The reliability of Elering’s power grid was close to maximum in the previous year

No failures occurred in the transmission network administered by Elering that would have caused a hazard to the functioning of the electricity system as a whole last year. Only 13.8 megawatt-hours of electricity was not supplied to consumers. This means that the reliability of Elering’s network was 99.9998 percent.

According to Taavi Veskimägi, Chairman of the Management Board of Elering, the company has fulfilled its main task – ensuring the security of supply of electricity for people. “Elering’s mission is to keep the lights on and homes warm and, looking at the percentage of the reliability of our network last year, Elering has accomplished this mission successfully,” said Veskimägi.

He added that the programme launched more than 10 years ago for preventing failures causing power outages has provided clear results. “People who are engaged in network administration on a daily basis have done an excellent job and I would like to publicly thank them for it. Last year, as a whole, only the electricity amounting to the consumption of a couple of private homes was not supplied compared to the 7.8 million megawatt-hours supplied throughout the year,” Veskimägi explained.

The amount of energy not supplied has been decreasing throughout the period of Elering’s operation. The average energy not supplied in the last 10 years amounts to 61.7 megawatt-hours per year.

In the previous year, there were 107 failures that caused a shutdown in Elering’s power grid, including 85 short-circuits. The most common causes for the failures were activities by birds and animals, lightning, and the depreciation of equipment. Only one failure was related to a tree falling on a power line, which means that the consistent work for the maintenance of protection zones has provided excellent results.

Contributing to the supervision of construction work, implementing new methods for identifying the condition and defects of equipment and annual power line safety and notification campaigns have also played their part in the decrease of failures. Of all shutdowns, only 12 resulted in a customer failing to receive electricity. The majority of the non-supply of the amount of 13.8 megawatt-hours to customers was caused due to two events related to Elering’s substations.

The electricity transmission network administered by Elering consists of more than 5,000 kilometres of transmission lines and nearly 150 substations. Elering does not supply electricity directly to private consumers but instead to distribution network companies and major consumers connected to Elering’s network.