2022 has been a particularly eventful year for the energy industry. All actors must now try to understand and navigate a completely new and significantly more complex external situation. Read the article in Swedish

The electricity supply must be secured while society is rapidly electrified and converted to sustainable energy. This is in a heightened security situation, with a new energy policy and electricity prices at record levels.

Despite differing and often strong opinions, most seem to agree that the Swedish electricity market model and the design of the electricity system need to be adapted to today's challenges and needs.

NordSyd – The electricity grid is expanded and densified

According to Energiföretagen, 240–310 TWh may be needed in Sweden in 2045 compared to today's barely 150 TWh. And it's not just about increasing production through sustainable forms of energy, but also transmission. Between 2020 and 2040, the transmission network will need to be expanded by over 5,900 km.

The NordSyd investment package will renew and strengthen Svenska Kraftnät's transmission network between electricity areas 2 and 3. The aim is to remove the bottlenecks that prevent electricity from flowing to where it is most needed and make the network more robust.

Challenges that require flexible power grid solutions

Project NordSyd will also make the network more flexible, and precisely flexibility is a must to be able to handle the complex and unpredictable reality.

Urbanization increases the pressure on electricity networks in the cities and can make it more expensive for those who remain in the countryside as the networks in sparsely populated areas supply fewer people. The electrification of the transport sector can lead to higher power peaks, above all in local and regional networks. New types of energy such as solar and wind are turning more and more users into electricity producers, so-called prosumers, and if they become self-sufficient, they can even disconnect from the grid.

Digitization and automation make us increasingly dependent on safe electricity, which makes the societal consequences of power outages even greater. Together with the new threat picture against the country, this can lead to increased demands on delivery security, faster measures in the event of interruptions and compensation obligations to customers.

The dependence on electricity and the risks can be reduced if more people become self-sufficient. It also leans towards more energy storage that can take care of consumption peaks, lower the power output through load control or increase it to receive excess power from variable electricity production. Local energy storage can also reduce the requirements for the security of supply and electricity quality.

Flexibility services

But it is not only the electricity networks that need to become more flexible but also the market. Should the price model be developed towards a Sweden price for all or individual network tariffs?

It is still uncertain, but we know that Svenska Kraftnät procures so-called consumption flexibility during peak hours. The target group for the procurement is large consumers of electricity such as industries within SE1 and SE2. There, companies can undertake to reduce their electricity consumption during certain fixed peak hours compared to what the operator would otherwise have consumed, and as compensation, they receive compensation from Svenska Kraftnät.

Customer relations (and service) require more

With today's volatile prices, it is no wonder that electricity customers have a burning interest in electricity and energy issues. In September this year, the General Complaints Board (ARN) received 274 notifications regarding electricity trading companies (compared to 119 during the same period in 2021). Customers and the public want to interact with their electricity companies. They want knowledge so that they can influence their consumption and costs - here the industry faces an educational challenge. A close and good exchange of information with customers, not least for case management, will become even more important as a competitive factor in the future.

e-mobility: Different strategies among the electricity companies

Traffic analysis predicts one million rechargeable passenger cars in 2025, of which 600,000 will be fully electric. By 2030, emissions from road and sea transport must have decreased by 70%.

In line with this, Energiföretagen has focused on e-mobility in 2022. They collaborate with actors such as electricity grid companies, charging infrastructure companies and municipalities to speed up and streamline the expansion of charging infrastructure in Sweden. Through Klimatklivet, from the start of 2015 to today's date, more than SEK 750 million has been granted to companies that build charging infrastructure. In 2022 alone, 320 charging stations have received support and for 2023 the allocation is 400 million for charging stations.

The electricity companies have chosen different strategies with different constellations of actors.

The common denominator is that there is a great need to coordinate the actors in these expansion projects and quite often to cooperate effectively with the electricity grid companies, the operators of the charging networks and local installers.