Second Opinion Effekttariffer Rodin Kritik (2026)

Title: “Effekttariffer: ‘meningslöst arbete för kunderna’” Publisher note: Second Opinion Nyheter AB, run on behalf of Energiföretagen Sverige Author credentials: entreprenör, civilingenjör elektroteknik och tekn. lic. Language: Swedish

DEBATT — a household-customer critique of static effekttariffer (capacity-based network tariffs), using the author’s own experience with Nacka Energi’s design as a concrete case. Argues the individual behavioural work these tariffs impose is pointless because only correlated load across customers matters for grid stress, not any one customer’s timing — knowledge only the DSO holds. Note on source status: Second Opinion ceased publishing 1 July 2026; see Demand Response › Effekttariffer — the double-edged price signal for the topic this connects to.

Key claims

Regulatory trigger: on 13 March 2026 the government removed the requirement that DSOs use effekttariffer (still permitted, no longer mandatory) — the same decision documented in Swedish DSO Tariff Reform — Three Parallel Tracks (2025–2027) › Track 2 — Effektavgift redesign as the EIFS 2022:1 repeal task.

Nacka Energi’s design (concrete example, not previously in the wiki’s construction-diversity table): billed on the average of the three highest hourly-average power values each month, applied year-round including nights and summer, currently 56 kr/kW + moms. Monthly invoice lists the three peak hours and their magnitude.

Core critique — the collective-vs-individual mismatch: what matters for grid load is whether many customers draw power at the same time (correlated load — cooking, EV charging), not whether any one household’s own peak recurs. A single customer cannot see or influence this from their own consumption data; only the DSO, which sees the aggregate, has that knowledge and the ability to steer it. The tariff imposes optimization work on the customer that cannot reduce aggregate peak load in any predictable way.

Year-round application criticized as pointless: Nacka’s tariff applies even in low-load periods (nights, summer) when the grid is nowhere near its dimensioning peak — the author cites being charged extra for running a sauna on a cold day in June.

Redundancy with the existing fuse-based capacity limit: a customer’s huvudsäkring (main fuse) already caps their draw, and increasing it requires DSO approval that checks local grid headroom — argued as sufficient protection against local overload without an additional tariff.

Equity critique — non-inverter heat pumps: households with on/off (not varvtalsreglerad) heat pumps cycle between zero and full power, so their peak stays roughly constant whenever the unit runs (i.e. most of the year except summer) regardless of how much their actual energy use varies — producing a similar effektavgift bill most of the year (except summer) despite genuinely variable underlying consumption. Called unreasonable since the load is essentially random and evens out higher up the network.

Proposed alternative: a time-of-use energy tariff (timtaxa) instead of a capacity tariff — the DSO already knows the network’s actual power-variation pattern (typically peak = weekday winter daytime vs. off-peak = everything else, extendable to finer differentiation once universal hourly metering is in place) and can price accordingly, without requiring households to attempt household-level optimizations that don’t translate into smoother aggregate load.

Cites Mats Nilsson (17 Nov, prior SO piece): research shows effektavgifter don’t actually change consumption — consistent, in Rodin’s view, from a user’s-eye perspective. Recommends the government remove effekttaxan entirely rather than merely make it optional, given the risk DSOs keep it as a convenient revenue source despite its flaws.

Notable comment threads: Dietmar Gleich proposes a passive/active customer split — fixed fuse-based charge by default, opt-in dynamic pricing for active customers, mirroring elhandel’s fixed-vs-dynamic contract choice. Thorstein Watne names the underlying phenomenon as sammanlagring (load coincidence/diversity) — today’s säkringstariffer already partly price this via the energy component — and argues any redesign for small customers (16–25 A, ~95% of subscriptions) should keep a relatively high, but time-differentiated, energy charge rather than a capacity charge; cites Norrtälje’s strongly time-differentiated energy-tariff model and E.ON’s proposed effekttariff (a single peak value per day) as alternatives worth examining.

Relationship to existing wiki topics