Northern Norway looks to Kola Peninsula for more power

The station will allow for a trans-border power capacity of 300 MW, company representative Audun Hustoft told Teknisk Ukeblad. The plans necessitate an upgrade of the line from Murmansk to the border town of Nikel from 150 KV to 330 KV, Hustoft adds. The new station is expected to cost at least 60 million EUR, and Statnett is confident that the investment will pay back easily.

In a letter to the Russian company Inter RAO UES, Statnett highlights that industrial developments in northern Norway increases the need for additional power imports.

-The power sector in northern Norway has an interesting development and combined with the expected ratification of the border delimitation deal between Russia and Norway in the Barents Sea, we expect further progress in the years ahead, the letter obtained by Teknisk Ukeblad reads.

However, the new cross-border connection will not only be beneficial for the Norwegian side. It will also give the Russians a much desired improved access to the Nordic power marked, Nordpool. Murmansk Oblast has long been a surplus producer of power and exports to the neighboring Nordic countries will be a welcome source of revenue.

Murmansk currently gets about half of its energy from the Kola Nuclear Power plant.

Local hydro power

Norway has for decades engaged in energy cooperation with the Russians in the two countries’ border areas. 1950s through 1970s a total of seven hydro power plants were jointly built in the Pasvik border river, two of them Norwegian. One of the Russian stations, the Borisgleb, has for many years transmitted half of its electricity to the Norwegian side.

In the short run, Statnett also hopes to get one more of the local Russian hydro power plants turned towards the Norwegian market. That will require the construction of a few hundred meters of new power line on the Norwegian side of the border, and three-four kilometers of new line on the Russian side.

On the Norwegian side, it is the Pasvik Kraft, a subsidiary of the Varanger Kraft company, which is the main negotiating partner.

Nuclear power

Norway is already about to expand the capacity of the grids connecting northern Norway with the rest of the country. Part of those plans is also the construction of a line all the way to the Russian border.

However, the expansion of power imports from Murmansk Oblast to Norway raises several environmental questions. Norway has long worked for the closure of the aging reactors of the Kola NPP and sees the plant as a potential significant danger to the regional environment. Meanwhile, power imports from the Kola Peninsula will inevitably include a high level of nuclear power.

Read also: Mayors protest against NPP

Also on the Russian side, the bigger exports to the Nordic market might not be unproblematic. Several major industrial projects are in the pipeline in Murmansk Oblast and the need for available cheap energy will be growing. That could eventually strain the power situation in Murmansk.

As reported by BarentsObserver, the Russian state-owned nuclear power company Rosatom is planning the construction of a second NPP in the peninsula. In a meeting with Rosatom director Sergei Kirienko, regional Governor Dmitry Dmitriyenko highlighted the need for the new power plant arguing that the upcoming Shtokman project will require huge amounts of new energy.

Read also: Nuclear power for Shtokman gas