The balance service fees for balance responsible parties will rise on 1 November 2023

Fingrid will raise the balance service fees for balance responsible parties from 1 November 2023. The increase is due to a sharp rise in the costs of power system reserves. 

As of 1 November 2023, the volume fee for production and consumption paid by balance responsible parties will rise to EUR 1.5 per megawatt-hour. Other balance service fees will remain unchanged. The current volume fee is EUR 1.2 per megawatt-hour. 

It is Fingrid’s responsibility to maintain the balance between electricity consumption and production in Finland. This responsibility is managed through the balance service. The balance service fees are intended to finance the execution of the national balance service and balance power trade, the development of systems and processes linked to the balance service, and costs resulting from the power system reserves. Balance power purchases and sales to manage imbalances are energy-based.  

Power system reserves maintain the frequency of the power system and the quality of electricity at the target level. Fingrid uses these reserves to balance the power system, which are purchased in different reserve marketplaces in both Finland and the Nordic countries. 

The current increase in reserve costs results above all from the sharp rise in the capacity costs of a single reserve product, the manual Frequency Reserve (mFRR), during the summer and autumn. Fingrid procures the reserve in question from the Finnish market where purchase prices have been highly elevated from time to time. 

Changes in the electricity market situation, fluctuations in the reserve market prices and the growing need to purchase reserve volumes, necessitated by the energy transformation, increase the difficult-to-predict fluctuations in the costs of the balance service. Fingrid is developing the reserve markets with the goal of increasing supply and expanding the markets geographically. The price of balance power is significantly affected by the quantity of balancing capacity available in the power system at any given time and the size of the balance responsible parties’ imbalances. 

Balance service fees are valid until further notice. Balance service fees and the costs of the balance service are monitored and the payments are adjusted to cover changes in the operations’ costs. 

 Further information: 

Jani Piipponen, Manager, balance services, Fingrid, tel. +358 30 395 4186 
Emails are in the format firstname.lastname@fingrid.fi 

 Euros/megawatt-hour are converted to euros/kilowatt-hour or cents/kilowatt-hour using the following formula: 1.5 €/MWh = 0.0015 €/kWh = 0.15 ct/kWh