Source - Svk Kraftbalansen Höst 2025
Svenska kraftnät’s bi-annual power balance report to the Swedish government, covering adequacy for winter 2025/2026. Published autumn 2025.
Bibliographic details
- Publisher: Svenska kraftnät
- Type: Government report (Kraftbalansen på den svenska elmarknaden)
- Period covered: Winter 2025/2026 adequacy outlook
- Raw file:
raw/svk/kraftbalansen-pa-den-svenska-elmarknaden-rapport-host-2025.pdf
Key findings
Winter 2025/2026 adequacy outlook
The power balance for winter 2025/2026 is assessed as positive under normal conditions:
- Surplus of approximately 1,000 MW at normalvinter (average winter conditions)
- Sweden’s adequacy relies on Nordic market integration — import capacity from Norway and Finland provides a meaningful buffer in tight hours
- Adequacy concerns arise only in extreme cold scenarios combined with reduced hydrology
The positive balance reflects the net effect of new wind and solar additions, industrial load growth (which has been slower than earlier projections), and Nordic interconnection.
Strategic reserve — failed first procurement
The strategisk reserv (strategic reserve) is Sweden’s new national capacity mechanism, adopted under Lag 2025:50 (om finansiering av en kapacitetsmekanism för elmarknaden). It replaced the old effektreserv, which ran for approximately two decades and was ended in March 2025.
Key timeline:
- July 2025 — EU Commission granted state aid approval for the strategisk reserv
- Autumn 2025 — Svk conducted the first procurement for winter 2025/2026
- Result: procurement failed — all submitted bids exceeded the CONE price cap; no reserve capacity was contracted for winter 2025/2026
Why procurement failed — the CONE price cap:
The strategisk reserv uses CONE (Cost of New Entry) as the reference price cap for procurement. The CONE value is intended to represent the cost of the cheapest new entry resource that could replace peak capacity in the system. The Swedish CONE calculation used household demand response (hushållsbaserad efterfrågeflexibilitet) as the reference technology — the cheapest available option.
However, the resources that actually submitted bids were production-side resources (generators, diesel/gas units) whose true entry costs are substantially higher than household demand response. Since all production bids exceeded the CONE cap, no contracts could be signed.
Consequence: Sweden entered winter 2025/2026 without a contracted strategic reserve. Svk’s assessment is that the positive market balance (1,000 MW surplus at normalvinter) means this did not threaten security of supply for the coming winter — but the mechanism failure is a significant policy concern.
Context: transition from effektreserv
The old effektreserv was a capacity mechanism that Svk used to contract standby capacity (primarily fossil-fueled units) to activate during extreme scarcity. It ended March 2025 following the EU Commission’s state aid assessment timeline and the introduction of the new mechanism framework.
The transition left Sweden without any contracted reserve capacity for autumn 2025 while the new mechanism’s first procurement was being attempted.
Relevance to wiki
- Svenska kraftnät — updates capacity mechanism section; Lag 2025:50 context
- Balancing Markets — strategic reserve as capacity adequacy backstop; BRP surcharge for SE3/SE4
- Bidding Areas — SE3/SE4 as focus of capacity risk
- Demand Response — CONE reference technology (household DR) and its mismatch with production-side bidders
Data gaps
- Revised CONE methodology — whether Svk proposes a new reference technology for subsequent procurements; tracked in Source - Svk Kraftbalansen Vår 2026