英语论文网

ed from its electricity market in the sustaining and modernizing the economy.[6]

2.0 FINNISH ELECTRICITY MARKET

The Finnish electricity market has a distinct market structure and has a well diversified production technology of hydropower, various forms of thermal unit and nuclear. Generation in the Finnish electricity market has been a multi player business, with its markets being one of the most competitive in the world.[7]

The electricity sector of Finland has been one of the most important sector in the development of the social and economic scenes of the Finnish economy. There are several features that has made the Finnish electricity market stand out: first is that the Finnish electricity market has always been structurally different when compared to other markets (especially the Nordic Market). Second of all, there has been exploitation in various types of thermal units and a well diversified production technology of hydropower and nuclear. There is also the presence of competition in transmission of the Finnish electricity networks which is a unique feature of its markets and lastly, before deregulation, small utilities existed side by side with the state owned companies.[8]

The history of the Finnish electricity industry can be broken down to three periods; the Grant Duchy Finland, the period between 1920 and 1939 and the period after the war.

When compared to Western Europe and the Nordic countries, Finland was less industrialized and towards the end of the 19th century, it was autonomous. Agriculture was then the main based of the Finnish economy. Its major source of electricity generation in the past was wood (indigenous source) and other technologies used for generation were majorly imported. There was an early electrification start in Finland which later grew to become a more modern industry and catching up with other early industrialized countries in the same region globally. There were a number of achievements in industrial works towards the end of 1880's, with the acceleration of electrification of the urban areas between the mid 1880s to early part of 1920s.[9]

Finland got its independence on the 6th of December, 1917. As a new republic country with its new parliament, made major decisions regarding electricity: the export of electric power was to be prohibited, there was to be the construction of a state owned hydro electric plant on the Vuoski river at Imatra rapids and the building of a state owned grid of about 500 km the famous Imatra to Viipuri, Turku and Helsinki which were its main cities. The drive for these decisions was to utilize the nation's resources for its benefit and having to avoid or abolish the use of foreign capital in Finland's local energy economy. Imatra power plant had an estimated capacity of nearly 150 MW and it was just enough to meet local demand. This brought about the need for a more extensive network for the transmission of power and distribution. The extension was done in 1919, but only for short distances and only transmitted little amount of electricity. There was no national plan when this expansion was carried out in the 1920's; therefore there was the use of many different voltages.

There was a launch of an emergency five year plan for 1946 - 1950; this was to build a new plant for hydroelectric generation. This resulted from the preparedness of Finland to remove the strong contro