The Finnish power provider has initiated its five year ‘Reliability Program’ designed to reinforce the security of its electricity supply to its Nordic customers. The new program accelerates Fortum’s already planned grid investments to a total of E700 million for the period.

The scheme’s first scheduled phase will last three years. A thorough analysis has been conducted to ensure that the solutions going forward fit more accurately with the different requirements of Fortum’s customers, both on a regional level and in their respective countries, the company revealed in a release.

Already now our average grid availability is 99.9% on a Nordic basis. With the help of this program we will reach our target to halve the present outage time for our customers by the end of 2011. Our ambitions are high and we believe they meet with our customers’ expectations. However this also requires long-term regulation that steers development towards higher reliability, said company SVP Christian Lundberg.