Domestic electricity production was far from sufficient in the last months of the year to meet domestic demands. The share of imported electricity in Hungarian consumption is permanently around 30 percent, and on the highest consumption day in December it exceeded 40%, Magyar Nemzet wrote on the basis of the data of MAVIR Hungarian Independent Transmission Operator Company Ltd. The reason for the high imports is that in late autumn and winter, in the dark weeks and months of windless and often foggy weather, when neither wind farms nor solar panels produce, the contribution of weather-dependent production to supply security is insignificant. In the third week of the month, nearly eighty-eight times more electricity was produced by nuclear energy than on a renewable basis.

The peak load was 6927 MW, which was recorded by Mavir on 15 December at 5:30 p.m. At that time, of the renewable energy sources, solar power plants did not produce, wind power plants provided 138 MW, and the gross capacity of the nuclear power plant was 2,032 MW. We had to import 2822 MW from abroad, which was 40.7% of the peak load.

It can also be read in the columns of the Magyar Nemzet that although the electricity consumption record was not broken last year - partly due to the epidemic and the fact that it was never necessary to order a heat alarm in the summer - the value of the 7095 MW of the winter peak demand on 3 December barely fell short of the 7105 MW registered in the last month of 2019. The demand for electricity can still be expected to increase as we use more and more electrical equipment, the number of which is not fully offset by the increasing efficiency of their energy use.

Over 90% capacity utilization in Paks

The Paks Nuclear Power Plant was able to claim its third most productive year in terms of production in 2020, was said recently in PaksFM’s program. The nuclear power plant’s annual capacity utilization factor was over 90% last year.