Southern Finland’s wind power ban costs billions – the bill will be passed on to electricity consumers

From the reader. Finland’s wind power production has grown at a historically fast rate between 2020 and 2025. Wind has become our country’s second largest source of electricity, which already covers more than a quarter of our electricity consumption. However, this success story of the green transition hides a serious financial flaw: electricity is produced far from where it is consumed.

The investment boom in wind power has inevitably concentrated in Ostrobothnia and the north. At the same time, Southern Finland has locked itself behind mechanical distance limits and the Defense Forces’ absolute radar prohibitions. In the public debate, there is a persistent delusion that building in the north would make the most sense from an overall economic perspective. In reality, this current model will be astronomically expensive for Finnish electricity consumers.

For an individual wind power company, erecting a basic power plant in Ostrobothnia is the cheapest. Namely, the investor does not have to pay the gigantic 5.2 billion euro expansion bill of the main grid, which is currently used to build the transmission lines from north to south. This billion-dollar bill – together with the transmission losses caused by long distances – will be passed directly onto the electricity transmission fees of all Finns. The electricity produced in the north is cheap only at the production site, but on the way to the consumption centers in the south, enormous social hidden costs are added to it.

At the same time, northern production suffers from severe price cannibalism. When it’s windy in Ostrobothnia, all the power plants in the region produce electricity at the same time, which causes the price of electricity on the exchange to collapse to zero.

The great paradox of the energy economy is that, in the long term, a special technology that adapts to the environment to be built on the coast of Southern Finland would be significantly more profitable. Technological solutions already exist: radar-friendly fading materials suppress radar reflections by up to 99 percent, and vertical axis turbines and intelligent noise control systems eliminate the traditional pulsating noise.

Although this kind of technology is more expensive in terms of purchase price, it would quickly pay for itself. On the coast of southern Finland, the wind conditions are excellent, and the wind there is often in a different cycle than in Ostrobothnia. Electricity produced in the south could be sold on the stock exchange when prices are high and there is the highest demand for electricity. Above all, electricity would sneak directly into consumption without billions of transmission networks.

So why is the market stuck? Because Finland’s licensing and regulatory system treats wind turbines as one mechanical mass. The investor prefers to choose the safe way in the north, because the risk of the project in the south falling is too great.

The knot must be opened by legislation:

1. Technology correction to the distance law: If the developer invests in quiet and adaptive technology, it must be possible to be flexible about the fixed protection distance of 1,250 meters.

2. The allowance must be based on actual measured effects, not metric classification.

3. Radar compensation fund: A fee can be collected from projects in the south, with which the Defense Forces can finance the updates of its control systems and filler radars.

4. Regional grid charges: Transfer charges must be staggered in such a way that production located far from consumption pays a fair share of the grid load it causes.

Finland cannot afford to sink billions of euros into unnecessary transmission lines just because the disadvantages of climate talks in southern Finland are wanted to be borne by others. It’s time to move from mechanical bans to smart regulation and use the best openers in the south.