Estonia’s Electricity Consumption 4% Up in August

In August 547 GWh of electricity was consumed in the Estonian electricity system, which is 4% more than a year ago. Since its fall of 9% in January, electricity consumption has risen slightly each month from last year’s levels, reaching about the same level as a year ago at the end of eight months.

Consumption grew most in Harju county, by around 13%, while in the rest of Estonia consumption grew by only a few per cents and it even fell slightly in the islands and in the Rapla-Järva region.

Taavi Veskimägi, the CEO of Elering, commented that while there had been a strong correlation in previous years between electricity use and GDP growth, in the first half of 2011 the economy grew by 8.5% while electricity consumption was slightly below its level of a year before. “In the future it will be important to analyse the whole electricity balance more deeply in terms of the long-term trends, whether rising energy prices and the recession pushed consumers towards greater energy efficiency and whether there is a general movement towards energy saving,” he explained.

Electricity production in Estonia in August was 13% higher than a year ago at 904 GWh, while the output of renewable energy more than doubled. The main cause of the growth is the Narva power plants, which started using renewable fuel for electricity generation from this August, and also the Pärnu CHP plant, which has used renewable fuel ever since it came into operation in November 2010.

Consumption was much higher than production in all of the other countries in our region in August. Falls in water supplies in Latvia led to a fall in production there of 20% from the levels of the previous August, meaning Latvia had to use imports to cover around 50% of its consumption.

Total production in Lithuania in August was only enough to cover 30% of consumption, leaving a shortfall of 596 GWh, 71% of which Lithuania covered using imports of electricity from third countries.

Electricity production in Finland fell by 8% as a result of increased imports from Sweden. Although total consumption in the Nordic region exceeded production in the previous year, electricity production in Norway was up by nearly 34% in August this year and Nordic electricity production exceeded consumption by 0.6 TWh. Imports from Estonia accounted for 4% of total imports to Finland.

The shortages in the neighbouring systems aided the growth in exports from Estonia, as almost 20% more electricity was sold outwards from Estonia than a year ago. The largest share of the electricity was taken by Latvia, with 62%, while 23% was sold to Lithuania and 15% to Finland.

The complete review of the electricity system in August can be found here (only in Estonian).