Two weeks of maintenance work ended on June 16, three days ahead of schedule, allowing power from Scandinavia to reenter the Estonian market.

Construction could not be carried out while the cable was in operation which limited the amount of cheaper electricity from Scandinavia, pushing up prices.

The work was planned for a long time and initially postponed to reduce security risks arising from Russian aggression, said Elering's spokesperson Ain Köster.

"Maintenance was now essential to ensure operations for years to come," said Köster. "The work was carried out on both the Estonian and the Finnish side, but on the Estonian side the work lasted less than five days, less than half the total duration of the maintenance."

After work started prices shot up and were comparable to those in winter.

The day before maintenance work started, the daily average price of electricity was €53 per megawatt hour. The following day, June 5, it rose to €92.

Today, the average price was €102, rising to €161 in peak hours.

The cost has stayed high due to repairs in Scandinavia, said Eesti Energia's market analysis strategist Olavi Miller.

"The Scandinavian electricity price itself is now slightly higher than it was a month ago," Miller said.

"And there are also major maintenance operations underway in Scandinavia that reduce the overall supply, with, for example, 1,000 megawatts currently under maintenance in Sweden from the end of May to the end of June."

The weather also plays a role.

"We have the sun, but we also have the wind," said Miller. "If you look at the wind farm yields right now, at 2 p.m. today we were at about 70 megawatt-hours, which is rather modest, a couple of days ago on Sunday when it was very windy we were producing 177 megawatt-hours."

Miller added that maintenance work is specifically chosen at times of the year when there is less consumption.

Elering said the company has not scheduled any more maintenance work this year.

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