Svk Kraftbalansen Vår 2026

Svenska kraftnät’s bi-annual power balance report to the Swedish government, covering winter 2025/2026 outcome and summer 2026 / long-term adequacy outlook. Published 15 May 2026, submitted to Klimat- och näringslivsdepartementet per §13 Förordning (2025:782).

Submitted to: Klimat- och näringslivsdepartementet

Legal basis: §13 Förordning (2025:782)

Period covered: Winter 2025/2026 outcome; summer 2026 outlook; long-term adequacy to 2035

Key findings

Winter 2025/2026 outcome

Temperature: Colder than normal across Sweden; Norrland experienced one of the coldest winters in decades.

Storm Johannes: Caused outages in regional and local distribution grids. The transmission grid (stamnätet) was unaffected.

Peak load: 24,800 MWh/h on 12 January 2026 kl. 08–09, compared with 22,470 MWh/h the prior year.

Nuclear: 99% utilization at peak. Wind: only 18% utilization at peak (vs 63% prior year) — low wind during the cold snap was the key stress factor.

Power balance: Stable throughout. Sweden met demand through high nuclear output and Nordic interconnection. No supply shortfall.

Strategisk reserv — winter 2025/2026

The strategisk reserv was contracted for winter 2025/2026, replacing the former effektreserv (562 MW, ended 15 March 2025 when the effektreserv law lapsed):

• Volume: 350 MW
• Suppliers: resources from Mälarenergi and Sydkraft
• Active period: 15 January 2026 – 15 March 2026
• Activation: Not activated — market balance was sufficient throughout
• Availability: 100% throughout the active period

The report notes it was neither placed on raised readiness nor activated, because balance was maintained with ordinary market and operational measures; the effektreserv had been put on 2-hour readiness twice in winter 2024/2025. (Report does not itself characterise this as the first successful procurement; see Strategisk Reserv.)

Prices — winter 2025/2026

Substantially higher than the prior winter across all zones:

Highest day-ahead price: 493 EUR/MWh (SE4, 19 February 2026)

Highest balancing energy price: 7,363 EUR/MWh (7 January 2026)

The 7,363.36 EUR/MWh upregulation price occurred 7 January 2026 kl. 15.00–15.30 in SE3 and SE4, when upregulation need was high relative to available bid volume and transfer capacity to southern Sweden was limited. Since 2025 Svk has temporarily run ongoing analyses to manually find occasions where the balancing energy price should be adjusted, pending market development; in winter 2025/2026, 11 quarter-hours (kvartar) were price-adjusted.

Cross-border flows

Net export to Finland rose sharply from 2.1 TWh to 4.9 TWh (winter 2024/2025 to 2025/2026); net export to Norway fell (1.3 to 0.9 TWh), so the trend of growing east–west flows was broken. Much of the Finland export comes from SE1, where transfer capability was strengthened ahead of the winter by the expansion of the Aurora line.

East–west flows in the transmission grid continue to force transit flows to be limited in summer 2026.

Summer 2026 outlook

Positive power balance for Sweden as a whole; no import need expected. Driftsäkerhet is assessed as maintainable, but there will be periods with simultaneous outages at Ringhals and Forsmark that may raise prices, plus planned grid works and east–west flow restrictions.

Long-term adequacy — ERAA 2025

The ERAA 2025 (European Resource Adequacy Assessment) shows Sweden’s LOLE (Loss of Load Expectation) far exceeding the 1 hour/year adequacy norm:

By zone, LOLE is concentrated in SE4 (6.5 / 7.8 / 10.0 / 6.6 h) and SE3 (1.4 / 3.1 / 8.5 / 4.4 h); SE2 is 0 and SE1 0–0.4 h. ACER approved ERAA 2025 in April 2026 but wants improvements in several areas.

The report states that electricity need and the need for demand-side flexibility are both rising, that flexibility becomes more important with more wind and solar, and (as in earlier assessments) that there is a risk flexible resources (production and consumption) are not built out in pace with need. It does not claim to be the first report to name demand flexibility.

NRAA (National Resource Adequacy Assessment)

Sweden’s first NRAA (nationell resursanalys) is due at the end of 2026, per Svk’s instruction (SFS 2025:782); Svk does no new long-term study in this report. The ERAA 2025 results set the baseline for what the NRAA will need to address.

Relevance to wiki

• Svenska kraftnät — winter 2025/2026 outcome; strategisk reserv not activated
• Balancing Markets — strategic reserve outcome; mFRR manual adjustments; price extremes
• Bidding Areas — SE3/SE4 as primary adequacy risk zones; east–west constraint
• Demand Response — demand-side flexibility named as increasingly needed; ERAA 2025 data
• Flexibility Need Assessment — ERAA 2025 LOLE data is input to FNA process; NRAA end-2026
• the regulatory timeline — NRAA end-2026 milestone

Data gaps

• NRAA 2026 content and publication — Sweden’s first national resource adequacy assessment (due end 2026)
• Whether Svk quantifies a specific demand-response contribution in the NRAA or leaves it qualitative