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This news is from May 2026. https://www.europesays.com/dk/80254/ https://www.europesays.com/dk/80254/ > Sweden has ordered the expansion of a key power interc

This news is from May 2026. https://www.europesays.com/dk/80254/ https://www.europesays.com/dk/80254/ > Sweden has ordered the expansion of a key power interconnector to Denmark to be halted after failing to reach agreement with the European Commission over bottleneck fees. The interconnect already exists as Konti-Scan 1 and 2. Konti-Scan Connect, when built, will replace them. What are "bottleneck fees"? https://swedenherald.com/article/surplus-from-electricity-customers-200-billion https://swedenherald.com/article/surplus-from-electricity-cu... > Bottleneck revenues, or capacity fees as they are also called, arise when there are large price differences between electricity areas, often between electricity area 2 (southern Norrland) and 3 (Svealand and northern Götaland). The price differences arise when the capacity in the network is not sufficient to transfer the electricity surplus in the north to the south where the supply is too small. When Svenska kraftnät handles this, revenues arise for the authority corresponding to the price differences. In the UK, which has a single electricity market for the whole country, we have curtailment fees. There is insufficent grid capacity between Scotland and England. When lots of power in England is needed, Scottish wind farms could provide it, but the grid can't deliver it. So the grid operator pays twice -- a curtailment fee to the wind farms to ask them to dump their energy, and a fee to English power stations to switch on the gas turbines and provide the power England needs that it can't get from the bottlenecked grid connection to Scotland. I have the suspicion that Sweden fears having to pay the equivalent of curtailment fees to Denmark. The EU agreed that wouldn't have to happen... but the EU still wants to constrain Sweden into using its collected bottleneck fees to upgrade its grid infrastructure, hastening their demise, rather than use it to subsidise power production. > In March, the Commission agreed that Sweden would not have to share bottleneck fees paid to Svenska Kraftnät with other EU countries. But a new conflict has blown up over some of the Commission’s other proposals. According to TT, the Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund power production as well as grid expansion.

contravariant 15d ago
Hmm, so basically Sweden has a surplus of goods (electricity), but the EU commissions is trying to pay for it with coupons that look like money but can't be used to buy everything, and now Sweden is saying "no, tak".
- try-working 15d ago
  Sweden does not have surplus electricity. We have production of electricity that is better matched to demand than other nations, most notably the disaster that is Germany. German demand is causing Swedish industrial production to shut down due to increased energy prices, which makes production unprofitable.
try-working 15d ago
Sweden will not pay curtailment fees, such a thing does not exist. The reason is exactly what you quote at the end. To state it again: 1. The intranational powercables means that German demand raises electricity prices in southern Sweden, which means businesses and consumers pay a premium vs what they would have paid without the cable 2. The extra charge is captured by network operators as what is called bottleneck fees and it's billions of euros per year, very large sums 3. The EC first wanted to confiscate these funds, which come from Swedish consumers and businesses. Now they want to rule about their use. Obviously this is completely unacceptable and nothing more than a bureaucratic powergrab, and no country would accept it.
- m101 15d ago
  Costs not born by those who made the decision is kind of a key property of the EU integration project in general.
  - try-working 15d ago
    [flagged]
    - surgical_fire 14d ago
      Following that logic, any minister appointed by a head of government is "unelected and has the same level of democratic involvement as that of China's Standing Committee". But that statement would be bullshit.
    - master-lincoln 14d ago
      The European council (which consists of elected country heads) nominates a Comission President and the members of the parliament (elected politicians) vote on the nominated president candidate and need absolute majority to confirm. That president then tries to form the commission with one representative from each member state. The parliament then has to vote again to confirm the commission. Sure it's not ideal. But compared to China, the population of the EU has influence.
deleted 14d ago
[deleted]
lrasinen 14d ago
Oh for Pete's sake, Sweden. Anything to avoid building more North-South connectivity. Sweden is currently split into four pricing areas due to lack of grid capacity. All the cheap electricity is typically in the north (hydro) and then the price creeps up when you head south. It's too bad the live electricity flow data is offline today, but there's a common pattern where SE1 pricing area in the north sends little under 2 GW to Finland (single zone) and most of it gets exported to SE3 around Stockholm.
leonidasrup 14d ago
The Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund nuclear power production. Or to be more precise, German and Danish high electricity prices financing the expansion of Swedish nuclear sector. "Sweden’s center-right government is simultaneously pursuing one of Europe’s most ambitious nuclear expansion agendas, seeking financing frameworks for four large-scale reactors or equivalent modular nuclear capacity totaling roughly 5,000 MW. Half of this capacity is targeted for commissioning by 2035. The government increasingly views congestion revenues as an important funding mechanism to support these ambitions." https://constructionreviewonline.com/konti-skan-connect-project-suspended-amid-eu-grid-funding-dispute/ https://constructionreviewonline.com/konti-skan-connect-proj...

