Austria imported 39.6% more electricity in September as hydropower output fell by 32%

Austria's electricity and gas consumption rose in September compared with the same month last year, while domestic power generation fell sharply because of hydropower, according to data from regulator E-Control reported by Kurier and derStandard. Electricity deliveries to end customers rose by 1.5% to 5.21 TWh and gas demand by 5.7% to 3.86 TWh.

Generation. Domestic electricity generation fell by 10.4% to around 4.92 TWh. The main cause was hydropower, which dropped by 32% to 2.17 TWh. Over the whole summer half-year (April–September), run-of-river plants produced 28.7% less than a year earlier because of extremely low water levels, and storage plants 11.3% less. In September, solar (an estimated +36.5%), thermal plants (+12.9%) and wind (+4.1%) increased.

Imports. To make up the shortfall, physical electricity imports rose by 39.6% in September to 2.73 TWh, and exports by 3.1% to 1.55 TWh. For the summer half-year this gives net imports of around 2.6 TWh, after an export surplus of 1.4 TWh in the same period last year. E-Control's monthly balance for the public grid shows physical imports up 55% in July and 70.3% in August; in the first nine months imports totalled 21,028.6 GWh, 17.9% more than a year earlier.

Gas. In the summer half-year, gas consumption was around 23.1 TWh, practically at last year's level (−0.4%). Domestic gas production, including biogenic gases, rose by 26.6% in September to 0.57 TWh. Gas imports fell by 29.1% to 10.2 TWh and exports by 23.1% to 5.3 TWh.

What next. At the end of September Austria's gas storage held around 68.7 TWh, 19.8% less than a year earlier but above last winter's total gas consumption of 57.5 TWh, according to the same data.

Real-time data for the country is on the country page.