Solar energy usage remains negligible in Finland – but is steadily increasing. This summer dozens of households have become net producers of electricity after installing solar panels, selling their surplus power to utilities.
Markku Åberg, an entrepreneur in Mäntsälä, southern Finland, shows off what is likely the largest private-home solar power plant in the country. Sixty-four square metres worth of solar panels are arrayed on his rooftop and on a rocky hillside behind it.
“This can produce enough electricity for this property, including air-conditioning, as well as for our office in Järvenpää,” says Åberg, who runs a telecoms business with large servers that are heavy power users.
"Not much of a business"
In sunny weather, Åberg’s setup also produces excess electricity. A local power company buys it and transfers it onto the national grid.
”I’ve calculated that during the summer this produces an average of 40 kilowatt-hours a day extra that I can sell. But it’s not much of a business, just six cents per kilowatt-hour,” he says.
Åberg has been able to slash his previously-astronomical annual electricity bill, though.
So far, says the Finnish Energy Industries Association, the amount of power being added to the national grid by private producers such as Åberg is negligible. Yet the phenomenon is on the rise – and part of a fundamental shift in electricity generation.
“It is a decentralisation of power, in that we could suddenly have, let’s say, a million electricity producers,” says Professor Jero Ahola, an energy expert at Lappeenranta University of Technology. He notes that there are already several electric utilities that are selling solar-power kits to their private customers.
Northern German conditions
Ahola is himself building Finland’s biggest solar power plant in Lappeenranta, eastern Finland. He says it should be able to generate a large proportion of the electricity used by the university. The university expects the installation to pay for itself within about a decade.
The professor says it is regrettable that there is so little use of solar energy in Finland.
“There’s a belief that solar power can’t work in Finland,” says Ahola. “However the situation here is just as good as in Northern Germany” – where solar already plays a significant role. In Finnish conditions, solar panels usually produce electricity from late February to October.
“Of course on rainy days, solar installations only produce 10-15 percent of their capacity,” he notes.