Electricity demand hits new record

Written by Rainer Ackermann

At lunchtime on Friday, the electricity grid was under greater strain than ever before.

As the transmission system operator Mavir Zrt. announced on Monday, the system load in the electricity grid reached a record level of 7,450 MW on 22 November. The last record high was only set last winter: In the late afternoon of 22 January, the load reached 7,441 MW.

Mavir Zrt. explains the new record with the unusually cold weather and the ongoing electrification – because a cold front covered the country with rain and snowfall, the sun remained in the background. As a result, private energy requirements were not covered by PV systems, but by heat pumps and air conditioning systems, which are increasingly competing with natural gas.

On Friday, half of the peak load was covered by the Paks nuclear power plant, the gas-fired power plants and the Mátra coal-fired power plant, the other half by wind power, a little sunshine and dominantly by imports. Fortunately, the latter were available at low cost because there was sufficient energy available in Europe at the time.