Sweden pauses Denmark power cable over EU grid rules(nordiskpost.com) |
Sweden pauses Denmark power cable over EU grid rules(nordiskpost.com) |
https://www.europesays.com/dk/80254/
> Sweden has ordered the expansion of a key power interconnector to Denmark to be halted after failing to reach agreement with the European Commission over bottleneck fees.
The interconnect already exists as Konti-Scan 1 and 2. Konti-Scan Connect, when built, will replace them.
What are "bottleneck fees"?
https://swedenherald.com/article/surplus-from-electricity-cu...
> Bottleneck revenues, or capacity fees as they are also called, arise when there are large price differences between electricity areas, often between electricity area 2 (southern Norrland) and 3 (Svealand and northern Götaland). The price differences arise when the capacity in the network is not sufficient to transfer the electricity surplus in the north to the south where the supply is too small. When Svenska kraftnät handles this, revenues arise for the authority corresponding to the price differences.
In the UK, which has a single electricity market for the whole country, we have curtailment fees. There is insufficent grid capacity between Scotland and England. When lots of power in England is needed, Scottish wind farms could provide it, but the grid can't deliver it. So the grid operator pays twice -- a curtailment fee to the wind farms to ask them to dump their energy, and a fee to English power stations to switch on the gas turbines and provide the power England needs that it can't get from the bottlenecked grid connection to Scotland.
I have the suspicion that Sweden fears having to pay the equivalent of curtailment fees to Denmark. The EU agreed that wouldn't have to happen... but the EU still wants to constrain Sweden into using its collected bottleneck fees to upgrade its grid infrastructure, hastening their demise, rather than use it to subsidise power production.
> In March, the Commission agreed that Sweden would not have to share bottleneck fees paid to Svenska Kraftnät with other EU countries. But a new conflict has blown up over some of the Commission’s other proposals. According to TT, the Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund power production as well as grid expansion.
To state it again:
1. The intranational powercables means that German demand raises electricity prices in southern Sweden, which means businesses and consumers pay a premium vs what they would have paid without the cable
2. The extra charge is captured by network operators as what is called bottleneck fees and it's billions of euros per year, very large sums
3. The EC first wanted to confiscate these funds, which come from Swedish consumers and businesses. Now they want to rule about their use. Obviously this is completely unacceptable and nothing more than a bureaucratic powergrab, and no country would accept it.
1. What does this have to do with Denmark? This is about upgrading an existing link from Sweden to Denmark (seems mainly for maintenance reasons, not capacity; it's only increasing from 715MW to 1000MW)
2. Why did the EU have to reassure Sweden wouldn't have to pay bottleneck fees to Denmark?
3. If you have such great power generation in the north of Sweden, why isn't it available to South Sweden where the demand is? (whether that's to Germany, Denmark or Sweden itself)
Sweden is currently split into four pricing areas due to lack of grid capacity. All the cheap electricity is typically in the north (hydro) and then the price creeps up when you head south.
It's too bad the live electricity flow data is offline today, but there's a common pattern where SE1 pricing area in the north sends little under 2 GW to Finland (single zone) and most of it gets exported to SE3 around Stockholm.
"Sweden’s center-right government is simultaneously pursuing one of Europe’s most ambitious nuclear expansion agendas, seeking financing frameworks for four large-scale reactors or equivalent modular nuclear capacity totaling roughly 5,000 MW. Half of this capacity is targeted for commissioning by 2035. The government increasingly views congestion revenues as an important funding mechanism to support these ambitions."
https://constructionreviewonline.com/konti-skan-connect-proj...
This sounds... exceptionally uninteresting. Am I missing something here?
Or is this just a dog whistle for the HN crowd who like to complain about anything related to EU regulations?
Is that something that really requires that much more regulation? If there's one thing markets tend to be good at solving it's arbitrage.
There are significant capital costs to moving power. As I understand it, an example within the US is the relationship between the regional transmission operator (RTO) SPP and MISO, who have overlapping territory. In order for move power between certain areas of SPP, it travels over MISO lines. This eats into MISO capacity. As a result the two RTOs are working on a joint project.
https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news...
