Svk Aktörsmöte Elområdesanalys (2025-11-05)

Svenska kraftnät’s stakeholder webinar of 5 November 2025 (10.00–11.00, digital, in Swedish) on the status of the government assignment to analyse alternative Swedish bidding-zone divisions: the 25-slide presentation and the written answers to the questions asked, including those not reached during the meeting. Both are Svk’s own material; the questions are anonymous participants’. The statements below are Svk’s position in November 2025; the assignment was amended on 28 May 2026 and the deadline moved to 29 January 2027, which overtakes some answers (see the last section). All of the slides and the whole Q&A document were read.

The assignment as presented

• Assigned by the government on 15 May 2025, originally due 29 May 2026. Delivered as a report on the conditions for different zone divisions. It is not a formal bidding-zone review under the EU rules, whose process for any change is governed by EU regulation and “requires more analyses and process steps”.
• Three alternatives, analysed for 2030, 2035 (the focus) and 2040: (1) Sweden as one zone; (2) two zones, corresponding to snitt 2; (3) several zones, corresponding to one of the alternatives examined in the EU-wide review. Svk also analyses special export zones.
• The slides define Alternative 3 as four zones, “SVK:s alternativ”. It resembles Configuration 11 of the EU-wide review (Source - ENTSO-E BZRR Nordic 2025) but is adapted to frequently recurring bottlenecks in today’s system: a new snitt 3 replaces the “eastern Svealand area”. Against today’s division, snitt 3 is introduced for more effective handling of east–west flows; snitt 1 and 2 are kept because they are judged necessary for north–south flows; and since snitt 4 is a bottleneck only in specific operating situations, Svk wants to test whether those can be handled without it.
• Analysis scope: Swedish and North European prices, congestion income, operational security, security of supply, capacity calculation between zones, market efficiency, zone stability and reliability, and the functioning of the financial electricity market.
• Special export zones are evaluated in two steps: a quantitative assessment of possible market design without regard to the legal framework, then a legal analysis.

Method

• Modelling prioritises hydropower and can run many weather years; the tool is the one Svk uses for other power-system analyses under ten years ahead, with Svk’s latest forecasts and scenarios. The Q&A names the tool as Samnett, with a flow-based capacity-calculation method.
• 2030: one scenario simulated. 2035: scenarios varying the distribution of production and consumption, for example different nuclear levels; one variant adds 1,500 MW of nuclear at Ringhals. 2040: a qualitative analysis from the 2035 results and long-term forecasts.
• Simulations cover the Nordic system; Svk’s neighbours (the Netherlands, Poland, Great Britain, Germany) are represented by price series from simulations with today’s Swedish division, identical for every alternative. Svk judges that Swedish zone changes have only a marginal effect on continental prices.
• Day-ahead only: intraday is not analysed, and balancing-market effects are assessed “to some extent” at an overall level.
• Not modelled: V2G (too uncertain how much of the fleet will have it; flexible EV charging is assumed, and stand-alone batteries and demand flexibility are in the model); dynamic bidding zones as in Norway; phase shifters at the Norwegian border; the benefit of different grid reinforcements (the study varies production and consumption but not planned grid investments, and takes the reinforcements expected by each analysis year, including Nord-Syd, as given).
• Other Nordic zone divisions are assumed unchanged; Svk exchanges models and data with Norway and is in regular dialogue with Statnett about its possible study of going from five to six zones.

Svk’s answers on reasoning and process

• Why keep snitt 1 in Alternative 3: it consists of four lines and is a bottleneck mainly during outages but also with an intact grid; the northern grid is meshed with much production, which makes accurate modelling of trade flows with one combined zone north of snitt 2 difficult. A merger of SE1 and SE2 is studied in the other two alternatives. It is not about congestion income.
• SE3–SE4 is mainly limiting during outages in southern Sweden, in the first place in the summer outage season. Svk normally does not counter-trade or redispatch to raise capacity there: suitable resources are scarce in southern Sweden (confirmed by its procurements), large volumes would be needed, and market solutions that “disregard the physics” distort price signals.
• Snitt 2: Svk judges it correctly placed; the published JAO flow-based data wrongly register some lines of snitt 2 as internal to SE2, which Svk is investigating and will correct.
• Structural congestion: the regulation’s definition (clearly definable, predictable, geographically stable, recurring under normal conditions) has no agreed frequency threshold; Svk reads “normal conditions” as including intact grid and planned outages, and expects the CACM revision to clarify it. A zone change is decided by the government, and as a rule needs agreement in the whole capacity-calculation region (Art. 14 of Regulation 2019/943).
• Starting a formal review nationally could happen in two ways: an Svk report showing structural congestion approved by Ei (Art. 14(7)), or showing negligible effect on neighbouring control areas (Art. 32.1(d) of CACM). Svk’s view in November 2025: the alternatives in the assignment could have more than a negligible effect and several are not based on structural-congestion analysis, so a formal review cannot be run alongside the assignment.
• Timing: new zones before 2030 are unlikely. Implementation needs at least 18 months; to have new zones at the start of 2030 a decision would be needed in the first half of 2028. A review should be considered at least every three years; Sweden has had one since 2011, the EU-wide review presented on 28 April 2025.
• Export zones: Svk sees legal challenges, not least if the aim is to reduce trade with Germany. Handling internal bottlenecks by reducing exports was one reason for introducing several zones in 2011, as it was seen as conflicting with EU competition law. Export zones for trade between Swedish zones are not studied.
• Configurations 8–11: ACER chose 8 and 10 from nodal-price simulations by Svk and the other Nordic TSOs; 9 and 11 are Svk’s modifications using the results and operating experience.
• Svk’s reply on investment signals: prices have historically not been high and predictable enough to motivate new production in southern Sweden; land and permits also matter; the large expected consumption growth in the north can be read as price signals steering industry location.
• Grid and income: over 200 billion SEK planned in the transmission grid over ten years; congestion income has been used to cut the energy fee in the tariff. The replacement of Konti-Skan (DK1–SE3) lifts capacity from 615 to 1,000 MW and is included in the 2035 analyses.
• The German court ruling on including internal limits in the capacity domain does not change Svk’s handling, since internal lines are already in its capacity domain; it may affect the update of the Nordic capacity-calculation method due 18 months after flow-based go-live.
• Further dialogue: a survey of financial-market actors after the New Year (only the financial market, because the other analyses rest on physical trade), stakeholder dialogue on financial hedging, notes and presentations on svk.se, and a stakeholder meeting at delivery.

Overtaken by the May 2026 amendment

• Svk said it would deliver no recommendation, since the assignment is not a formal review (Art. 14(6)). The 28 May 2026 amendment adds an Art. 14.7 structural-congestion report, a recommendation on the most suitable division over 5–10 years, and, if that has more than two areas, an action plan toward two areas (Source - Ändring Uppdraget Svk Elområdesindelning (2026)).
• The Q&A said a formal review is not possible alongside the assignment; the amendment moved the first formal step (the structural-congestion report) into the assignment itself. The deadline is now 29 January 2027.

Relevance to wiki topics

• Bidding Areas — Alternative 3, method and timeline, in the section on Svk’s Swedish-specific analysis
• Source - Svk Analys av Elområden 2026 — the assignment text this webinar elaborates
• Source - ENTSO-E BZRR Nordic 2025 — Configurations 8–11 and the review the assignment follows
• Svenska kraftnät — the TSO’s role in zone design and congestion handling