Finland the electricity system was not prepared for Russia’s energy weapon, and because of that, electricity prices are now “absurd”.

This is the opinion of the CEO of the electricity transmission grid company Fingrid Jukka Ruusunen In Helsingin Sanomat’s big live broadcast on Monday.

“This is probably the biggest crisis the energy system has ever had. This is a Russian weapon of war. Now we’re shooting with energy, and we’re in the middle of it,” Ruusunen said.

“The system doesn’t work during war in the same way as it does during peace, but the prices are absolutely insane – you can’t get anywhere.”

The stock market price of electricity was 54 cents per kilowatt hour on Monday afternoon, and on Monday it will cost more than 58 cents per kilowatt hour at most. On Tuesday, the price peak hits over 60 cents. Ruusunen said that under normal circumstances, the price of electricity “would be in a different place”.

HS’s electricity direct guests in the studio were Fingrid’s Ruusunen and the CEO of Energiaindustri Jukka Leskelä.

Read more: When will the price of electricity normalize? See the recording and the answers on HS’s live stream

in Finland it is now the heating season for apartments, and the situation in the electricity system can become tense if the temperature drops a lot across the country. On Monday, it was already freezing all the way to southern Finland.

According to Ruusunen, Finland’s electricity system is “tight” this week. Based on Monday’s weather forecast, the most difficult moment is Wednesday morning. A minimum of 13 degrees of frost is forecast for southern Finland on Wednesday.

“We are in the middle of a crisis, and we have been preparing for this since the fall,” Ruusunen said.

According to Leskelä, CEO of the energy industry, the crisis treats consumers unequally. According to him, the energy crisis is “incredibly undemocratic and unpredictable”.

“Consumers face the crisis in completely different ways, depending on what kind of home they happen to live in or when the electricity contract has ended. It’s bad luck in the lottery if you live in a house with electric heating and have to make a new expensive electricity contract in the fall”.

On the other hand, according to Leskelä, a consumer living in a district heating house suffers relatively less from the rise in electricity prices.

Fingrid’s Ruusunen pointed out that the electricity crisis is not the fault of the current energy system based on exchange electricity. He said that the crisis is not a “normal” commodity market shock.

“They have gone to war against us with an energy weapon. We are now living in a time that will surely be remembered for a long time as a very exceptional period in the energy system. The energy system itself did not cause the crisis, but the system was not war-proof. The crisis is not about a normal disruption of the energy system.”

Energy industry’s Leskelä agreed. According to him, crises always raise questions about whether things could be done differently in the electricity system.

“Even though I think the system has worked well in principle, the crisis reveals things that could have been done better,” said Leskelä.

Fingrid’s Ruusunen and Leskelä of Energiaustuisin both predicted that the price of electricity will return to the level it was at before the energy crisis.

According to Ruusunen, it will take several years to calculate the prices. The widow estimates, however, that next year’s winter already looks significantly easier if there are no surprises.

“A crisis is like a ball that bounces. The next bounce is quite a lot smaller and the bounce after that is even smaller and after three or four years the ball doesn’t bounce much anymore,” said Leskelä.