Friday's average electricity price in Estonia rises to nearly €200 per MWh
The average electricity price for Estonia as quoted on the NordPool exchange will on Friday be even higher than Thursday's at a little under €200 per megawatt-hour.
The average price had already risen to €134 per Mwh for the whole of Thursday, with peaks at nearly €400, following cheaper prices seen earlier in the week.
In a market overview, state generator Eesti Energia said that the approaching fall has yet to be reflected in electricity prices, since the weather still "resembles summer," in other words they may rise more.
Karl Joosep Randveer, an energy trading analyst with Eesti Energia, said: "Long-term forecasts suggest that September will be warmer and drier than average."
"If these forecasts are fulfilled, electricity prices are expected to remain at similar levels [as now]. However, as daylight hours inevitably shorten, solar energy production will also fall, while demand for electricity will increase. The closer we get to heating season, the more electricity prices will rise," Randveer went on.
Heating season is usually taken as October to March inclusive.
On Friday, prices during peak hours (between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m) will hit €357 per Mwh, still short of the peaks seen Thursday evening, when the price is nearly €400 per Mwh as quoted on the NordPool.
The overall average for the whole day will be €196.5.
Late on Friday night, starting from 10 p.m., and even then, the price will dip just below €100, to €99.91 per Mwh.
Over the past week, the price of exchange electricity in Estonia has stayed steadily below €100 per Mwh. And on Monday of this week, lows of €4.7 per Mwh were seen for some hours.
However from Tuesday, the level crept up again, with an average price of €56.3 per Mwh, and by Wednesday, the price had already climbed to €75.6 per Mwh.
The initial lower prices were put down to the Estlink 2 cable coming back online, after an outage that began in January.
In August, when the Estlink 2 cable was still under repair, Eesti Energia estimated this to cost €45 per Mwh more than it otherwise would have
Since the average exchange price of electricity in Estonia in August was €106.95 per Mwh through August, without the Estlink
Not only Latvia and Lithuania, as is often the case, but also Finland will see similar price conditions on Friday.
Estonia's northern neighbor usually experiences considerably lower electricity prices but it, too, has seen a sharp rise in in recent days, put down mostly to low domestic electricity production, partly thanks to one of the nuclear reactors at the Olkiluoto nuclear power plant being offline.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte