Electricity prices remain high in summer

Between 21:00 and 22:00 on Tuesday, the electricity exchange price will rise to €352.05 per megawatt hour. It is unlikely that both the daily average and the peak price of electricity will fall significantly during the summer.
Electricity prices are not showing a downward trend, according to Kalvi Nõu, head of energy trading at Alexela.
"Early in the summer – a month or two ago – I would have expected these [prices] to come down. However, recent trends show that there is not enough continuous sunshine to keep these average daily prices sufficiently low, and at the same time there is a clear shortage during the night, morning and evening peak, which keeps electricity prices high as well," he said.
The reason for the high daily peak prices is the inability of gas and oil shale facilities to meet consumer demand due to their temporary shutdowns.
In addition to the short operating hours of these plants, electricity prices are also influenced by weather conditions.
"If there are windy and sunny days, they will bring the price down in places, but I don't see much change at the moment," Nõu said.
For the coming months, Nõu predicts an average weekday price of €100 per megawatt hour, similar to current prices.
However, electricity prices could be most affected by the outage of Estlink 2, which will be off the market until the end of August, Nõu said.
"There is a very good reason for this: 650 megawatts per hour of such cheap capacity from Finland will not reach the Estonian market. If Estlink 2 comes back to the market at some point, these prices will also fall," he said.
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Editor: Kristina Kersa