Fortum gets contract to raise Finland's solar power capacity by 30 percent

OSLO (Reuters) - Finland's Fortum, a majority state-owned utility company, won a tender to increase Finland's total solar production capacity by nearly 30 percent, the firm said on Monday. Fortum will install a solar electricity system on rooftops of about 40 commercial buildings across Finland. Even though their combined output will be of only 10 megawatts (MW), the project will be the biggest ever of its kind in the Nordics. The total solar power production capacity in Finland neared 35 MW by the end of 2017 and adding the new installations will increase the country's output by about 30 percent. "The installation work will start in spring 2018 and will be completed during autumn 2018," the company said in a statement, without giving the value of the deal. Fortum, the Nordic region's largest utility in terms of customer base, has so far been active in the solar power industry mostly in India, where it has implemented projects with a total output of 185 MW. (Reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos; Editing by Adrian Croft)