Energiforsk 2025-1089 Datacenter som Flexibilitetskapacitet (2025)

Energiforsk report 2025:1089 (RISE; foreword dated December 2024), in the programme on sustainable grid technology and digitalisation. It is a guideline for data-centre owners on joining Svk’s ancillary services (FFR, FCR-D, aFRR, mFRR), with a small owner survey and a rough CO₂ estimate. The programme board included Svk, Ellevio, Vattenfall Eldistribution and other DSOs. It does not cover grid connection, queues or conditional connection for data centres.

Data-centre types and how they can flex

• Types: hyperscaler, co-location, enterprise, edge, HPC and crypto. The strengths and risks differ: hyperscalers can move work between sites but have low financial incentive; co-location sites are bound by customer contracts and can mostly not touch the IT load; HPC and crypto can pause or down-clock computing and have the lowest uptime risk.
• The simplest method is to run the site on its UPS batteries while a service is active. That needs enough battery capacity for the service and enough energy left for an unplanned outage afterwards. Pausing HPC computing needs checkpoints; down-clocking needs tests.
• Existing UPS batteries sit in standby most of their life, and using them avoids new equipment and connection fees. The report suggests designing them from the start for ancillary services, and prequalifying UPS systems more widely.

Volumes

• Data-centre use in Sweden: 2.8–3.2 TWh in 2022 (against 123.8 TWh total use in 2023), an estimated 4–4.4 TWh in 2025 and 4.4–5.0 TWh in 2030, from Energimyndigheten (2023). The report says this forecast predates the AI build-out and may be low.
• 2020 data (Radar report, Energimyndigheten): installed power, mean power and utilisation of 319 / 77 MW / 24 % (enterprise), 99 / 70 / 71 % (hyperscale), 225 / 122 / 54 % (co-location) and 200 / 180 / 90 % (crypto).
• Two scenarios for how much could join the reserve markets with limited technical measures: about 20 % of mean power with hyperscalers excluded gives 75 MW; about 40 % with hyperscalers included gives 180 MW.

Owner survey

• Ten interviews, mostly co-location and HPC; the full answers are in an Appendix 1 that is not part of the extracted text. Nearly all knew Svk’s services; 22 % were using them and 44 % had started the process (the report gives no denominator; the shares fit 2 and 4 of 9 answers).
• The larger the site, the less the revenue matters and the more the wish to support the grid; for small sites revenue matters more. Co-location owners split between following customers’ wishes and acting regardless. Owners view the services positively but say customers’ knowledge must grow.
• The report’s reading: flexibility is often seen as an uptime risk that is “not worth” taking even when paid.

Market notes (as of late 2024)

• Minimum bid 0.1 MW for FCR-D and FFR; marginal (pay-as-cleared) pricing in all FCR markets since 1 February 2024; capacity is bought in D-2 and D-1 auctions; FFR is bought yearly.
• The report says prequalified storage grew sharply in 2024 and flexible consumption in FCR-D up in 2023, and that FCR-D payments in late 2024 were about a tenth of the 2023 monthly average, which reduces data centres’ incentive.
• A data-centre owner needs a BSP, and under the rules then applying also needs to be BRP at the delivery point. The report expects full BSP/BRP implementation by 2028 at the latest.

CO₂ estimate

FCR-D up is activated only a few tens of times a year for minutes, so direct emissions effects are tiny. The report instead argues that consumption flex lets Svk reserve less hydropower for FCR-D up. For an example site in SE1 prequalified at 21.7 MW that contributed 23 MWh in 2023, it gets about 19.5 t CO₂ if the freed hydro displaces coal (852 g/kWh), and at most 15.9 t if it displaces Polish imports. It says the coal case does not hold in practice and that the true figure lies between 0 and about 15 t; a better figure needs a detailed system model.

Recommendations and open points

• Examine requirements on new (and in part existing) data centres to offer flexible tariffs and contribute to Svk’s ancillary services as a condition for grid capacity, and the Finnish model of connecting data centres to district heating.
• Beyond FCR-D: local flexibility markets and aFRR/mFRR, mainly by shifting lower-priority computation (also to other bidding zones or countries) rather than draining batteries.
• Conclusion: data centres are a lowly used, technically ready resource; acceptance among owners and customers, and knowledge among decision-makers, are the limits.

Relevance

The Swedish anchor for data centres as flexibility providers, and the source of the 75–180 MW range. See Demand Response and Balancing Markets. It predates the 2025–2026 queue and connection debate.

Limits of this summary

Appendix 1 (interview answers) was not available in the extracted text and was not read. The market description is from 2024.