Last Year Electricity Production Exceeded Consumption by Almost Half

Last year electricity consumption in Estonia  was 2% lower than in the previous year, totalling 7.8 TWh. Estonia continue to be a large-scale exporter of electricity, and production exceeded consumption by 45% in 2011.

The fall in electricity consumption last year was not surprising given the warm winter in the whole region, and consumption also fell in the other Baltic and Nordic states. Consumption in Estonia fell back from its more recent highs to the level of 2006.

A total of 11.4 TWh of electricity was produced in Estonia last year, which was 1% more than in the previous year. The amount produced from oil shale fell by 0.2 TWh or 2%, while production from renewable sources rose by 0.3 TWh, or about one third, with wind and biomass supplying most of the growth.

In 2011 the only countries in the Baltic and Nordic region that produced more than they consumed and were exporters of electricity were Estonia, Sweden and Norway. Electricity production was down in the Baltic region as a whole by 7%, with falls of 11% in Latvia and of 19% in Lithuania.

Despite this there was no shortage of installed generating capacity in the Baltic states in 2011. The net capacity of the power plants was 8.7 GW, which is enough to cover the consumption of the whole Baltic region. Taavi Veskimägi, the CEO of Elering said that this shows the rational thinking of market participants, which shows up the difference between domestic production and imports. “This is why the regional market is good for both consumers and producers. All decisions to invest in building new power stations in the region must be based on economic logic and respond to market demand. It is not necessary to build uneconomic new power stations on the grounds of security of supply as there is sufficient production and connection capacity in the Nordic and Baltic region. Building power stations with direct or indirect subsidies will be very expensive for society,” he said.

The fall in Latvian production was caused by a drop in output from hydroelectric plants, with the plant at the Daugava cascade producing 18% less electricity than in the previous year. For the year as a whole, Latvian domestic production was enough to cover 82% of Latvian consumption, leaving a shortfall of 1.2 TWh.

Lithuanian production was enough to cover only 36% of consumption in the country and the shortfall was 13% higher than in 2010. The main reason for this was cheap imports from non-EU countries, with imports from Kaliningrad, where a second generating unit at a combined heat and power plant started up at the end of 2010, replacing the output of Lithuania’s largest power station.

Electricity trading boosted cheap production from hydropower in the Nordic countries. Estonian exports to Finland suffered most, while the share of exports going to Latvia and Lithuania rose by a total of 30%. In 2011, 39% of exports went to Latvia, 33% to Finland, and 28% to Lithuania.

Latvia supplied 46% of Estonia’s imports last year, Finland 31% and Lithuania 23%. The amounts bought from Finland increased during the year, while the Latvia’s share of imports fell.

A longer summary in Estonian can be found here.