Maintenance at Narva power plant postponed due to increased demand
Russian energy company Inter RAO's exit from the Baltic and Finnish markets has meant an increased workload of the power plants in Narva, due to which Enefit Power has postponed maintenance work on one of its blocks originally slated to begin this week.
According to AS Enefit Power board chairman Andres Vainola, maintenance and renovation work is typically planned at least a year in advance, but this summer they will have to take the rapidly changing market situation into consideration and acknowledge that long-planned maintenance on its energy blocks will have to be postponed.
"At the beginning of this week, we were still working with the knowledge that we'd be starting maintenance on one of our energy blocks, as Estonian-Latvian transmission capacity would be halved from 1,000 megawatts to 500," Vainola said. "This restriction was lifted, and as demand on the market is so high and so are prices, then we also had to react quickly and further postpone maintenance, even further into the summer."
He added that similar situations may crop up during the fall and winter period as well.
According to the board chairman, a tense political situation and sanctions are both contributing to the unpredictability of the energy market, including the withdrawal of Russia's Inter RAO from the Baltic and Finnish markets, for example.
"It is 20 degrees Celsius out and we're offering more than 1,000 megawatts of net electrical capacity to the market," he said. "To be honest, I can't even remember such a time."
All of this is related to the political situations that have arisen, Vainola said, adding that currently, one third of Estonia's electrical exports are going to Finland, while two thirds are headed in the direction of Latvia and Lithuania.
"This is reality," he said. "This is what we have to be able to manage, and we are acting accordingly. So we have to react to changes in the market situation caused by sanctions packages."
Enefit Power's three power plants include a total of seven energy blocks. Two are scheduled for maintenance this summer, one after the other, starting mid-June. One energy block will undergo maintenance on the go, with half the block online while the other half is being repaired. Auvere Power Plant, Enefit Power's newest plant, is slated to undergo maintenance this fall, once the company's remaining six energy blocks have already been repaired and are operational.
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Editor: Aili Vahtla
