations with General Electric are underway. Nor can the dependability requirement set forth in the warranty terms or its pricing be disclosed, he said. 

The Auvere station belonging to the Eesti Energia subsidiary Enefit Energiatootmine was idle from mid-May to June 21 as a result of a malfunction in an external heat exchanger. The plant was then operational until the evening of June 28 and was subsequently placed in reserve as previously planned.

The plant was restarted on July 2 and was intended to operate continuously after that. However, maintenance works began again due to a malfunction on the next day.

While initially the Auvere power plant was planned to be handed over to Eesti Energia in 2015, then due to the occurrence of various faults, it was finally handed over to Eesti Energia in last August.

The 300-megawatt plant in Estonia's biggest industrial investment and is said to be the last oil shale power plant of Estonia. Its annual output capacity, 2.2 terawatt-hours, equals over 25% of Estonia's domestic consumption.

In addition to oil shale, the plant can be fueled with biomass to an extent of up to 50%, with peat to an extent of up to 20 %, and with shale gas to an extent of up to 10%.