Elenia

Underground resilience for Finland’s electricity network.

Overview

Elenia owns and operates Finland’s second largest electricity network¹ – serving approximately 430,000 customers across more than 100 municipalities.

Leveraging its long-term investment approach and experience in managing major capital expenditure programmes, MAM is supporting Elenia as it invests to protect its network against extreme weather events.

Sector Infrastructure

Sub-sector Utilities

Invested 2018

Ownership 45%

Location Finland

The gathering storm

Finland’s temperature is rising faster than the global average². In recent years, the country’s changing climate has combined with more frequent and severe weather events to cause serious damage to electricity distribution networks.

On 26 December 2011, Cyclone Tapani hit Finland and reached gust speeds of up to 31.5 metres per second³. The storm caused some of the worst damage in over 15 years – impacting overhead power lines and causing extensive power outages during the holiday period.

The episode drew attention to the growing impact of storms, snow and tree fall on the resilience of Finland’s electricity network. In response, new regulations were introduced requiring network operators to exceed certain availability targets by 2028.

Overhead power lines at risk of tree fall

A long-term perspective

Since 2018, MAM has supported Elenia in its goal to bury a further ~25,000km of its network over the next decade.

The ‘undergrounding’ of the network is expected to be the most effective way to protect it from extreme weather events – minimising the risk of disruption for Elenia’s more than 430,000 customers.

Leveraging more than 15 years of experience managing electricity, gas, and water utilities across Europe, MAM is actively supporting Elenia’s management team as they plan and implement this major capital expenditure programme.

To ensure construction is completed safely, MAM and its co-investors are also helping to promote best practice health and safety practices amongst Elenia’s employees and contractors. In 2018, Elenia set new safety targets and introduced rewards within its safety incident reporting system to incentivise staff and contractors to report incidents. Elenia also produced a health and safety manifesto with which it now requires all contractors to comply with.

24/7 network control centre, Tampere

Swipe for more

~72,000km	of high voltage power lines
430,000+	customers
Improving resilience	through long-term investment
Focused	on health safety of employees and contractors