Electricity, Electricity Price | Shock prices on electricity: Norway escapes...

Early today, Danish, Swedish and Finnish electricity customers experienced a power shock: The price for electricity was NOK 2.7 per kWh on the power exchange.

On top of this come fees.

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This afternoon, the price will shoot up to more than 2 kroner per kWh.

In Norway, on the other hand, the price never exceeds 16 øre during the day. Northern Norway gets away even cheaper.

Many reasons make you get away cheaper

One thing that Norwegians have not had to worry about during the corona pandemic is high electricity costs. Electricity prices have been historically low for a long time. The main reason has been that the hydropower producers have worked hard to empty the reservoirs before the spring melt, to receive historically a lot of melt water.

Thus, power production has gone too full.

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But as winter has begun to sweep across Europe, prices have risen again.

The exception is in Norway.

The reasons are several, but a very wet autumn has created a completely unusual situation: The water is usually drained evenly from the beginning of November, but last week NVE was able to report that the water level increased in the already historically full water reservoirs.

In one week, the water level rose by 1.8 percentage points – while last year it fell by 2.1 percentage points in the same period.

These full reservoirs mean that Norwegian hydropower producers are now producing at full capacity. Figures from Statnett show that the export cables to the Netherlands and Denmark have run at maximum capacity in the last two weeks – and still the water level is rising.

Several other reasons

According to communications manager Stina Johansen in the power exchange Nordpool, there are also several other reasons why Norway is doing well at the moment, while our neighboring countries are receiving electricity shocks:

– There is some limitation in the capacity between NO1 (Eastern Norway) and SE3 (Sweden), but 2/3 of the capacity is up and running, she says.

Had there been no restrictions on the transmission capacity between areas in the Nordic region, the price would have been the same.

– There are still revisions of nuclear power in Sweden – so nuclear power now delivers about 60%. This, together with colder weather and less wind, means that prices are rising in some areas. Then there is a very good hydrological situation in Norway that keeps the prices here low. We (Norway) now export power in full – and this gives a more even price than we otherwise would have had.

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