contravariant 15d ago

Hmm, so basically Sweden has a surplus of goods (electricity), but the EU commissions is trying to pay for it with coupons that look like money but can't be used to buy everything, and now Sweden is saying "no, tak".

try-working 15d ago
Sweden does not have surplus electricity. We have production of electricity that is better matched to demand than other nations, most notably the disaster that is Germany. German demand is causing Swedish industrial production to shut down due to increased energy prices, which makes production unprofitable.

try-working 15d ago

Sweden will not pay curtailment fees, such a thing does not exist. The reason is exactly what you quote at the end. To state it again: 1. The intranational powercables means that German demand raises electricity prices in southern Sweden, which means businesses and consumers pay a premium vs what they would have paid without the cable 2. The extra charge is captured by network operators as what is called bottleneck fees and it's billions of euros per year, very large sums 3. The EC first wanted to confiscate these funds, which come from Swedish consumers and businesses. Now they want to rule about their use. Obviously this is completely unacceptable and nothing more than a bureaucratic powergrab, and no country would accept it.

m101 15d ago
Costs not born by those who made the decision is kind of a key property of the EU integration project in general.
- try-working 15d ago
  [flagged]
  - surgical_fire 14d ago
    Following that logic, any minister appointed by a head of government is "unelected and has the same level of democratic involvement as that of China's Standing Committee". But that statement would be bullshit.
  - master-lincoln 14d ago
    The European council (which consists of elected country heads) nominates a Comission President and the members of the parliament (elected politicians) vote on the nominated president candidate and need absolute majority to confirm. That president then tries to form the commission with one representative from each member state. The parliament then has to vote again to confirm the commission. Sure it's not ideal. But compared to China, the population of the EU has influence.

deleted 14d ago

[deleted]

lrasinen 14d ago

Oh for Pete's sake, Sweden. Anything to avoid building more North-South connectivity. Sweden is currently split into four pricing areas due to lack of grid capacity. All the cheap electricity is typically in the north (hydro) and then the price creeps up when you head south. It's too bad the live electricity flow data is offline today, but there's a common pattern where SE1 pricing area in the north sends little under 2 GW to Finland (single zone) and most of it gets exported to SE3 around Stockholm.

leonidasrup 14d ago

The Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund nuclear power production. Or to be more precise, German and Danish high electricity prices financing the expansion of Swedish nuclear sector. "Sweden’s center-right government is simultaneously pursuing one of Europe’s most ambitious nuclear expansion agendas, seeking financing frameworks for four large-scale reactors or equivalent modular nuclear capacity totaling roughly 5,000 MW. Half of this capacity is targeted for commissioning by 2035. The government increasingly views congestion revenues as an important funding mechanism to support these ambitions." https://constructionreviewonline.com/konti-skan-connect-project-suspended-amid-eu-grid-funding-dispute/ https://constructionreviewonline.com/konti-skan-connect-proj...