Swedish Congestion Management — Redispatching Data and Regional Patterns
Sweden's clearest empirical congestion signal is a price gap of roughly 2× to 67× between the SE4 (Skåne) and SE3 local flexibility markets Sweco surveyed, and a national redispatching volume that nearly doubled in 2024 while its composition flipped from mostly-TSO to nearly 80% DSO-driven.
The SE4/SE3 gap is narrowing as grid reinforcement completes — the intended market-closure dynamic, not a market failure — but the underlying north-south imbalance resurfaces on a longer horizon, with Svk's board-decided "Skåne Syd" package (2036–2045) already signalling the constraint isn't permanently solved.
Two Swedish datasets give the clearest empirical picture of where and how congestion actually arises and gets managed in practice — split out from Congestion Management as a focused data/outcomes companion, the same pattern used for Effekthandel Väst — Market Data and Season Outcomes. See Congestion Management for the underlying mechanisms (why congestion occurs, the EU regulatory framework, the DSO redispatching hierarchy) that this page provides the numbers for.
SE4 vs SE3 — Sweden’s structural congestion pattern
European benchmarks — common-market and reinforcement-alternative pilots
Europe’s most advanced TSO-DSO coordination model for congestion, the Dutch common-market platform GOPACS, and Denmark’s Cerius-Radius/TREFOR flexibility-vs-reinforcement pilots, are detailed in TSO-DSO Coordination — The Central Design Problem (full technical specifications and legal basis).
SE4 vs SE3 congestion price spread
Sweco’s 2025 market survey provides the clearest evidence of the SE4/SE3 structural congestion difference (Source - Sweco Kartläggning av lokala flexibilitetsmarknader (Ei, 2025)):
Sweco reports the highest average prices in SE4 (Hässleholm ~14,672 SEK/MWh; CoordiNet Skåne and E.ON Södra Skåne ~3,000) and much lower ones in SE3 (CoordiNet Uppland ~220, E.ON Vaxholm ~1,650) — a spread of roughly 2× (3,000 vs 1,650) to 67× (14,672 vs 220). Sweco’s sentence also lists Effekthandel Väst at ~3,000 among the SE4 markets, although Göteborg lies in SE3; the chart shows it as SE3, which narrows the like-for-like gap. Sweco adds that the prices “kan också vara kopplat till de tillfälliga abonnemangen” (may also be linked to temporary subscriptions), so the spread is not purely a capacity-deficit signal; the wiki’s reading is that it also reflects the structural southern deficit (high demand, historically constrained transmission links, limited local generation). The October 2024 Söderåsen-Barsebäck 400 kV upgrade (+600 MW versus 2020, which Sweco compares to Malmö’s entire cold-winter-day power demand) is expected to reduce the premium over time.
Post-2024 status, confirmed: with all three Malmö-area 400 kV renewals complete (Hurva–Sege 2021, Barsebäck–Sege 2023, Söderåsen–Barsebäck 2024), Svk states the capacity constraints to Malmö are “långsiktigt hanterade” (handled over the long term) and the transmission network is assessed as not limiting for increased withdrawals over the coming ten years. The constraint resurfaces on a longer horizon: Svk’s 2024 board-approved three-package strategy (which includes the “Skåne Syd” package) adds over 1,000 MW of secure capacity to the region when fully built — described as twice the Malmö metropolitan area’s consumption — via projects planned mainly for 2036–2045. (Source - Svk Så Säkrar Elförsörjningen Södra Sverige (2026))
Grid expansion as congestion resolution — the market closure dynamic
A key insight from Sweco’s mapping: local flexibility markets are often triggered by temporary grid bottlenecks. When the underlying grid constraint is resolved through reinforcement, the market rationale disappears and the market closes. This is not a market failure — it is the intended dynamic where flexibility bridges the gap until investment catches up.
Skåne example: the CoordiNet project was started to bridge the capacity shortage on the Söderåsen-Barsebäck and Barsebäck-Sege lines, the main bottlenecks for western and southwestern Skåne. October 2024: the 400 kV Söderåsen-Barsebäck link came online, the third line on the west coast to be replaced after Hurva-Sege (2021) and Barsebäck-Sege (2023), allowing a further 600 MW compared with 2020. Sweco states this made the flex markets “mycket mindre nödvändiga, eller till och med onödiga” (much less necessary, or even unnecessary). (Source - Sweco Kartläggning av lokala flexibilitetsmarknader (Ei, 2025))
The “chicken race” between grid levels
A structural barrier identified through interviews: when a capacity constraint spans multiple grid levels (e.g., regional DSO constraint affects local DSO connection queue), each level waits for the other to procure flex first — to avoid bearing the cost. Neither level has a legal obligation to initiate. This creates inaction and delays market development. Sweco recommends Ei develop a methodology to attribute responsibility across grid levels (Rec 3 and Rec 4). (Source - Sweco Kartläggning av lokala flexibilitetsmarknader (Ei, 2025))
Redispatching volumes in Sweden — 2022–2024 trend
Ei publishes an annual Art. 13.4 EMR redispatching report. The most recent is Source - Ei R2025-13 Omdirigering i Sverige 2024 (October 2025), covering 2024 data. Historical data comes from Source - SOU 2025-47 Elmarknadsutredningen (2025).
