Finland had to start two emergency power plants on Thursday morning to avoid a power shortage, the network operator announced after warning at the end of August of the risk of cuts this winter in the face of the energy crisis in Europe. Running on fuel oil, the reserve power plants operated by the operator Fingrid in Huutokoski (south-east) and Forssa (south-west) were started for three hours, the public company announced in a press release. These emergency starts take place on average about once or twice a year, but generally due to an unforeseen loss of an important means of production and not a risk of shortage, said a spokeswoman.
Insufficient production and imports
“For this morning, production and imports were insufficient to cover consumption,” said Minna Laasonen, a Fingrid manager. “We had reached the technical import limits from Sweden and the wind generation was very very low”.
The start-up of the emergency power plants provided 200 megawatts of power to ensure the essential balance on the grid between production and consumption, according to Fingrid. The company estimates that it has a total of about 600 megawatts of reserves this winter in addition to the total power generation capacity in Finland estimated at 12,300 megawatts.
A new nuclear reactor in the test phase
At the end of August, the operator had called on the Finns to prepare “for power cuts this winter due to possible shortages”. To spend the winter more serenely, Finland hopes to count on its new EPR nuclear reactor at Olkiluoto-3, which started up at the end of December 2021 and is currently in the test phase.
According to the latest forecast given Tuesday by the operator of the plant, TVO, the full power of nearly 1,600 megawatts should be reached “early October”. When Finland announced its candidacy for NATO in May after the invasion of Ukraine, neighboring Russia announced that it would stop delivering electricity to its neighbor Finland, citing payment problems.
Russian imports, which were around 10% of Finnish consumption, could reach a power of around 900 megawatts, which has not been available since mid-May. Sweden can supply up to 2,400 megawatts to Finland, but the Swedish neighbor is itself faced with the risk of shortages and regularly relies on reserve oil-fired power stations.