Effekthandel Väst

A local Flexibility Market in the Gothenburg area, operated jointly by Göteborg Energi Elnät AB (GENAB) and Mölndal Energi Elnät AB (MENAB). One of three active Swedish local flexibility markets as of 2025 (alongside E.ON’s flex markets and Götene Flex). Uses the NODES platform. Sweden’s highest-volume active flexibility market.

Overview

Geographic areas

From the NODES tenders map (portal.nodesmarket.com/onboarding/tenders, observed May 2026), Effekthandel Väst consists of two distinct geographic polygons:

• Göteborg (GENAB) constraint area: Eastern Göteborg — the forested lake district east of the city centre (Delsjön/Stora Delsjön area) extending northeast toward the Partille municipal boundary, bounded roughly by the Boråsleden motorway (E20/Rv 40) to the south. The area is predominantly residential eastern suburbs and nature reserve, not central Göteborg.
• Mölndal (MENAB) constraint area: Mölndal municipality and the area extending east toward Mölnlycke (Härryda municipality), with an irregular western/northern boundary running along the eastern edge of the built-up Göteborg area. The polygon covers Mölndal city and stretches east along the Boråsleden/E6 corridor.

The two constraint areas are geographically adjacent — the Boråsleden ring road forms the rough shared boundary — and together cover the southeastern distribution grid area east and south of Göteborg city centre.

Context

Effekthandel Väst grew out of the Swedish flexibility market wave following CoordiNet. Göteborg is Sweden’s second largest city and one of Sweden’s most congested grid areas — Svenska kraftnät‘s transmission subscription is the primary binding constraint for regional DSOs serving the greater Gothenburg area.

The market’s name translates as “effect/power trading west” — “Effekthandel” emphasizes capacity management (effect/power = MW) rather than energy volume (kWh), reflecting that the primary driver is peak capacity constraint rather than total energy throughput.

Origin confirmed by DNDP: GENAB’s DNDP 2025–2034 states explicitly: “Då tidiga prognoser visade på möjlig kommande kapacitetsbrist startade GENAB säsongen 2021/2022 upp sin lokala flexibilitetsmarknad, Effekthandel Väst.” — the market was launched in season 2021/22 because early capacity forecasts projected a potential shortfall. This confirms the market was purpose-built as a capacity management tool from its inception. (Source - GENAB Nätutvecklingsplan 2025-2034 (2024))

Kapacitetsprogrammet: Effekthandel Väst is one component of GENAB’s broader Kapacitetsprogrammet — a dedicated programme managing all non-wire capacity tools. In the programme’s operational framework, Effekthandel Väst sits in the “Strained mode” layer: it is activated after grid reconfiguration options are exhausted but before the last-resort villkorade avtal backstop. The DNDP assesses the market as well-suited to short hour-scale shortfalls but assesses that additional tools (particularly planerbar produktion) will be needed as the constraint deepens through 2028–2034. (Source - GENAB Nätutvecklingsplan 2025-2034 (2024))

Capacity bottleneck — DNDP data: Göteborg Energi Nät‘s DNDP 2025–2034 quantifies the need that Effekthandel Väst was purpose-built to address. Area A (Hisingen/harbour) needs 0–100 MW in the next two years, rising to 170–240 MW in 3–10 years. The DNDP positions Effekthandel Väst as the primary non-wire tool for addressing hour-scale and multi-hour capacity shortfalls in “Strained mode” — once the short-term forecast projects a shortfall and grid reconfiguration options are exhausted, the market is activated before any non-market curtailment. (Source - GENAB Nätutvecklingsplan 2025-2034 (2024), Source - Göteborg Energi Elektrifieringsrapporten nr 1 (2025))

Platform: NODES

Effekthandel Väst uses NODES, a platform built by NODES AS (registered in Lysaker, Norway). NODES is the only competing platform to SWITCH in the Swedish flexibility market. sthlmflex (now closed) and JämtFlex (closed) also used NODES.

During CoordiNet‘s sthlmflex experiment, the E.ON-built flex tool (the DSO operator interface from SWITCH) was reused alongside NODES as the market tool — demonstrating architectural modularity between the two systems.

Products

Effekthandel Väst offers three products (Source - Effekthandel Väst Produkter och MaxUsage (NODES, 2024), Source - Effekthandel Väst Onboarding Info (2025-26)):

• ShortFlex (“fria bud”) — energy activation: a continuous hourly market where the FSP decides per hour whether to submit a sell bid when the DSO posts a buy order, paid only on delivery (no availability fee). Minimum bid 0.05 MW (lower than SWITCH’s 0.1 MWh/h). Maps to LFM-e (≈ SWITCH DO).
• LongFlex — period/seasonal availability (availability fee + activation fee). Bids compete on availability price — the lowest asking availability price wins the reservation; during activation, contracted and free ShortFlex bids compete on activation price. This contrasts with SWITCH’s seasonal availability, where bids are ranked by activation price only. Maps to LFM-p (≈ SWITCH ST).
• MaxUsage — consumption cap (see below).

