Generation Capacity and Interconnections are Sufficient to Cover Estonia’s Electricity Consumption

Elering estimates that there is enough capacity for electricity generation and interconnections with other countries to ensure supply security for Estonia’s consumers at all times during the upcoming winter, as well as ten years after that.

As of September of this year, Estonia’s net installed generation capacity is a total of 2652 megawatts, out of which 2275 megawatts of output are available to be used during peak consumption. Since September of 2011, 152 megawatts of electricity output capacity have been added to Estonia’s electrical system. In addition, several producers have notified Elering of slight increases in the net capacity of existing generation equipment. The forecasted peak consumption within the Estonian electrical system for the coming winter is anywhere up to 1640 megawatts, with a possible spike to 1700 megawatts in case of particularly cold weather.

No extensive maintenance of generation equipment is planned for the coming winter at any of the major power plants. At the same time, Eesti Energia’s Narva power plants have placed one energy block of the Balti power plant into conservation in the spring of this year, and have also submitted notice of the conservation of a second block, meaning that 302 megawatts of generation capacity that were available last winter will not be available now. Accounting for the average condition of the generation equipment, the output reserves required for system services, as well as the irregularity of primary sources for renewable power (wind and hydro energy), a total of 2024 megawatts of generation capacity will be available for consumption and export during the coming winter.

Until the year 2022, the average increase in peak consumption in the Estonian electrical system will remain at 1.8% annually. Elering’s forecast for 2022 is a peak load of 1900-2000 megawatts, and there are approximately 2250 megawatt-hours of domestic generation capacity available to cover that demand.

The electrical system of Estonia and the Baltic states will be increasingly integrated with neighbouring systems in the next decade (interconnection capacities of 1000 megawatts with Finland by 2014, 700 megawatts with Sweden by 2016, 500 megawatts by 2015 and 1000 megawatts by 2020 with Poland, and 2600 megawatts with Russia and Belarus), meaning that in the future, it will be increasingly important to consider the developments in output and consumption in a broader regional context.

Considering the fact that the supply security of Estonian consumers is ensured for the next ten years, Elering’s Chairman of the Board Taavi Veskimägi says that now is the right time to open a discussion within the scope of the creation of a new energy sector development strategy, concerning whether local consumption will still be covered by domestic capacity at a rate of 110% starting from the second half of the 2020s. Veskimägi believes that a possible alternative is not to cover peak consumption by local generation resources, but rather that with sufficient interconnections it is possible to rely on the sufficiency of generation capacity in the Baltic Sea region.

The regional approach to output and consumption, based on a common Nordic-Baltic electricity market, allows for the satisfaction of consumption demand with a lower total cost to society, and gives producers the ability to maximize their use of generation capacity. If interconnections are used to cover electricity consumption with imports, the electrical system’s reliability criteria are also always fulfilled. The transmission system operator has access to a 250-megawatt emergency reserve power station, as well as 400 megawatts of emergency reserves under contract, meaning that consumers will see no power supply interruptions in the event of interconnection failures.

“Approximately 73 gigawatts’ worth of generation capacity is available in the Nordics during peak consumption. In Estonia, on average, consumption exceeds 1200 megawatts for only 13% of all hours in a given year. Therefore, covering peak consumption with Nordic generation capacity is not a problem if sufficient interconnections are available, especially if peak consumption does not fall on the same hour as the Nordics,” remarked Veskimägi.

The full assessment of generation reserves necessary to cover the consumption demand within Estonia’s electrical system is available here (in Estonian).