Ei Flexläget 2026 (PM2026-02)

Ei PM2026:02 — Flexläget 2026: Nyckeltal för efterfrågeflexibilitet på den svenska elmarknaden. Energimarknadsinspektionen, 2026. Authors: Melina Kotsinas, Ada Nilsson, Isak Öhrlund. 24 pages. The inaugural edition of a planned recurring annual statistics publication tracking the state of demand flexibility in the Swedish electricity market.

Survey design

Three Novus surveys conducted simultaneously in late 2024:

Important timing note: Surveys were conducted before kvartsprisavtal (quarterly pricing) was offered to households. All references to “dynamiska elhandelsavtal” in the report mean timprisavtal as of the survey date.

Prior series: Flexläget builds on prior Ei-commissioned surveys: Source - IVL Konsumentperspektiv Efterfrågeflexibilitet (2023) (ref. [5]), Source - Ramboll Nyckeltal Hushålls Efterfrågeflexibilitet (2024) (ref. [6]), and Source - AFRY Styr och Informationstjänster Konsumenter (2023) (ref. [7]). It is the 2024-wave successor to that cluster.

Structure

Four thematic sections:

1. Household incentives for flexibility (elhandelsavtal, effektavgifter, tariff knowledge)
2. Household access to information enabling and promoting flexibility
3. Household resources, flexibility, and perceived drivers and barriers
4. Market actors’ ability to control household flexible resources

Key findings — Section 1: Household incentives

Grid connection and price signal reach

• 76% of households have their own grid connection (nätanslutning); 24% do not — primarily apartments sharing a single connection through a housing association (BRF) or where the connection charge is bundled into rent
• Households without their own connection cannot benefit from electricity market price signals unless the connection owner implements an internal metering and billing system (IMD — intern mätning och debitering) that passes signals through. Most IMD systems currently do not do this — converting the variable tariff into a flat per-kWh price

Elhandelsavtal (electricity supply contract) types

• 81% of those with own connection chose their contract themselves; 11% are assigned (anvisad); 7% don’t know
• Breakdown by housing type (timprisavtal penetration):
  • Småhus (detached houses): 22%
  • Radhus/kedjehus (terraced/semi-detached): 18%
  • Flerbostadshus (apartments): 5%
• Effective reach of hourly pricing across all households: approximately 12–13%. This is Ei’s own calculation: ~76% with own connection × ~15–22% with timprisavtal × housing-type weights → only 12–13% of all Swedish households actually face hourly spot price signals.

Why households don’t choose timprisavtal

Among those who have chosen a non-dynamic contract, top reasons:

1. “I believe timprisavtal risks being more expensive” — 28% cite this (of whom 70% live in småhus, 50% of those have electrical heating — a group that would likely save money with timpris)
2. “I think timprisavtal makes it harder to predict costs” — 25%
3. “I haven’t had time or prioritized switching” — 25%
4. “I wasn’t aware timprisavtal existed” — 10%

Ei notes that these perceptions often do not reflect reality — the savings potential for households with controllable assets (heat pumps, EVs) is substantial — and has since sharpened requirements on suppliers to proactively inform customers about contract differences (EIFS 2024:2). Ei has also replaced the term “rörligt pris” with “månadspris” in all its communication to clarify the distinction.

Effektavgift (demand charge) penetration

• 14% of grid companies have an effektavgift for household customers; separately, 13% of household customers report having an effektavgift (different denominator — households, not grid companies)
• 8% [of grid companies] have a time-differentiated effektavgift within the day (i.e., the charge varies by time of day within the billing period) — this figure comes from a separate spring-2025 Ei kartläggning (mapping exercise) referenced alongside the main survey, not from the November–December 2024 Novus surveys themselves
• This is lower than the Ramboll 2024 figure of 21% with time-differentiated tariffs — the discrepancy may reflect different survey populations, definitions, timing (spring 2025 vs Ramboll 2024), or the smaller Flexläget sample vs broader Ramboll coverage. The true figure is somewhere in this range.

Household tariff knowledge

Most households have very limited understanding of their own network tariff:

• 63% know energiavgift (energy charge) is part of their tariff
• 56% know fast avgift (fixed charge) is part of their tariff
• Only 20% know effektavgift is part of their tariff — 47% say “don’t know”

This knowledge gap is a direct barrier to effektavgift reform acceptance: if customers don’t know peak charges exist, they cannot adapt behavior in response to them.

