Orkuforða

Orkuforða is the Icelandic term for the amount of energy stored to meet demand beyond current generation or consumption. It covers both strategic reserves and operational buffers used to ensure reliability and balance in energy systems.

In electricity grids, orkuforða refers to reserve capacity kept available to compensate for outages, demand surges, or generation shortfalls. It includes spinning reserve (online) and non-spinning reserve (offline). Planning expresses it as a reserve margin, either as a percentage of peak demand or as megawatt-hours.

In energy storage and generation planning, orkuforða is managed through dispatch strategies, storage duration, efficiency, and cost considerations. Technologies used to provide reserves include pumped hydro, lithium-ion and other batteries, thermal generation, and gas turbine peaking units.

In consumer devices, orkuforða can describe the remaining runtime of a battery-powered device or the duration a mechanical watch will run before winding is required.

In Icelandic policy and industry discourse, orkuforða is a central concept for reliability, renewable integration, and contingency planning.