All products: min 0.05 MW, 1–2 h endurance, Nov–March.

Reconciled (June 2026): an earlier reading of the onboarding source mischaracterized ShortFlex as a two-part availability product. The onboarding document itself (Step 5) and Göteborg Energi’s product page agree that ShortFlex is the continuous hourly energy-activation product (paid on delivery, no availability fee) and that LongFlex is the availability product. The wiki’s ShortFlex→LFM-e / LongFlex→LFM-p mapping reflects this.

MaxUsage product

NODES MaxUsage™ (“a virtual fuse contract”): instead of defining a baseline and measuring deviation, the FSP and the DSO jointly set a ceiling on consumption between fixed clock-times during high-load periods; as long as the FSP stays below the ceiling it is remunerated. No per-event baseline calculation — the product simply enforces an upper bound on the meter, with minimal administration. It was developed by NODES with its DSO partners and FSPs explicitly to widen participation, above all with EV charging in mind, by removing the per-trade administration of active bidding. Trialed at Effekthandel Väst in winter 2023/24. (Source - Effekthandel Väst Produkter och MaxUsage (NODES, 2024))

Cases:

• Renova Miljö AB (waste/sorting): capped at 75 kW between 07:00–10:00 every weekday in January, vs ~300 kW historical consumption in those hours — delaying the morning start of electricity-intensive crushers (critical grid window identified as 06:00–10:00).
• GoCo Health Innovation City (workplace EV parking via Vattenfall InCharge): limited charging power 08:00–12:00 weekdays, roughly halving output for connected EVs on the coldest days without affecting all-day chargers. The site notes it “currently means no major income for us” — an early signal that the FSP-side business case is modest.

Outcome — reported successful (2023/24): both DSOs judged the trial a success and signalled intent to scale. Mölndal Energi’s CEO noted MaxUsage helped lower load during a record January peak in regional-grid withdrawal. Consistent with this, MaxUsage scaled at Effekthandel Väst, becoming the dominant activation product by volume from December 2024 (see the NODES portal data below). (Source - Effekthandel Väst Produkter och MaxUsage (NODES, 2024))

The reference-drift limitation: the value measurement uses a historical-consumption reference (Renova ~300 kW), which carries an embedded counterfactual. It works cleanly for season 1, but from season 2 onward, if the resource owner has shifted behaviour or invested in energy efficiency, the original reference no longer holds — making delivered flexibility ambiguous. Kinnekulle Energi discontinued MaxUsage for exactly this reason (reference drift), compounded by time-differentiated tariffs making the explicit product redundant. Effekthandel Väst, by contrast, retained and scaled it. The contrast is the empirical case for anchoring caps to a firm contractual level rather than a drifting historical baseline — see recommendation B5. (Source - Sweco Kartläggning av lokala flexibilitetsmarknader (Ei, 2025), Source - Effekthandel Väst Produkter och MaxUsage (NODES, 2024))

Market outcomes

FlexAbility (2025) provides the most comprehensive historical dataset for Effekthandel Väst to date, compiled from data shared by Göteborg Energi and Mölndal Energi Elnät. (Source - FlexAbility Delrapport 2 (2025))

Activation (fria bud / ShortFlex)

Availability (LongFlex)

MaxUsage

Effektförmåga (qualified capacity)

Göteborg peaked at 19 MW registered capacity in 2023/24. The growth in Göteborg from 1 → 11 → 19 MW across three seasons reflects the successful FSP recruitment trajectory. As of 2024/25, Göteborg had 27 FSPs with 539 registered resources — the highest FSP diversity of any Swedish flex market. The DSO Entity report (2026) cites approximately ~30 service providers for the 2025/26 season, reflecting continued growth. (Source - DSO Entity Distributed Flexibility Practices (2026))

Season totals 2024/25

• Effekthandel Väst total (Göteborg + Mölndal, all products): 7,180 MWh (vs E.ON’s 3,185 MWh across all its markets)
• Total activated volume (fria bud + ShortFlex): 930 MWh — described by Göteborg Energi as roughly doubled compared to the previous season (Source - Göteborg Energi Elektrifieringsrapporten nr 1 (2025)); the much larger 7,180 MWh figure includes LongFlex and MaxUsage availability hours
• Total cost estimate: ~SEK 2.9M (lower prices than E.ON’s markets despite higher volume)
• Activation in 2024/25 coincided with an unusually mild winter — Sweden’s total peak demand was only 22.5 GW, an unusually low figure

Effekthandel Väst is the highest-volume Swedish flex market. Its lower prices reflect its SE3 location (Gothenburg) compared to E.ON’s dominant market in SE4 (Södra Skåne).

