Energy – Stormy weather brings high green energy

Stormy weather in Austria in January caused an increase in green electricity. In addition to good hydropower generation, wind power also has a good balance, transmission system operator APG announced on Tuesday. At the beginning of the year, electricity consumption was almost at the level of average consumption from 2017 to 2021. Thanks to good renewable generation, about 60 percent of the electricity requirements were covered sustainably.

The first month of the year was very mild, but the wind was getting stronger. At 932 GWh, electricity production from wind power was about 70 percent higher than it was in the same month last year. Approximately 2,200 GWh of hydroelectricity has been generated. Domestic electricity demand was about 5,453 GWh. Compared to the average Austrian consumption from 2017 to 2021, the weekly volatility range was 2 to 2 percent, roughly the same level. According to APG, coverage of 60 percent of electricity requirements by renewables was above average for January.

At the beginning of the year, electricity imports were lower than in the previous year. On January 6, with a capacity of 12 GWh in one day, more electricity was exported for the first time since September 1, 2021. Thomas Karal, CFO of APG, explained: “Looking at the balance sheet, we imported 890 GWh of electricity in January. Compared to the same month last year (1,508 GWh), this means about 40 percent less electricity purchased from abroad.

customer costs

Within Austria, the strong Burgenland region fed about 233 GWh into the APG network. “This is about six and a half times the amount of energy that the federal state itself would have had to take from the APG grid,” said Gerhard Christener, technical director at APG. Lower Austria provided about 240 GWh nationwide via the APG network, which is more than double the amount obtained from the APG network. Carinthia was the largest Austrian importer at about 319 GWh.

To stabilize the network, APG intervened for 20 days in January by redistribution. This resulted in costs of about three million euros. Although this is the lowest value for January since 2019, “nevertheless, these are the costs that the electric customer ultimately pays,” says Karal. The condition for reducing costs and interventions is a strong power grid. (Abba)