The Harjavalta industrial park bustles with activity day and night – employing more than a thousand professionals. Production engineer Elisa Lehtikangas works in the heart of the area at a power plant that supplies steam, water, compressed air and other commodities to the processes of the industrial park’s production plants.
The power plant belongs to Veolia’s subsidiary, Suomen Teollisuuden Energiapalvelut – STEP Oy, and employs 26 experts. Lehtikangas is the supervisor for the powerplant shift engineers.
– My team’s main task is to ensure that customers receive the commodities they need as agreed, without disruption, and with high standards of safety – so that they can focus on their core business, which is producing metals.
You must be prepared to react as situations change
Elisa Lehtikangas originally came to the Harjavalta plant as a summer intern while studying energy technology at Satakunta University of Applied Sciences. After graduating, she worked for a few years as a power plant operator at Pori Energia’s Kaanaa power plant, until she returned to Harjavalta.
– I first worked as a powerplant shift engineer and later as a commissioning engineer on a STEP project for BASF’s battery materials plant, after which I became production engineer, Lehtikangas says.
There is no typical working day at the power plant. Lehtikangas says her regular tasks include production control, planning, reporting, fuel management and supervisory work. You can never know in advance how the day will turn out.
– If there are fluctuations in our customers’ production, we have to react and change our own process. Therefore, we constantly discuss their future needs with our customers and adapt our operations accordingly.
In addition, the job includes ensuring safety and reliability of the equipment.
– The priority is that it is safe to work at the plant. We rarely face critical equipment breakdowns or malfunctions, but we must be prepared and ensure that everyone knows what to do in case something happens. Proactive maintenance is of great importance. By investing in advance, we strive to detect the problems as early as possible.
Future-oriented solutions benefit customers and the entire industrial park
Lehtikangas actively participates in the plant's development projects. She acts as a technical expert and provides design support during equipment renewals or when new solutions are introduced. As the latest project, Lehtikangas mentions new machines that were converted to produce seven bar compressed air.
– The new equipment is significantly more efficient, and it saves energy. In general, the emission reduction resulting from the renovations directly benefits customers, as the carbon footprint of their products also decreases. We are part of the production chain, Lehtikangas states.
The power plant has switched from heavy fuel to wood pellets. The next step will be to develop emission-free energy solutions.
– It is not yet known whether it will be done with heat pumps or other solutions, but the goal is to give up burning at some point.
The power plant has the resources of the globally operating Veolia at its disposal, and this brings benefits to customers and even the Harjavalta city. Over 90 percent of the municipality’s district heating is produced with surplus heat released from the industrial park, which is more than in any other municipality in Finland.
The industrial park’s energy network is a complex network where everything affects everything. Elisa Lehtikangas is happy with her choice of profession, which, in addition to technical expertise, requires the ability to manage a large-scale entity. She got inspired by technology in high school:
– One of my physics teachers was very inspiring, and I became interested in questions related to energy production. This has felt like my own field. We have women working at our other Veolia locations, but here in Harjavalta I am the only one. It would be great to have more women as colleagues.
To balance work and spare time, Elisa Lehtikangas enjoys ultrarunning:
– I’ve got several hundred-mile races planned for next summer. When work requires responsibility and focus, on the running trail you can immerse yourself in something completely different.