Official Ei activation counts (SGI, calendar year)

Ei’s mandatory SGI reporting (No_upreg_market indicator, EIFS 2022:5) provides an independent official count of upregulation activations by calendar year — a different lens from the season-based FlexAbility data above:

Calendar year 2024 combined (93 → 812) is nearly 9× growth. The SGI calendar year covers Jan–Mar (end of the 2023/24 season) and Oct–Dec (start of 2024/25), so the jump predominantly reflects the step-change in procurement scale that began with the 2023/24 season. (Source - Ei SGI Data 2023-2024)

Winter 2025/26 zone-level compensation comparison

The most detailed cross-market revenue data available comes from CheckWatt‘s published chart for winter 2025/26, showing compensation per 10 kWh battery system across all active zones. (Source - CheckWatt Website (2025-2026))

Two E.ON Switch zones (Kalhäll and Bromölla-Sölvesborg) had zero activations and are not shown.

Key observations:

• Effekthandel Väst revenues (357–361 SEK) were substantially lower than all E.ON Switch active zones, with Bålsta earning 7.6× more than Göteborg.
• The spread within E.ON Switch zones alone (600–2,703 SEK) reflects highly variable grid constraint intensity. Bålsta batteries were activated for 100+ hours; Göteborg/Mölndal for 2–20 hours.
• Effekthandel Väst revenues in 2025/26 were lower than in 2023/24 partly because Göteborg Energi shifted from seasonal to weekly capacity procurement, reducing passive availability revenue (batteries now receive availability payments only for weeks when DSO purchases it, rather than for the full season).

Participation scale V2025/26

• ~1,000 battery systems from CheckWatt participated on local flex markets during winter 2025/26.
• E.ON Switch (CheckWatt portfolio in January 2026): ~400 battery systems, ~8 MW.

NODES portal — 2023-2026 public data

From the NODES market dashboard (portal.nodesmarket.com/onboarding/dashboard, observed May 2026). All-Sweden view (only Effekthandel Väst markets appear as Swedish markets in NODES). Data covers months with active contracts only — summer months have no contracts and are omitted. No open reservation tenders were visible as of early May 2026.

Reserved volume (monthly, all products):

The Dec 2024 step-change (from ~110 to ~2,200 MWh) marks when the 2024/25 season’s LongFlex contracts were awarded — the scale of procurement jumped dramatically. The 2025/26 season opened later (December rather than November) and with higher MaxUsage share.

LongFlex availability price (monthly, SEK/MWh):

Three distinct price eras: (1) 2023 launch at ~500 SEK as a thin market; (2) 2024–2025 compression to ~200 SEK as FSP competition matured; (3) 2025/26 repricing to 270–407 SEK as constraint intensity increased. The Mölndal premium over Göteborg emerged in November 2025 and has persisted.

Activated volume (monthly, all products, SEK/MWh):

The March 2024 ShortFlex spike (~285 MWh) is notable — a very cold late-winter month requiring repeated activations. From December 2024 onward, MaxUsage became the dominant activation product by volume, reflecting the DSO’s shift toward pre-committed consumption caps for peak management.

V2025/26 season total ≈ 1,744 MWh activated (Nov 2025–Feb 2026, per-market NODES portal figures, re-checked June 2026): Göteborg ~1,214 MWh (MaxUsage 1,100 + ShortFlex 114) and Mölndal ~530 MWh (MaxUsage 294 + ShortFlex 237). The two DSOs run the same platform differently — Göteborg’s activation is ~91% MaxUsage, while Mölndal relies far more on ShortFlex (237 vs 114 MWh, roughly half its volume). At ~1,744 MWh, Effekthandel Väst’s V2025/26 activation is on par with all of E.ON’s SWITCH markets combined (~1,400 MWh) — the NODES market is no longer the smaller one. December 2025 was the peak month at ~700 MWh (Göteborg ~652, almost all MaxUsage).

ShortFlex activation price (monthly, SEK/MWh):

The early market (2023) showed Mölndal FSPs demanding ~3,500–3,600 SEK/MWh to activate, far above Göteborg’s ~2,000–2,500 SEK — likely reflecting fewer competing FSPs and/or more constrained grid conditions in Mölndal at launch. By 2024/25, markets had converged to ~2,700 SEK for both. The November 2025 Göteborg spike (~3,500 SEK) occurred in the same month GENAB had no pre-contracted LongFlex capacity, confirming the spike was an unplanned urgent activation.

V2G breakthrough (March 2025)

In March 2025, Effekthandel Väst became the site of the world’s first V2G delivery to a local DSO flexibility market. Four Volvo Cars EVs (V2G-capable bidirectional chargers) delivered 111 kWh across 2 activations, aggregated by CheckWatt and settled through the NODES platform.