Key findings — Section 2: Information access

• Few suppliers or grid companies provide information enabling flexible electricity use beyond the minimum regulatory requirements
• Gender disparity: men are more often the contract holder (361 vs 184 women as primary holder in a sample pair) and are more often the person who receives consumption/price information. Ei has proposed that DSOs be required to enable secure sharing of customer-specific information with other household members (“mina sidor” access sharing)
• 61% of suppliers offer multi-user login on web/app; only 33% of grid companies do
• Mobile apps: 73% of suppliers offer an app vs 57% of grid companies; 62.5% of suppliers offer product integrations (smart home, EVs etc.) vs 39% of grid companies
• Real-time metering: only ~20% of suppliers and grid companies offer real-time meters to customers — limiting automated steering potential
• Suppliers generally more digitally advanced than grid companies across all information services measured

Key findings — Section 3: Household resources and flexibility

Overall flexibility rate

• 37% of households steer their consumption manually or automatically to reduce costs (cf. Ramboll 2024: 42% self-reported flexible — the slight difference likely reflects all-household vs villa-only scope in Ramboll)
• Of these, the vast majority steer manually toward spot price; very few steer toward other signals (grid tariffs, self-production)
• Automated steering is used in very low proportion overall

EV and smart charging

• 14% of households have a plug-in vehicle (EV/PHEV)
  • Småhus: 26%, Radhus: 15%, Flerbostadshus: 6%
  • Home charging access: Småhus 93%, Radhus 75%, Flerbostadshus 66%
• 29% of households with a plug-in vehicle and home charging use smart charging (smart laddning — where a company can remotely adjust charging intensity)
  • 26% lack the smart charging function
  • 21% have the function but don’t use it
  • 23% don’t know if they have it
• Shared parking barrier: 81% of apartments have charging on shared/common parking — which means smart charging services for this group are far more limited than for house owners. The market for smart charging at shared facilities is much less developed.

Heat pump and battery steering

• Only 3% of heat pump owners use automatic steering of their heat pump — despite heat pumps being the largest technically-steerable load in Swedish homes
• Only 25% of home battery owners steer their battery at all (manually or automatically — the source does not break this out by mode, unlike EVs and heat pumps) — many treat the battery as a solar self-consumption tool rather than a cost optimizer

Perceived drivers and barriers

Top drivers for steering electricity use (ranked 1st choice):

1. Reduce household costs
2. Reduce electricity prices / increase energy security
3. Reduce climate/environmental impact
4. Reduce grid load

Top barriers (ranked 1st choice):

1. “We have too few products that can be controlled” — despite most households having heat pumps, EVs, etc.
2. “Incentives are too small”
3. “Life schedule constraints” (Livspusslet)
4. “We lack technical solutions”
5. “We lack knowledge about how to adapt”

The gap between barrier #1 (perceived lack of controllable products) and reality (most have heat pumps and EVs) illustrates the knowledge problem: households don’t realize their existing assets are steerable.

Key findings — Section 4: Market actor capabilities

Supplier steering services

• Only 42% of electricity suppliers offer any steering services (styrtjänster) at all
• Among those that do:
  • Most common: EV charging steering
  • Second: heating system steering (heat pumps, air conditioning)
  • Third: home battery steering
  • Very few: steering that considers grid tariffs, solar self-production, or Svk ancillary markets
• Third-party dependency: 71% of suppliers offering EV steering rely on a third party for aggregation/steering; 88% of those offering battery steering rely on a third party
• The supplier layer is thin: most “offered” services are wholesale aggregator products repackaged, not proprietary supplier systems

Coordination failure

• Only 1 in 10 suppliers coordinates its steering with any other market actor. The only coordination reported is with Svenska kraftnät (for balancing market purposes) — not with local or regional DSOs
• Only 31% of grid companies inform other market actors about grid load to allow steering adaptation
• Consequence: if many suppliers’ customers are simultaneously steered toward the same signal (e.g., all EVs start charging when spot price drops), local grid overloads become more likely — a documented risk Ei flags as increasing as more resources become flexible (Demand Response › Grid risks of demand response at scale)

DSO participation in household flex markets

• Only 1 in 10 grid companies (DSOs) operates or participates in a local flexibility market
• The same proportion buys flexibility from aggregators controlling household resources — either via marketplace or bilateral contract
• 88% of DSOs do not buy household flexibility at all (respond “Nej” to whether they buy from aggregators with household customers)

This is the clearest quantification to date of how early-stage DSO participation in the household flexibility market remains: 90% of Swedish DSOs have no mechanism for household customers to contribute their flexibility to the local grid.

