The strong winds that began sweeping over Finland on Wednesday night helped the country's wind turbines to generate electricity at a record pace, according to national grid operator Fingrid.
Electricity generation levels were broken hourly several times over the course of Wednesday night, with a peak of 4,734 MWh measured between 10-11 pm.
The previous hourly record high (4,429 MWh) was recorded on 11 January.
Strong winds continued into the afternoon on Thursday, but the grid operator did not anticipate that the new record would be broken again that day.
However, because of the windy weather's duration, a record amount of electricity is expected to be generated over the course of the day, according to Fingrid's head of strategic network planning, Mikko Heikkilä.
"According to the forecast, 106,560 MWh — or about 106 GWh — will be produced today. Based on that, it looks like a new daily wind power production record will be set today," Heikkilä explained.
The previous record of 98,856 MWh was set on January 28, according to Fingrid.
According to Fingrid's forecast, the country's electricity consumption will be just below 10,000 MW/h on Thursday. Heikkilä said that wind power would provide about 45 percent of that power.
Meanwhile Fingrid expects nuclear energy to account for 25 percent of the day's power needs, industrial and district heating facilities will provide around 20 percent and the remainder will come from hydroelectric power.
The high winds significantly helped lower the hourly market price of electricity on Thursday, especially compared to recent weeks and months.
The peak per-kWh price on Thursday was 3.24 cents between 11am-12pm, according to Fingrid. The day's lowest hourly price was just after midnight when electricity dipped to 1.81 cents per kWh.