The pump-fed power station plan

• The principle of a pump-fed power station is that water is pumped up to reservoir at night, when electricity demand is low, and then released in the daytime to satisfy peak demands. Such a cycle is required in conjunction with huge power plants, especially nuclear power, which are both vulnerable and difficult to regulate. At present the construction of a fifth nuclear reactor is again being discussed at a high level in Finland.

• The pumping station with its basin on the top of Vaarunvuori hill would have worked by electricity, being a short period peak power station. It would have used at least 25-33 % more electricity than it would have produced. The loss at minimum would have been about 100 GWh per year, equivalent to at least the electricity consumption of the households (without heating) of about 100,000 Finns.
     Using the pumping station only a little more than planned more than 20 years ago, the loss would have been equivalent to the production of the Vuotos hydroelectric plant.

The pump-fed power station would have erosed the biological diversity

• The maximum electricity output of the pumping station, 540 MW, would have been about equivalent to that of a nuclear power station. At electricity consumption peaks during the daytime (about 9 a.m. and 6 p.m) the water would have flown 117 metres down to Lake Päijänne with the same force (540 m3/s) as the mean flow of the second largest river in the Baltic region, the river Kemijoki as it streams into the sea.

• The endangered species, mainly on the slope of the rocky outcrop between the planned basin (1 km2 ) and Lake Päijänne, would have been affected by the switchgear site, the enormous power line (400 kV), new roads (3 km), the gigantic mouth of the lower channel with its embankments, and other constructions. Outside the constructions the mutual balance of the current species and their occurrance would have been endangered because of waterlogging of the soil, fog and other changes in the microclimate, ice erosion, and air pollution produced by blasting and other building work.

• Orinally drafted in the 1960s the plan received the go-ahead from the Water court in 1981, but the power station was not then considered necessary. On 19.4.1995 The Vaaru plan was granted additional time to the year 2001, passing the Supreme Court (KHO) with votes 4-3, against the advice of the referendary. On 30.12.1997 the company concealed the plan. The area is now a nature reserve.
     IVO's partner Kemijoki Inc., has in turn gone ahead with it's infamous plan to construct a hydroelectric plant in Vuotos in Finnish Lappland. This reservoir would inunduate 237 km2 of the valuable large river, its surroundings, and the homes of numerous people. The pump-fed power station would use up as much electricity as the Vuotos power station would produce.
     
  More information about Vuotos plan:
  http://www.sll.fi/vuotos/
  http://personal.fimnet.fi/luonto/vapaavuotos

Violated the aims of the EC Habitats Directive

• The proponents of the Vuotos plan managed to manipulate both the Vuotos and Vaarunvuori hill plans out from the sphere of Finland's new environmental impact assessment legislation (EIA), provided that Finland could become a member of the EU. In IVO's case, with its peculiar pumping station plan, the utility succeeded only by using a loophole: IVO kept its project boiling officially for more than twenty years.

• There has still been no unbiased report in the common interest about the economics of the pumping station. The plan was contrary to energy saving and to the consumer pays principles, and apparently violated the aims of the EC Habitats Directive. There are many alternatives to the pumping stationt, including a compressed air driven power plant in a former mine.

• Many authorities, the district of Central Finland of the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, and Vaarunvuori hill movement opposed for a long time the plan during e.g. legal proceedings. Even the president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari, did not consider Vaarunvuori hill the only alternative to the pumping station site, if it ever were really needed (12.12.1995).
  

Imatran Voima Inc.'s plan to construct a pump-fed power station on Vaarunvuori hill in central Finland seemed to be the biggest single threat to endangered species in Finland apart from Vuotos plan.

   Up to the Vaarunvuori hill English Home Page

Tätä sivua on muutettu 13.5.2001