Bilaga 5 and 8 — supplier and grid-company survey detail

The main promemoria summarizes headline figures; the underlying diagramrapporter (Bilaga 5, suppliers n=33; Bilaga 8, grid companies n=49) contain sharper detail behind the coordination-failure and steering claims above.

Verification (2026-09-24): Bilaga 5 and Bilaga 8 were downloaded from Ei’s publication page and saved as Raw/Bilaga-5-Flexläget-2026-resultat-för-enkät-till-elleverantörer.pdf and Raw/Bilaga-8-Flexläget-2026-resultat-för-enkät-till-nätföretag.pdf (each with an -extracted.txt), plus Bilaga-10 (survey methodology). Every figure in this section matches them. The surveys were run by Novus for Ei; suppliers n=33 (fieldwork 28 Nov–13 Dec 2024). Bilagor 1–4, 6, 7 and 9 (questionnaires and raw-data workbooks) are not saved.

Suppliers offering steering services (n=14 of 33) — which signals they steer toward: spot price 64%, customer’s own solar production 21%, Svk ancillary-service-market compensation 21%, grid tariffs 7%, local flexibility markets 0%. Confirms the local-market channel is effectively unused even by suppliers already running steering products.

Coordination on steering, among that same n=14: coordinate with Svenska kraftnät 7%; coordinate with local grid companies, regional grid companies, aggregation-service providers, or other flexibility deliverers — 0% each. Sharper than the main report’s “only 1 in 10 suppliers coordinates, and only with Svk” — the true figure among those actually steering is closer to 1 in 14, and coordination with any DSO or aggregator is literally zero in this sample.

Contract types offered by suppliers: rörligt/månadspris 94%, timpris 91%, fast pris 64%, mixavtal 33% — confirms nearly universal formal availability of hourly contracts, consistent with the main report’s point that the barrier is uptake, not availability.

Named local flexibility markets identified by grid companies (Bilaga 8, n=49, 10% i.e. 5 respondents participate): Effekthandel Väst, Kinnekulle Flex, Stockholm Flex, Södra Skåne, Hässleholm, Nordöstra Skåne, Norra Örebro, Enköping, and a separate free-text entry “Stockholm” (probably the same market as Stockholm Flex) — consistent with markets already tracked elsewhere in this wiki (see Swedish Flexibility Market Landscape), not a new discovery, but confirms Ei’s own survey captured the same landscape. Among the 5 participating DSOs, median 14,810 connected local-grid customers can access the market (mean 74,905, heavily skewed by one large respondent) — Bilaga 8 itself flags this (n=5) as a very small base to be read with caution.

Grid companies’ demand-flexibility engagement is lower than suppliers’: on “offer steering services for demand flexibility,” 71% of grid companies answer “not at all” (rated 1–2 of 5) vs. suppliers’ 48%; on “offer information services promoting demand flexibility,” 65% vs. suppliers’ 55%. DSOs lag suppliers on every measured activity in this section, not just steering.

Relation to existing wiki content

• Demand Response: Effective timprisavtal penetration (12–13% of all households); housing-type breakdown; EV smart charging 29%; 37% flexible vs 42% Ramboll (scope difference); barriers hierarchy; knowledge gaps
• Flexibility Market: 1-in-10 DSO participation in household flex; 10% time-diff effektavgift (vs Ramboll 21% — flagged discrepancy); 31% of DSOs share grid load info; coordination problem quantified
• Aggregation: DSO-aggregator relationship quantified: only 10% of DSOs buy from aggregators with household customers; 88% and 71% third-party dependency in battery/EV steering
• Demand Response › Grid risks of demand response at scale: Coordination failure data directly relevant; only 1 in 10 suppliers coordinates steering
• Ei: New annual statistics series; enforcement action (EIFS 2024:2 on supplier information requirements); terminology change (rörligt → månadspris)
• Elpriskollen: Mentioned as active development project (ref. [19])
• Elmarknadshubb: IMD systems and DHV’s “mina sidor” as vehicle for information-sharing within households

Data gaps

• Whether the 8% vs 21% DSO time-diff effektavgift discrepancy (Flexläget/spring-2025 kartläggning vs Ramboll) reflects a genuine difference in definition, population, or survey timing — Ramboll’s broader coverage vs the smaller kartläggning behind the 8% figure