Adequacy of power capacity during winter peaks in Finland

Due to ambitious national and EU level climate targets, wind power capacity in Finland has grown rapidly, while a significant amount of thermal capacity has been decommissioned or mothballed. Moreover, Finland is growing more dependent on electricity imports and the current electricity prices do not encourage market-based investments in power capacity. Hence, the issue of power capacity adequacy during winter peaks has been present in the political discourse in Finland, especially since the record-high demand peak in January 7
^th
2016. We analyse the Finnish power system by simulating different stress factors and their combinations, e.g. faults in the largest power plants and transmission lines, in a period such as January 7
^th
2016 using EnergyPLAN simulation tool. The results show that, despite the record-high demand, the Finnish power system currently has both technical capacity and adequate measures of intervention to cope with severe stress factors in the simulated period.