Finns managed to slash their power consumption by 10% in December to counter the impact of higher prices and to avoid blackouts that have become a real prospect after imports from Russia ended last year.
(Bloomberg) — Finns managed to slash their power consumption by 10% in December to counter the impact of higher prices and to avoid blackouts that have become a real prospect after imports from Russia ended last year.
The 10% drop from year-ago levels comes on top of four straight months of declines, each bigger than the last, according to estimates by the Nordic nation’s grid manager. The data is adjusted for temperature differences, Fingrid Oyj said Monday.
The reductions in electricity use come against a backdrop of freezing temperatures last month, and helped ensure that electricity supply remained adequate, said Tuomas Rauhala, senior vice president of power system operations.
On windy days, Finland gets most of its power from wind mills, but the coldest days tend to have still weather. With no domestic fossil fuels, Finns have built a lot of nuclear power and rely on imports to cover the shortfall between power consumption and production. There’s a particular danger of outages in the cold months of the year, if enough imports aren’t available. In previous years, flows from Russia helped bridge the winter gap, but that supply ended in May.
The government started a campaign in October to slash power use and to get people to time consumption outside of peak hours. Hiccups in the commissioning of Europe’s largest and newest nuclear reactor, the 1,600-megawatt Olkiluoto-3 in the west of the country, have increased the need to save electricity.
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