Expanded main grid will provide more expensive electricity in Norrland

In recent days, electricity in southern Sweden has been 40 times more expensive than in the northern parts of the country.

In southern Sweden, the price was then over SEK 7 per kWh, while it cost 17 öre in the north.

The war between Russia and Ukraine means that the price of electricity is now rising again.

Concerns about energy shortages and sanctions against Russian gas are pushing up energy prices in Europe.

The government has promised to accelerate the construction of more powerful lines from north to south - so that cheap northern electricity can be transferred south.

Former Minister of Energy Anders Ygeman has been clear that he thinks "consumers in southern Sweden pay too high a price" and promised that a stronger main grid would give lower prices.

But according to several players in the market, new cables will above all provide more expensive electricity in the north.

- The more and more powerful cables we get, the more prices will level out, which means much more expensive in electricity in the north and a little more expensive in the south, says Svenska Kraftnät's CFO Peter Wigert to SVT.

Investing 100 billion

Svenska kraftnät will invest SEK 100 billion in expanding the main grid.

Researchers at the Institute for Business Research have studied how electricity prices in Sweden would be affected if the whole country were a single electricity price area.

About what the government said it wanted to investigate.

The conclusion is 14 percent lower electricity prices in the far south, but 68 percent more expensive in the north.

- There are winners and losers, if you beat out the prices, the effect in percentage will be significantly greater in the north, says Pär Holmberg who is one of the researchers behind the report.

Then comes the impact of the market, and today's European energy crisis.

Electricity prices soared early this winter, not least because energy prices in Europe were already high at the time, partly because Russia cut off the supply of gas.

Our electricity prices are infected by electricity prices on the continent

Svenska kraftnät believes that we are infected by prices on the continent, because we sell electricity there.

Therefore, the hope of lower prices in the south is a bit difficult.

Peter Wigert points out that new cables from Denmark to the Netherlands and from Norway to the United Kingdom have increased capacity to export electricity from the Nordic countries to the south.

That is why our electricity prices are more contagious from the prices on the continent now, he says.

And when Sweden plans more cables to Finland and Germany, he thinks it may be good for countries that want to reduce dependence on Russian gas, but that prices will be pushed up in Sweden as well.

- With more cables, there will probably be more hours every year with the same prices in Sweden as on the continent, says Peter Wigert.