Ugly numbers about Helsinki’s electricity network – This is what happens to transmission prices

The electricity demand of the Helsinki area is about to double within a short time. This creates an online company For Helen Sähköverkku and the grid company For Fingrid needs for large grid investments and creates pressure on the transmission prices of electricity users.

The city’s need for electric power was a couple of years ago, and for a long time before that, it was in the order of 800 megawatts, from which it has now grown to more than 1,000 megawatts. The investments for the large electricity demand that have already been decided for the next few years are increasing the consumption to around 1,500 megawatts, and the likely realized investments would increase the amount to around 1,600 megawatts, says Helen Sähköverko’s CEO Markus Lehtonen.

“It can be said that the need for electric power will double during the 2020s. Just a year and a half ago, the record for electric power was more than ten years ago,” says Lehtonen.

In the past, the increase in energy efficiency even reduced the need for electricity, but in recent years consumption has been clearly increased by large electric boilers and heat pumps, which have replaced the electricity and heat production of decommissioned coal-fired power plants. According to Lehtonen, they are almost entirely responsible for the growth of the city’s electricity demand in the next few years.

Another significant addition is coming from the electrification of shipping. Some tens of megawatts are needed to fulfill the requirement of the new EU directive to connect all ships coming to the port to the shore power grid.

A clearly bigger increase is about to occur Viking Linen planned, fully electric passenger car ferries to traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn.

“There is already talk of a power requirement of almost a hundred megawatts, because the ships’ batteries must be able to be fully charged during a short stay in port. So we are prepared for such a need for connection power,” says Lehtonen.

If other shipping companies also notice the benefits of introducing electric ships, the need for electricity may clearly increase later.

“Four passenger transport shipping companies operate in Helsinki: Finnlines, Tallink SiljaViking Line and Eckerö Line. If electric ships become economically sensible, I definitely believe that other shipping companies will follow suit and the need for electrification will only grow.”

A decision on the high-voltage line in the coming months

The rapid growth in electricity demand creates a significant investment need for Helen, which is responsible for Helsinki’s electricity grids, and the grid company Fingrid. Helen Sähköverko’s normal annual investment amount of around 25 million euros is doubling.

The biggest pot of this is covered by the new 400 kilovolt high-voltage line, which Helen plans to run initially from Old Town to Sörnäis and at a later stage to Ruoholahti. The investment decision for the first phase is to be made in the first half of this year.

According to Lehtonen, the 400 kilovolt line would not replace the current 110 kilovolt network, but they would work in parallel and thus increase the network’s capacity and reliability of supply.

In addition, Helen is planning, for example, underground cabling of high-voltage lines running in the air on Vihdintie, because the area needs space for the urban boulevard to be built there.

As a counterweight to the investments in the high-voltage network, Helen intends to postpone investments in the low-voltage network, which serves, for example, residential properties and blocks of flats. There is a repair debt for the low-voltage network.

According to Lehtonen, the investments require Helen to take on debt in addition to income financing. The costs also have an impact on customers’ electricity transmission prices, even if new users come to the network to share the payment burden.

“Network charges are affected by many other things than our investments. Cost pressure also comes from the main grid to the distribution network companies, because all electricity users in Finland also pay main grid charges, which are really substantial. Here, there is clearly cost pressure on customers’ transmission prices as well,” says Lehtonen.

The backbone connections create a bottleneck

Southern Finland has very little own electricity production compared to consumption, so electricity has to be imported via the main grid from elsewhere, primarily from the nuclear and wind farm areas on the west coast.

Lehtonen considers the grid company Fingrid’s future grid investments to be clearly the biggest bottleneck for making the equations of Helen’s own plans and thus the capital’s growing need for electricity work. The permit and zoning processes for mains cables alone take several years.

“Southern Finland would need a lot more electricity production. It would be really important so that it would not always be necessary to build a new transmission connection from north to south when the electricity demand in southern Finland increases,” says Lehtonen.

In Helsinki, Helen constantly receives a lot of inquiries from potential customers who would be willing to connect, for example, data centers or other investments that consume a lot of electricity to the network. Lehtonen says that it is not realistic to carry out all the surveys, as it would mean a further doubling of the electricity demand to more than 3,000 megawatts.

Customers with a consumption of more than 10 megawatts require approval from Fingrid due to the restrictions of the main grid. Priority is given to already agreed investments, such as Electric boilers and the electrification of shipping.

However, Lehtonen says that access to the grid can be obtained if it is possible to be flexible about the use of electricity when consumption is at its peak.

“I would think that maybe two or three large data centers of around one hundred megawatts can be connected to the grid in Helsinki, provided that they can be flexible. The rest depends on how well Fingrid gets the main grid development projects implemented.”