The price of electricity is on the rise – Olkiluoto 3 is still out of the game

Exchange electricity prices will jump significantly in Finland on Tuesday. In the background is the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear power plant, whose turbine fault repair was reported on Monday to keep the plant out of electricity production until Wednesday.

“Olkiluoto 3 now clearly has a price-increasing effect, because it is a production unit covering such a significant part of Finland’s production. Its absence from our production palette has a clear effect of increasing prices, especially now that there is very little wind power in Finland since the beginning of the week,” commented the utility company The being portfolio manager Risto Kinnunen.

Kinnunen says that the risk is that the repair of the Olkiluoto 3 turbine fault would take even longer, in which case the production shortfall would continue for a little longer.

Tuesday’s electricity futures prices are clearly higher than Monday’s. According to Nord Pool, the daily average price of electricity on Monday is 71.15 euros per megawatt hour, which is almost the cheapest in the Nord Pool area, with the exception of northern Sweden and Norway.

On Tuesday, the daily average price will rise to 125.08 euros per megawatt hour, which is one of the most expensive in Northern Europe. However, in several other countries in the Nord Pool area, electricity is almost the same price or slightly more expensive on Tuesday. The most expensive hour on Tuesday is the hour starting at 5 p.m., when the price of electricity rises to 174.83 euros per megawatt hour.

“The situation in Central Europe in recent weeks has been that there has been really little wind and very high spot prices. The export of electricity from the Nordic countries to Central Europe has been the largest ever in the last three weeks. In other words, cheaper electricity from the Nordic countries is exported from our market area, and it tends to increase the price of electricity. However, no dramatic increase is in sight,” says Kinnunen.

According to Kinnusen, the near-term price outlook for electricity is now moderate, as hydropower is well used in Pohjola. The weather forecasts for the next few weeks are a couple of degrees cooler than usual, but according to him, this will not have a dramatic effect on prices.

At the end of the week or during the weekend, Finland will also receive more wind and wind power. According to Kinnusen, this also enables zero- or minus-priced hours for buyers of exchange electricity, if there is enough wind and Olkiluoto 3 returns to production.

“In the big picture, the structural change in our production has caused our price volatility to be extremely strong and will remain so for a long time into the future, when the increasing share of wind power in our production structure keeps the price fluctuation high, and the amount of wind regulates spot prices quite briskly in the market.”

According to Kinnusen, the pricing of electricity for a longer period is also “quite moderate” on the futures market, which seems favorable for consumers and industry. Weather forecasts promise that the winter will be clearly milder than the previous one. In addition, at the end of next year, a new transmission connection from Northern Sweden to Finland is coming into use.

According to Kinnusen, whether the consumer should now rely on exchange electricity or a fixed-price contract depends on their own risk tolerance. If you can schedule, for example, the use of the hot water heater and the charging of the electric car during the cheap hours of the night, you can clearly save with exchange electricity compared to fixed-price contracts.