A lot of it for sure is either direct propaganda, or internalized anti-EU sentiments after reading too much of that propaganda on other platforms.
Weak Europe is what both Russia and the current US administration are explicitly promoting, so it's not surprising to see an uptick of those comments. Most countries now have pro-Russian alt-right/left parties, and their supporters are very exposed to foreign state sponsored messaging.
Why is it so crazy that the facilitators of getting the resource moved get compensated?
The facilitator is not someone in the free market trying to offer the service for a low price either. It's a government essentially forcing profit to be given to a middleman and anther country.
From the immortal TV-show Riget!
That you don't understand financial markets doesn't mean the realities of those marks won't hurt you really really badly if you try to adjust it with communist misapprehensions.
There's a strong tradition of a Jewish Left fwiw.
The free market in EU caused the high electricity prices in Germany to be partially transferred to Swedish consumers, despite Sweden being a net exporter.
From a political POV, Sweden couldn't really stop this (or the government didnt want to as they were making bilions on transfer fees). And this cable would make things significantly worse for the swedish consumers
Now Sweden is stuck in a terrible situation where we're forced to quickly sell our excess energy to Google/Microsoft/Facebook before the EU will force the use of the bottleneck fees to build more cables to Germany.
Britain is often suffering high prices, likely due to lack of capacity in connections with the mainland EU.
https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK2/live/fifteen...
Interestingly, the hydro plants are located in the north and the national power grid is not dimensioned for massive export, so the export to germany from the south of sweden caused a strong price gradient.
Renewable, net zero energy requires massively expanding the grid to regions that cannot supply enough from regions that can. I.e. hydro during Dunkelflaute.
Here, we find yet another type of stumbling block in setting up such a system.
Yeah, not super riveting stuff, I suppose...
Only topped by the number of people who love to cheer for US vs China while living in neither.
The point is that banking is something you remove at your peril.
But it seems you didn't even read what I responded to? Not to mention Denmark spraying Skåne with poop for a long time. And Sweden did vote yes to these regulations.
Sure it's not ideal. But compared to China, the population of the EU has influence.
I have yet to meet anyone happy with the european commission policies, except for very minor and timid arrangements such as the USB-C connector (and even then, Apple fanboys complained). The rest is all about destroying every pro-consumer/pro-worker/pro-environment regulation in favor of big multinationals who employs thousands of lobbyists across Brussels and Strasbourg.
But that statement would be bullshit.
As a Norwegian (very similar situation to the Swedes wrt power export): hard disagree. Most of our electrical power production is publicly owned, so we do indeed get something for the export. More cables, please!
> The facilitator is not someone in the free market trying to offer the service for a low price either. It's a government essentially forcing profit to be given to a middleman and anther country.
No, it's a mechanism to encourage interconnection.
It appears to be higher electricity prices whilst the compensation given doesn't adequately match and goes disproportionally to what's essentially a middleman.
Is it then not better for the population to essentially reward it's investment in energy production and keep prices low domestically?
Could you elaborate on this disproportionality?
> Is it then not better for the population to essentially reward it's investment in energy production and keep prices low domestically?
By the same token, we should stop exporting fish and oil – that'd be sure to lower the price of both commodities domestically.
It's disproportional in that it's more than the swedish would want to give since they'd rather invest it domestically (in energy production and those prices).
>By the same token, we should stop exporting fish and oil – that'd be sure to lower the price of both commodities domestically.
It would and I suspect you might take issue if your consumer prices were relatively higher and you were told you could not build a sovereign wealth fund to the same extent and should instead give much of that money so the eu can build bigger pipelines so germanies prices can remain relatively low.
I am supposed to have a say about how the country I live in is run. That is democracy. Not that I get to vote on a person who votes on a person who votes on another person who may or may not agree with me.
It's why I live in Switzerland now, and not the EU.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Dem_Democracy_Indices#/media...
