We pay the one hour spot price for power.
The power company called me the other day and offered a fixed-price fixed-term electricity contract for two years at about 8 cents for the power. My prompt answer was "No, thank you." and they didn't even try to convince me otherwise because they knew what a bad deal it was for an ordinary consumer such as our household whose power bills are around €50 per month with the current spot price based contract that we have.
Even if the price went up by 20%, which I doubt it will, the spot price contract would still be the overwhelmingly cheapest option. The Olkiluoto 3 NPP has been running without a hitch since last spring with some ability to vary its output and the newly installed wind power capacity is massive. Any cold and calm snap during the winter will probably be short enough not to warrant paying for the huge markup for every single hour that the power company would pocket for the vast majority of two-year period.
The latest 28-day average price of power (not including transmission, the peak power fee and the constants in the bill) was about 2 cents.
Yes, but - I can also imagine that come the dead of winter, this is going to change. There will be more issues. The reactor has had some issues already. In winter (start of year as contract ended in Dec), we were paying around 450 a month.
I was thinking about taking a 12m contract and seeing how it goes, even though the rest of the year it will be a bit more expensive. If the spot price is at say, 4c we will be paying twice as much, but if it is at 15 cents, it will be cheaper.
In my opinion, we shouldn't be having these issues at all with OL3 online, and considering the cost of it and how late it is, we should be given free electricity from it for the next ten years.
I think the added wind power capacity and the fact the new reactor is online and has been working without major issues for 6-7 months makes it likely that there won't be a crisis like last winter.
Of course, if you have electric heating you are in a completely different position. Anyone in that position is going to have to think about the price risk more carefully. I hope you can find a product that meets suits your needs.