Säkerhetskrav Hinder För Elektrifieringen (2024)

Second Opinion (a publication run on behalf of Energiföretagen Sverige) interview with Oddbjørn Gjerde, research director at SINTEF Energi, on Europe’s shift away from the N-1 criterion toward probabilistic risk-based methodology.

Summary

Core claim: the classical N-1 dimensioning of grid operational/delivery security “has become a hindrance to electrification” — the electrification goal will be hard to reach without accepting more risk in the grid, per Gjerde.

N-1’s track record and limits: N-1 took the Nordic power system to 99.98% general availability — an impressive figure the article frames (in the journalist’s own words, not a direct Gjerde quote) as now far too high and out of step with the times. The system is, in Gjerde’s own words, “unmotivatedly oversized in many respects” — but the real problem, per the article, is that nobody actually knows by how much.

Regulatory timeline:

• The EU-funded GARPUR project (2013–2017; Generally Accepted Reliability Principle with Uncertainty modelling and through probabilistic Risk assessment) — coordinated by SINTEF Energi, with a dozen research partners and seven TSOs (Denmark, Iceland, France, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia, Norway) — designed the probabilistic framework now being rolled out.
• ACER decided in 2019 (per the article’s “artikel 44” reference, which links to ACER’s own CSAM Decision/Annex I document — the raw does not tie this to Regulation (EU) 2017/1485 specifically) that a common probabilistic risk-assessment methodology should be required EU-wide.
• ENTSO-E leads implementation, publishing periodic “state of play” reports (the article cites the second, from 2023, highlighting Norwegian TSO Statnett’s work).
• Target — since corrected: per this article, all European power systems should have access to, and begin implementing, the new methodology by the end of 2027. Source - ENTSO-E Third Probabilistic Risk Assessment Report (2025) (read in full 2026-08-25) shows this article’s framing conflates two different things: CSAM Art. 44.1’s end-2027 deadline is for TSOs to draft and propose the methodology, not implement it — ENTSO-E’s own third progress report states implementation happens post-2027, with no date given. Treat this article’s “by end of 2027” as describing methodology completion, not rollout. See N-1 Criterion › The EU shift to probabilistic risk assessment for the corrected account.

Norway/Statnett already deviate from N-1 in places: around Stavanger, Bergen, and Trondheim, N-1 is not applied in all operating situations; probabilistic calculations supplement it. Further north, where Norway’s grid is sparser and more stretched-out, N-1 remains necessary for smaller towns and low-density regions. Fornybar Norge (Norwegian renewables industry body) argues N-1 leaves capacity idle that new green industry could otherwise use. EU network codes explicitly permit this TSO-by-TSO judgement, as long as faults don’t propagate into the wider synchronous area.

Historical roots of probabilistic safety methodology: traced to 1970s Swedish nuclear power — the Reaktorsäkerhetsutredningen (SOU 1979:86), written after the Harrisburg (Three Mile Island) accident, proposed probabilistic risk-analysis methods for Swedish reactor safety review, first applied at Ringhals 2 in 1983. The article draws a direct historical line from nuclear probabilistic safety analysis to today’s grid-operations probabilistic push.

Practical grid design implication: in Norway, a line that would need two 420 kV circuits to satisfy N-1 can instead be built with a single 420 kV circuit plus a supplementary 132 kV line (the raw does not itself characterize this substitution as cheaper — that’s the wiki’s own inference).

Relevance to wiki

• N-1 Criterion — primary source for the EU regulatory timeline (GARPUR → ACER 2019 → ENTSO-E → 2027 target), the “hindrance to electrification” framing, and the Norway/Statnett practical deviation examples
• Congestion Management — N-1 as a structural driver of “phantom” unused capacity, conceptually adjacent to the luftbokning/faktisk belastning discussion already in that page
• Svenska kraftnät — Swedish TSO context for how the EU-level probabilistic push would eventually apply