Scale context: 111 kWh from 4 vehicles is small. The significance is proof-of-concept — demonstrating that the technical pathway (V2G-capable EV → CheckWatt aggregator → NODES bid → Effekthandel Väst activation) works end-to-end under real market conditions. Full V2G potential for Sweden is estimated at 5,000 MW by 2030, but faces Svk’s physical address requirement, incomplete ISO 15118 deployment, and immature business models as structural barriers. (Source - Göteborg Energi Elektrifieringsrapporten nr 1 (2025), see Energy Storage › V2G structural barriers)

CheckWatt — the largest aggregated portfolio

CheckWatt is the largest aggregated resource in Effekthandel Väst as of 2025. Its local Göteborg portfolio (Source - Göteborg Energi Elektrifieringsrapporten nr 1 (2025)):

• ~500 stationary batteries under management (hembatterier and small commercial BESS)
• ~5.5 MW total capacity (approximately 4.8 + 0.7 MW across portfolio segments)
• Dual-market strategy: simultaneous participation in Effekthandel Väst (local DSO market) and national Balancing Markets (FCR/aFRR/mFRR via Svenska kraftnät)
• Resources allocated dynamically between local and national market based on expected revenue at any given time

This local portfolio is a sub-set of CheckWatt’s full Nordic VPP: 15,000+ battery sites / 300+ MW aggregated across Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark, and Poland, with 200+ Nordic TSO pre-qualifications (Source - CheckWatt Website (2025-2026)). CheckWatt reports a 2.5× revenue multiplier vs basic price arbitrage in SE3 and 4.0× in Finland, achieved by stacking TSO ancillary services, DSO local flex, and wholesale market participation simultaneously.

This is one of the clearest Swedish examples of value stacking in practice — the same batteries serving both DSO congestion relief and TSO frequency regulation, at both local (Göteborg) and Nordic scale.

Fridges and freezers as a resource type

The Nordic Energy Research 2025-03 study selected Effekthandel Väst as one of its 10 Nordic case studies, focusing specifically on fridges and freezers at supermarkets and warehouses as the primary resource type (alongside batteries and EVs). (Source - Nordic Energy Research 2025-03 Current Utilisation of Flexibility in the Nordics)

Key reasons this resource type is well-matched to the market:

• Spatial distribution: supermarkets exist throughout urban areas proportional to population density — well-aligned with where DSO grid congestion occurs
• Control infrastructure: most Swedish supermarket refrigeration uses Modbus/Danfoss control systems; integration does not require new hardware
• National potential: estimated ~0.6 GW from fridges and freezers nationally
• Baseline flexibility: aggregators can negotiate appliance-specific baselines with the platform operator, unlocking profitability not possible under rigid standard baselines

Food hygiene constraint: EU and Swedish food hygiene regulation sets strict temperature limits for refrigerated food. When a fridge or freezer is activated as a flexibility resource, it cannot deliver in situations where reducing power intake would risk exceeding temperature thresholds. In practice, this is managed by pre-cooling (running colder before activation) and fine-tuning the baseline to exclude unsafe states. The constraint creates complexity but does not prevent participation — no deliveries have been cancelled for food safety reasons in Effekthandel Väst. The non-standard baseline negotiation required with NODES is both a barrier (time-intensive, case-by-case) and an enabler (without it, the resource type would not be commercially viable).

Comparison with other markets

Related pages

• Göteborg Energi Nät — the primary DSO operating this market
• Flexibility Market — Swedish market landscape
• NODES — the platform used
• CoordiNet — the predecessor project that shaped Swedish flex market design
• SWITCH — the competing platform
• Congestion Management — the grid problem this market addresses
• Energy Storage — BESS deployment and V2G context
• Aggregation — CheckWatt case study
• Source - Ei Flexibility in Distribution Grids (2023) — Ei’s pilot evaluation including Effekthandel Väst

Data gaps

• Season 4 Mölndal sub-market FSP composition and resources
• V2025/26 product or process changes (beyond weekly vs seasonal capacity procurement change documented above)
• Season 5 (V2025/26) FSP count and total cost — activation volume now known (~1,744 MWh per-market from the NODES portal, June 2026); FSP count and settlement cost still not published
• Why Mölndal’s 2025/26 LongFlex availability prices (~375–407 SEK/MWh) are consistently above Göteborg’s (~270–334 SEK/MWh) — a pattern that emerged in November 2025 (Göteborg did not procure at all in November while Mölndal did at ~275 SEK) and has persisted; may reflect higher constraint severity in Mölndal, thinner FSP competition, or different weekly procurement timing by MENAB vs GENAB
• Whether Göteborg Energi / Mölndal Energi will continue Effekthandel Väst given the NC DR implementation work required — key strategic question for the market’s future