Reporting DSO count rose from 5 (2023) to 6 (2024).
2024 breakdown — who redispatched and why:
- Svenska kraftnät: 59,334 MWh — primarily värmekraft (81%) and hydro (16%); avoid overload in own transmission network
- Ellevio: 220,150 MWh — hydro 201,188 MWh (91%), wind 14,698 MWh (7%), demand response 4,264 MWh (2%); caused by ongoing works at the regional grid level requiring sustained redispatching. Ellevio alone accounts for 99% of all DSO redispatching and 78% of the national total (the DSO-wide shares are almost identical: hydro just over 90%, wind ~7%, demand response ~2% of 221,906 MWh, the last being 4,990 MWh across all DSOs). This is a structural event linked to a specific investment programme, not an ongoing market mechanism.
- Umeå Energi Elnät: 988 MWh — other resources; avoid overload
- Göteborg Energi Nät (GENAB): 403 MWh — demand response; explicitly testing Effekthandel Väst local flex market and managing capacity peaks pending subscription increases from overlying network reinforcements
- Mölndal Energi Nät: 168 MWh — demand response; avoid overload in own and overlying network
- E.ON Energidistribution: 194 MWh — demand response + other + heat + storage; avoid overload and overlying network constraints
- Götene elförening: 4 MWh — demand response; avoid exceeding subscription limit + pilot testing
Market-based vs non-market: 4 of 6 DSOs described their redispatching as market-based. 2 DSOs used Villkorade Avtal — non-market-based redispatching — the report does not name which two.
Demand response growth in redispatching:
A 48× year-on-year increase in 2024 (18 → 103 → 4,990 MWh since 2022), though still small (1.8% of total redispatching) compared to hydro and wind. Ei’s report gives no single cause for the growth; 4,264 MWh of the 4,990 MWh (85%) is Ellevio’s, which says it procured demand flexibility because of capacity shortage, so the jump mainly reflects one DSO’s procurement rather than broad market uptake.
The low uptake paradox: Despite widespread reported capacity constraints across Sweden’s 168 DSOs, only 6 reported using redispatching in 2024. Ei explicitly flags this gap — volumes are “fortfarande låg” (still low) and “de företag som omdirigerar är få” (few companies redispatch) despite stated capacity shortages. Most DSOs appear to be managing capacity through villkorade avtal that were not activated, connection refusals, or queue delays — none of which appear in the Art. 13 report. Ei calls on all grid companies to investigate whether they could use redispatching as a grid efficiency tool.
“Increase-decrease game” risk: When redispatching is used repeatedly and predictably at the same location, market participants can game it. An actor sitting in a congested area can bid high for upward redispatch and low for downward redispatch — earning systematic profit from the congestion. This is the “increase-decrease game” documented in international literature (Holmberg, 2024). Norway encountered this problem in the late 1990s and introduced cost-based compensation rights in 2002. Germany uses non-market-based redispatch systematically for this reason. Art. 13.3 EMR explicitly permits non-market-based redispatch with cost-based compensation in situations of insufficient competition or highly predictable congestion.
Data gaps
- Congestion costs in Sweden: redispatching prices paid at Svk level
- Which 2 DSOs used villkorade avtal (non-market redispatching) in 2024 — unnamed in Ei R2025:13
Related pages
- Congestion Management — the mechanisms and regulatory framework this page provides Swedish empirical data for
- TSO-DSO Coordination — The Central Design Problem — European coordination-model benchmarks (GOPACS, Cerius-Radius/TREFOR)
- Bidding Areas — the SE1–SE4 structure underlying the SE4/SE3 price-spread pattern
- DSO Flexibility Valuation — Methods and Swedish Evidence — quantified DSO willingness-to-pay case studies
- Villkorade Avtal — the non-market redispatching tool used by 2 of the 6 reporting DSOs in 2024