HS analysis|Although the long maintenance period of the Olkiluoto nuclear reactors is finally coming to an end, other factors that affect the price of electricity will not disappear for a while. The average price of electricity has been low in June.
Power the price has fluctuated really drastically in June. Within the same day, there could be almost zero prices and very expensive hours. Such fluctuations have not been seen in the summertime before.
Last week, too, the price of a kilowatt hour dropped to minus on Sunday during the day. On Thursday morning, the price went up again to no less than 37 cents per kilowatt hour.
There are many reasons for price fluctuations. Fluctuations can be due to bad luck or completely planned. Some of it may be related to the rapid upheaval of the Finnish electricity system.
“Really significant changes have taken place in two years and it can be seen in the daily system and market behavior”, the director responsible for the operation of the electricity system Tuomas Rauhala Fingrid says.
Bad luck has been that there have been delays in the maintenance of the Olkiluoto nuclear power plants throughout the spring until this weekend. The maintenance shutdown of the triple unit completed a year ago at Olkiluoto was considerably longer, and the reactor was finally out of action for a total of 2.5 months.
The maintenance of Olkiluoto’s first unit was also extended beyond the original schedule. Its maintenance will finally be completed during this weekend. This would increase the production capacity of nuclear power plants by 890 megawatts, which has a great impact on the market, especially during the summer.
Major factor Fluctuations in electricity prices include interruptions and limitations in transmission connections of the main grid. In Lapland, almost 1,000 megawatts of the transmission connection between Finland and Sweden are out of use.
It means that when there is a shortage of electricity in Finland, it cannot be equalized in the normal way with imports. This usually increases the price of electricity.
And correspondingly, when there is plenty of production in Finland compared to demand, prices fall because there are fewer export opportunities than usual.
Cross-border transfer capacity scarcity therefore increases price volatility.
The electricity cable between Finland and Estonia, which failed already in January, is also still out of action.
In Lapland, the border wires are out of use because the Swedish side is improving the main network and cross-border connection. This work will take several more weeks, which means that the fluctuation of prices can continue for the same amount of time.
In Finland side, especially in Western Finland, Fingrid periodically limits wind power production during the summer due to its own network development work. Right now there are no restrictions, but they will be coming again at the end of summer.
It means that in very windy weather, the price of electricity will drop a little less than it might normally drop.
According to Rauhala, all these planned maintenance and construction works have been purposely scheduled for the summer because electricity consumption is much lower in the summer than in the winter.
Strengthening the grids and building new ones is necessary because the production of wind and solar power in particular is increasing all the time. There are also a lot of new electricity consumption destinations, such as new types of industry.
The root cause however, behind the large fluctuation in the price of electricity is the upheaval of the electricity system, which is caused by the explosive growth of renewable and weather-dependent production.
The change has happened in just a couple of years. Around 7,200 megawatts of wind power have already been installed. However, now the growth has waned.
In summer, there is usually significantly less wind than in winter, and the power of wind power has also remained low on many days.
Electrical system the new entrant is solar power, whose impact on the price of electricity is already really big on summer days. On sunny days, electricity has often been cheaper during the day than in the mornings and evenings.
Even the summer wind often only blows during the day, which intensifies the phenomenon.
According to Fingrid’s estimate, there are already about 1,000 megawatts of solar panels in production. The peak power has reached more than 800 megawatts on several days, which is almost equivalent to Olkiluoto’s number one reactor.
Prices fluctuations may distort the picture of the average price of electricity. Despite the fluctuation, electricity has not been terribly expensive in June.
The top prices usually get attention, the usual low prices are ignored.
In the past week, the price of electricity per kilowatt hour was 7.4 cents on average. In the first week of June, electricity cost an average of 5.8 cents.
On Saturday, the average price of electricity is only 2.3 cents per kilowatt hour. During the day, electricity costs almost nothing.
Market prices tell the price of electricity if the consumer has a stock exchange electricity contract. In addition, the consumer pays the electricity company a margin and a basic fee.
The electricity transmission is paid separately to the company in whose area the property is located.
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