Estonian and Finnish Electricity Prices Equal for 87% of Hours in February

According to numbers released by the Nordic power exchange Nord Pool Spot (NPS), all price areas saw price drops in February, and the Estonian and Finnish price areas were on par for 87% of all hours last month.

The price in the NPS Estonia price area fell by 15% to 34.79 euros per megawatt-hour, while the same relative price drop in Finland brought it down to 34.16 euros. The price drops in Finland and Estonia were the largest in all of NPS. The system price of the Nordic power exchange reached 30.23 euros per megawatt-hour, a tenth below that of January. The lowest electricity price was in Denmark, where negative electricity prices were observed again for three hours.

In Latvia and Lithuania, the price was 42.73 and 42.74 euros per megawatt-hour respectively in the last month. The Latvian and Lithuanian prices matched the day-ahead electricity price in Estonia for 20% of all hours in February.

The fill rates of Norwegian hydro reservoirs, which strongly affect the electricity price in the Nordics, were nine percentage points higher at the end of last month than the same time in the previous year.

The price of carbon dioxide emission quotas, which remained relatively stable for a long time, rose to 2012 levels in February, fluctuating between 5.80 and 7.12 euros per ton. The price increase may be due to recent climate policy decisions in the European Union.

During February, power flows were in the direction from Finland to Estonia for all hours. The EstLink 1 and EstLink 2 interconnections were at maximum transmission capacity for 88 hours in February.

The use of transmission capacity between NPS Estonia and NPS Latvia that was released into the market grew again in February, with the day-ahead market utilizing 97% of tradable transmission capacity in the direction from Estonia to Latvia (compared to 76% in January). Interconnections between NPS Estonia and NPS Latvia were fully claimed for 540 hours, based on day-ahead trading results.

An auction took place on February 18th for the sale of 150 megawatts of limited PTRs for each hour in March. Six market participants took advantage of the auction. The starting price was 0.47 euros per megawatt-hour, and the auction drove the price up significantly, to 6.21 euros per megawatt-hour. Overall for February, the average difference in the price of electricity between Estonia and Latvia was 7.93 euros.

The prices of derivative transactions fell in February. Based on those, the price of electricity in the NPS Estonia price area in the second quarter of this year shall be 33.35 euros per megawatt-hour. The NPS system price in the second quarter shall be 26.95 euros, based on derivative transactions.

The full market report for February is available here.