One of the many reasons for high electricity prices this winter is that there was unusually light snow in the mountains last winter. Light snow gives little melt water, which in turn filled the water reservoirs less than what was normal.
This is much of the reason why water reservoirs have been at record low levels throughout the autumn and winter, in addition to high power exports.
Fear of another snow-poor winter
The start of this winter has also been abnormally snow-poor. There has therefore been a great deal of concern that this winter, too, there will be little new water in the power reservoirs. The snow depth has in many places been able to be measured in single-digit number of centimeters.
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Three weeks ago, NVE was able to warn that there was 5 TWh less energy in what they call the snow reservoirs than what has been normal for the last 20 years.
Enormous change
But now the situation on the mountain has changed radically after large amounts of precipitation have come in over Norway:
– The snow magazine in week 6 was about 5 TWh above the average for this time of year. The snow magazine is now almost 20 TWh larger than it was at the same time last winter, NVE writes in its weekly report.
In comparison, Norway’s net exports of electricity last year were 17.4 TWh.
The situation now is such that there is more snow on the mountain now than there was at the top last year at the end of April.
NVE points out that this snow is very differently distributed in the country:
– There are large regional differences in the amount of snow, where there is generally less snow than normal east of the watershed in southern Norway, and normal or above normal amount of snow in the rest of the country, NVE points out.
It is still too early to declare the electricity market healthy. The water level is still significantly lower than what is normal at the moment, which means that more water is needed to return to normal.
In addition, a lot of the extra snow that is now waiting to melt is in Central and Northern Norway. As is well known, Norway has major challenges in moving electricity from north to south, which is the reason for the extremely large price differences. There is still little snow in the important mountain areas in the south-east.
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