Svk Månadsrapporter FCR 2024

Svenska kraftnät’s first five monthly FCR reports: August, September, October, November and December 2024 (published 17 September 2024 to 14 January 2025). Svk began publishing a monthly summary of FCR price development in September 2024; the 2025 reports are on Source - Svk Månadsrapporter FCR 2025. Each report gives monthly mean prices for FCR-N, FCR-D up and FCR-D down against the SE2 and SE3 spot price, an hourly price analysis, price-driving factors, prequalified volume by technology and procured volume per zone. The reports’ text was read in full; the monthly means are mostly shown only in charts, and the figures below are those the text states. The data is Mimer’s (Source - Svk Mimer Reserve Price Exports (2026)).

Svk’s account of the pricing change

• Pay-as-bid until January 2024, pay-as-cleared from 1 February 2024 on all FCR markets. The reports’ footnote: price data up to February 2024 is the volume-weighted average price of auctions 1 and 2 under pay-as-bid, and afterwards the volume-weighted marginal prices of the two auctions.
• How Svk’s reading develops: in August 2024 it says that in more mature markets marginal pricing should lead to more efficient pricing, all else equal, “which can be a contributing factor” to lower price levels; in September that it is “probably a contributing factor”; in October that the marginal-price change in combination with more prequalified actors leads to lower prices.
• The December 2024 year review reflects on 2024: there had been great uncertainty about price levels after marginal pricing was introduced, and whether the markets were diversified enough to cope with it “without price-efficiency losses”. Because the change coincided with a clear fall in market concentration, the result was strong price pressure, above all on FCR-D; from the second half of the year monthly lows in effect replaced each other. December set no new lows but came close.

Why prices were low: Svk’s explanations

• More prequalified actors and a more diverse base: the larger number of actors raises liquidity and diversifies the asset types. The markets had been strongly dominated by hydropower; the dominance remains but is loosening with large-scale entry of mainly wind power and energy storage (August). In December: energy storage “has entered on a broad front”, above all for FCR-D; storage volumes are small beside hydropower but have been decisive at the margin for price formation.
• Wind and requalification (December): prequalified wind has rarely been requalified for FCR-D up and FCR-N, probably because much of the wind that was prequalified came from pilot projects with time-limited, simplified prequalification; FCR-D down suits wind better, since FCR-N means continuously changing activation with many direction changes (an average activation rate of about 15%).
• FCR-N is symmetric (it needs room to regulate both up and down), so very high and very low hydro output each tend to raise its price; new in 2024, FCR-D up and FCR-D down no longer correlate in the same way with higher FCR-N prices, because of the diversification of actors (December).
• Spot price as alternative cost: FCR-N traded at a premium to spot in autumn 2024, while FCR-D up and down traded at a discount to an already low spot price, which Svk reads as the persistent hydro dominance in FCR-N (hydro producers face the spot price as an alternative cost; storage must also count cost and time for recharging) and as FCR-N being activated more often than FCR-D, with more wear.
• Seasonality: FCR-D up normally rises in the last months of the year as hydro output rises; Svk expected the pattern to be weaker in 2024 and it did not appear. In December FCR-N also broke its usual seasonal rise.

Prices and procurement

• August: low for the season; FCR-N was the dearest product but lower than any August in 2021–2024 except 2021; the FCR-D markets were stable, FCR-N more volatile with a couple of hours at about 250 EUR/MW. FCR-D up was very low partly because sparing hydro production left plenty of up-regulation resources; FCR-D down had broken the pattern of historically high prices (through April).
• September: FCR-N’s monthly mean reached a new low for the compared period, 19.0 EUR/MW; the highest single hour was a modest 56 EUR/MW.
• October: all products higher than in September but still low; the highest single hour was FCR-D down at 60.9 EUR/MW.
• November: FCR-D down at a new monthly low of 2.7 EUR/MW, FCR-D up around 6, FCR-N up to 23.5 (“low for the season”, with hydro production very low for the time of year).
• December: FCR-N 19.4, FCR-D up 4.3, FCR-D down about 3.2. Every month since June had a FCR-D up mean under 10 EUR/MW and every month since September a FCR-D down mean under 5.
• FCR-D down procurement: raised from 365 to 410 MW in April 2024, then to 470 MW for all hours from October 2024, and, announced in the November report, to 524 MW from 1 January 2025, the full need under the 2025 key, completing the stepwise build-up. Svk says the market appeared able to absorb the increases.

Price events and Svk’s explanations

• 24 August, 04–06 (FCR-N): auction 1 cleared 90 MW at 57.30 EUR/MW and auction 2 cleared 66 MW at 763 EUR/MW, with negative spot prices.
• 21 September, 06–07 (FCR-N): auction 1 190.5 MW at 21, auction 2 56 MW at 176; the spot price rose sharply as wind fell, so hydro ramped up and FCR-N supply worsened.
• 9 October, 03 (FCR-D down): auction 1 361.4 MW at 1.61, auction 2 154.1 MW at 200; low spot with high wind and low night load; hydro was ramping up and wind falling, which limits both resource types’ ability to take part in FCR-D down and, all else equal, raises prices.
• 18 November, 17 (FCR-D up), “price event of the month”: weighted 183.89 EUR/MW, auction 1 418.7 MW at 3, auction 2 182.9 MW at 600; five hours in a row above 100. High spot in SE3 (low wind, high load); Svk considers it not unlikely that flexible consumption and energy storage also acted on the spot price, lowering supply.
• 4 December, 08–09 (FCR-N): weighted 89.4; auction 1 184.6 MW at 60, auction 2 70.9 MW at 170, with the month’s highest SE2 spot price and high hydro output.

Context

• Hydro: production in October was 5.2 TWh against 5.9 TWh in 2023; in November 5.5 against 6.8 TWh although reservoirs were 86.9% full (29.3 TWh, 4.3 TWh above a normal year), which Svk reads as water being saved for a period of higher prices; in December the hydrological balance rose from +4.5 to +7.9 TWh between weeks 49 and 52.
• Procured volume: SE2 has the largest market share in FCR-N and SE3 dominates FCR-D (October, November, December); a deeper analysis of volume by zone was promised in the November report and appears in the January 2025 report.

Reading the reports with care

• Check against the wiki’s series: the stated monthly means for September (19.0), November (23.5, 2.7) and December (19.4, 4.3, 3.2) agree with the series built from Mimer, and the FCR-D up (below 10 since June) and FCR-D down (below 5 since September) statements hold on that data (Source - Svk Mimer Reserve Price Exports (2026)).
• The monthly means for most months are charts only. The reports’ own explanations are Svk’s reading; the volume tables by zone are printed without clear labels in the extracted text and were not used.
• The reports compare against 2021–2024, so the pre-February-2024 years in their charts are pay-as-bid averages, not marginal prices.

Relevance to wiki topics

• Swedish Balancing Market Prices and Volumes — the 2023–2026 monthly series and the FCR price-basis break
• The Swedish BESS Business Case — Revenue Stacking and the FCR Saturation Problem — storage entering FCR-D and the price effect
• Balancing Markets — FCR products and pricing
• Source - Svk Månadsrapporter FCR 2025 — the following year’s reports