In October the Prices in the Nordic Power Exchange Were Mainly Affected by Hydroenergy Production

In October the main factor affecting trading on Nord Pool Spot (NPS), the Nordic power exchange, was the high production levels of hydroenergy plants in Norway and Sweden, as it was in September. This has pushed electricity prices to much lower levels than a year ago.

Reservoirs in the Nordic region are at their highest levels for years and as a result the electricity price in the NPS Estonia price area was 16% lower than in October 2010, and the price in Finland was 28% lower. However, even the low Nordic price was not enough to protect the Estonian price from the twin impacts of strong demand from Latvian and Lithuanian market participants and the shortage of connection capacity between Estonia and Finland. The average price in NPS Estonia was 41.51 EUR/MWh, which was 1.6% higher than in September.

The total amount bought in the Estonia price area rose slightly in October to 507 GWh, of which 43% was bought by Estonian market participants, 49% by Latvians and 8% by Lithuanians. The amounts bought by Estonian market participants covered 34% of domestic consumption, which is 7 percentage points less than in the previous month.

The amount sold in October fell to 357 GWh, which is 25% less than in September. The fall was mainly caused by the low prices in the Finland price area, which led imports from Finland to replace the electricity sold by local sellers. There were also less sales offers from Latvian and Lithuanian market participants, who preferred the more favourable prices on Baltpool. In October Estonian market participants made 98% of the sales in the Estonian price area.

The electricity in the EstLink 1 cable was flowing from Finland to Estonia in 85% of the hours.

A complete summary can be found here (only in Estonian).