Black Friday or Blackout Friday

Today has been a very interesting day electricity wise.

We are using Stock electricity pricing in our household. About 30% of Finns are on that and the rest has set price for a certain period. As the prices have been all over the last 18 months, we have chosen the Stock based price (Nordpool that has Estonia in it too.).

So due to a error of a Norwegian company yesterday, (they bid with a huge error that equals 3-4 times of a nuclear plant) the prices went crazy today. Since 3pm it's been -50 cents / kWh. With our margin we actually get 45 cents for every kilowatt we use. To be accurate: we get paid to use electricity from 3 pm to midnight.

Crazy, right?

We're not the ones to go overboard with this situation (we've been asked to be reasonable), but I have been cooking and baking from 3 pm to 7:30pm. I did one cake for Christmas. 3 carrot casseroles (2 to freezer too  for Christmas). I made a vegetable soup and boiled potatoes for next week. Also made gingerbread cookies that I'll make into the Christmas tree presents.

I am exhausted. But I am happy with the result. Few more steps towards Christmas has been taken.

There was a fear of people using so much electricity that we might experience blackouts. That has not happened.

Oh and if you are wondering who will pay all of this. It is the Norwegian company who made the false bid. According to the rules they have to supply what they have bid. So if they can't produce that electricity, they have to buy it. And as they have to buy it, the other suppliers in the Nordpool can ask for much higher prices as they are forced to buy.

In all the other countries there are some limits to how high the prices can go, but not in Finland. We've seen some sky high prices. like last Tuesday when one our the kWh price was 96 cents. So to my understanding the other countries have low prices, but they are not paid to use electricity. The the situation here is different. And usually not good, but at least now for few hours we get the benefits.

I'm quite sure some heads will roll in that Norwegian company...