Source - Effekthandel Väst Produkter och MaxUsage (NODES, 2024)
Three web clippings on the Effekthandel Väst product set and the NODES MaxUsage™ product, captured 2026-05-30:
- “A virtual fuse contract” — NODES use-case page (nodesmarket.com, published 2024-03-20). The canonical description of MaxUsage™.
- “Effekthandel Väst: Maximum peak in electricity consumption reduced…” — NODES news (2024-03-07), republishing Mölndal Energi Nät’s winter 2023-24 results (near-duplicate of #1).
- “Effekthandel Väst – produkter” — Göteborg Energi’s official product page (goteborgenergi.se), the authoritative current spec of the three products.
The three Effekthandel Väst products (official, per Göteborg Energi)
All three: resources within Göteborg Energi’s grid area; minimum 0.05 MW; endurance 1–2 hours; season Nov–March. (The NODES news clip states the market is “open from 1 December to 31 March” — a minor discrepancy with the produkter page’s “nov–mars”.)
| Product | Definition (official) | Remuneration | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|
| ShortFlex | Free hourly bids; FSP is active and monitors the marketplace, decides whether to submit a sell bid when GENAB posts a buy order; no obligation to bid | Paid only when sell bid is accepted | Businesses that want to bid actively per hour |
| LongFlex | FSP commits which hours/days it can be available, per DSO need | Availability payment (whether or not activated) plus activation payment; “high remuneration levels”; monthly/seasonal contract | Batteries, reserve power; sites that can plan offtake |
| MaxUsage | FSP and DSO jointly set a ceiling on power use between fixed clock-times | Paid for staying under the ceiling; “minimal administration” | EV-charger fleets, machine-heavy sites, cooling/freezing |
Note: ShortFlex and LongFlex requirements include the ability to “regulate offtake based on bidding”; the MaxUsage requirement list omits this — it is the lowest-administration product.
Conflict resolved (June 2026): this official page is authoritative — ShortFlex is free hourly bids paid only on acceptance (energy-only, no availability component → LFM-e, ≈ SWITCH DO), and LongFlex is the two-part availability product (→ LFM-p, ≈ SWITCH ST). The onboarding source document itself (Step 5: “kontinuerlig marknad… avtal på en timma… betalning dras ner… för leveranser under 75%”) confirms the energy-only structure; the earlier wiki summary of it had mischaracterized ShortFlex as two-part availability. Corrected across NODES, Effekthandel Väst, and the onboarding source page.
MaxUsage™ — mechanics and cases
Concept (“virtual fuse contract”): the supplier sets a maximum ceiling on its consumption in advance, between specified high-load clock-times; as long as it stays below the ceiling it is remunerated. Developed by the NODES team with DSO partners and FSPs, explicitly to widen participation — above all with EV charging in mind — by removing the per-trade administration of active bidding. Tested at Effekthandel Väst in winter 2023-24.
Cases:
- Renova Miljö AB (waste/sorting): capped at 75 kW between 07:00–10:00 every weekday in January, vs a historical consumption of ~300 kW 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, managed by Vattenfall InCharge): limited charging power 08:00–12:00 weekdays, roughly halving output for connected EVs on the coldest days — “should not affect the driver who charges all day.” The real-estate manager notes this “currently means no major income for us” but contributes to grid relief.
Outcome (winter 2023-24): reported successful by both DSOs. Therese Caesar (flexibility manager, Göteborg Energi Nät): the product “fulfils a purpose … we truly see potential in scaling up,” with strong interest from FSPs and industry. Fredrik Lundmark (CEO, Mölndal Energi Nät): MaxUsage “has been successful,” and helped lower load during a new record peak in power withdrawal from the regional grid in January.
Significance / reconciliation with existing wiki content
- MaxUsage succeeded and scaled at Effekthandel Väst — it became the dominant activation product by volume there from Dec 2024 (see Effekthandel Väst › Market outcomes). This nuances the “cautionary case” framing: MaxUsage was discontinued specifically at Kinnekulle Energi, for two documented reasons (reference-baseline drift from efficiency gains; time-differentiated tariffs making the explicit product redundant), not because the product failed generally.
- The cap is set jointly with the DSO and is window-targeted to the DSO’s known critical hours — correcting any impression that MaxUsage is purely FSP-nominated or untargeted.
- The reference is historical consumption (Renova 300 kW; GKT 450 kW at Kinnekulle) — confirming that MaxUsage’s value measurement carries an embedded counterfactual, whose fragility (drift) is exactly Kinnekulle’s discontinuation reason (a). This is the empirical basis for preferring a firm contractual anchor (abonnerad effekt) — see recommendation B5.
Relevance to wiki pages
- Effekthandel Väst — product taxonomy; MaxUsage cases and 2023-24 success
- NODES — MaxUsage™ as a NODES product (virtual fuse contract)
- Baseline Methods — MaxUsage as a capacity-limit product anchored to a historical-consumption reference
- E.ON SWITCH Markets — Supply Liquidity and Growth Recommendations — corrects/sharpens recommendation B5
- Kinnekulle Energi — the contrasting case where MaxUsage was discontinued