Elering Confirms that the Security of the Electricity Supply is Guaranteed until 2020

The security of the electricity supply to Estonian consumers is guaranteed until 2020 by local production capacity and international connections, according to a report by Elering on the security of supply in the Estonian electricity system.

The main change from 2010 is in the planned capacity from 2015 submitted by Eesti Energia, as the earlier report assumed that six of the twelve generating units would be closed in accordance with EU requirements. This would have led to a reduction in generating capacity of 970 MW and would have meant that consumption was not covered by domestic production.

The new report into security of supply takes into account the mitigatory measures in the new industrial emissions directive in force since 7 January 2011, which will allow the Narva power plants to use 636 MW of capacity for limited numbers of hours in the years 2016-2023 on top of its permanently available 1022 MW, to give a total capacity in Narva of 1658 MW.

New generation facilities will add 307 MW, even without the additional new units in the Narva plants.

Elering considers that the information from producers and the planned developments in the grid mean that the security of supply of electricity for Estonian consumers in the next decade is good. Equally, Elering does not see any need to hold a competition to build additional capacity to ensure security of supply, as foreseen in the Electricity Market Act.

Elering forecasts that electricity consumption will grow by an average of 2.2% a year, leading to a probable level of consumption of 10.6 TWh a year by 2025.

The current state of the electricity grid and the planned investments up to 2020 provide enough transmission capacity to ensure security of supply and the functioning of the electricity market.

The report is available here (only in Estonian).