4 ms·

Sweden pauses Denmark power cable over EU grid rules

57 points by leonidasrup 1mo ago

theturtle 1mo ago
[dead]
tyrabound 1mo ago
[flagged]
esperent 1mo ago
So a bureaucratic dispute between Sweden and the EU has led to an infrastructure project being paused. This sounds... exceptionally uninteresting. Am I missing something here? Or is this just a dog whistle for the HN crowd who like to complain about anything related to EU regulations?
- tokai 1mo ago
  You're not missing anything. Its extremely uninteresting and nothing out of the ordinary in the early phases of large infrastructure projects. I guess EU/Denmark/power generation is a sure thing to reach the HN front page nowadays.
- aaron695 1mo ago
  [dead]
- villish 1mo ago
  > Or is this just a dog whistle for the HN crowd who like to complain about anything related to EU regulations? Only topped by the number of people who love to cheer for US vs China while living in neither.
- zdragnar 1mo ago
  Most of the US isn't online yet, so I would expect this to be mostly people from the East side of the pond voting on it. In any case, onto the merits of the article itself: Renewable, net zero energy requires massively expanding the grid to regions that cannot supply enough from regions that can. I.e. hydro during Dunkelflaute. Here, we find yet another type of stumbling block in setting up such a system. Yeah, not super riveting stuff, I suppose...
- throwa356262 1mo ago
  From an economical and political point of view this is actually interesting. The free market in EU caused the high electricity prices in Germany to be partially transferred to Swedish consumers, despite Sweden being a net exporter. From a political POV, Sweden couldn't really stop this (or the government didnt want to as they were making bilions on transfer fees). And this cable would make things significantly worse for the swedish consumers
  - silvestrov 1mo ago
    This is a good live map of how Europe is partitioned into zones and what their prices are. Right now you can see a large price difference between Sweden and Denmark and also with Norway. Britain is often suffering high prices, likely due to lack of capacity in connections with the mainland EU. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK2/live/fifteen_minutes?signal=electricity-price https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK2/live/fifteen...
  - cotillion 1mo ago
    Germany cleverly designed this particular variant of the 'free market' to ensure that access to cheap energy can't be used as a competitive advantage against their industries when they closed their nuclear plants. Having the same price in northern Sweden and Norway in winter as in central Europe is insane. Now Sweden is stuck in a terrible situation where we're forced to quickly sell our excess energy to Google/Microsoft/Facebook before the EU will force the use of the bottleneck fees to build more cables to Germany.
    - yxhuvud 1mo ago
      Northern Sweden don't have the same prices as central Europe or even close to that. The underlying reason is that the transfer capability doesn't handle equalizing it. However, southern Sweden is a lot closer - Sweden is divided into 4 different price regions with insufficient transfer capability between them.
- gpvos 1mo ago
  Europe is scrambling to expand its electricity network, which doesn't have enough capacity. I don't know how badly Sweden and Denmark are affected, but in e.g. the Netherlands it inhibits the move away from fossil fuel for both homes and companies, and even disrupts building developments. So, anything that delays this for unexpected reasons is news. Is it interesting enough for HN? That's for you to decide.
  - geon 1mo ago
    Sweden is very well positioned due to well developed hydro, but when germany was forced to give up russian gas, more electricity was exported, causing record high prices. Interestingly, the hydro plants are located in the north and the national power grid is not dimensioned for massive export, so the export to germany from the south of sweden caused a strong price gradient.
    - gpvos 1mo ago
      Yes, I read that in other comments too, and it's the main factoid for me to take away.
contravariant 1mo ago
So congestion revenues are essentially arbitrage? Is that something that really requires that much more regulation? If there's one thing markets tend to be good at solving it's arbitrage.
- m101 1mo ago
  It does require regulation if you, as the state, find it inconvenient where the proceeds of the arbitrage end up.
  - yorwba 1mo ago
    Sweden has already successfully regulated so that the state-owned grid operator is collecting the profits. But other countries have privatized grids and don't particularly enjoy it when an operator forgoes grid expansion in favor of collecting on the price difference. I guess this will result in a compromise where grid operators are required to invest a minimum amount of their bottleneck revenues into grid expansion, while Sweden can take out the rest in a way that's less enticing for private operators. After all, that Sweden is negotiating at all indicates they would like new electricity market regulations in principle, just not this particular aspect of the current proposal.
- adolph 1mo ago
  > So congestion revenues are essentially arbitrage? There are significant capital costs to moving power. As I understand it, an example within the US is the relationship between the regional transmission operator (RTO) SPP and MISO, who have overlapping territory. In order for move power between certain areas of SPP, it travels over MISO lines. This eats into MISO capacity. As a result the two RTOs are working on a joint project. https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/electric-power/092024-spp-miso-joint-transmission-portfolio-draws-support-criticism-in-comments-to-ferc https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news...
christkv 1mo ago
The Danish traders are parasites on the energy infrastructure earning billions in arbitrage fees taking advantage of being the transit of Norwegian and Swedish power exports. All I can see from the EU energy market is an enormous wealth transfer from the users to the middle men. The market does not work unless the goal is to enrich the financial elite.
- boxed 1mo ago
  Spain tried to kick out all the bankers (in this case "the jews"). It was a financial disaster. That you don't understand financial markets doesn't mean the realities of those marks won't hurt you really really badly if you try to adjust it with communist misapprehensions.
  - vrganj 1mo ago
    Trying to conflate anticapitalism and antisemitism is intellectually deeply dishonest and indicative of ideological capture. There's a strong tradition of a Jewish Left fwiw.
    - boxed 1mo ago
      I'm not the one who conflated it, Spain did, fwiw. The point is that banking is something you remove at your peril.
- Hikikomori 1mo ago
  Danskjävlar
  - botprizm 1mo ago
    De är bittra att de förlorade Skåne
    - geon 1mo ago
      Tillbaka till r/unket med dig.
amiga386 1mo ago
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.
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- contravariant 1mo 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".
beezlewax 1mo ago
Why the constant EU bashing on this site now?
- gpvos 1mo ago
  I'm not sure this is EU bashing, it could equally be Sweden bashing.
  - distances 1mo ago
    The article isn't, but many accounts now dish out anti-EU narratives in any topic remotely touching Europe. A lot of it for sure is either direct propaganda, or internalized anti-EU sentiments after reading too much of that propaganda on other platforms. Weak Europe is what both Russia and the current US administration are explicitly promoting, so it's not surprising to see an uptick of those comments. Most countries now have pro-Russian alt-right/left parties, and their supporters are very exposed to foreign state sponsored messaging.
    - gpvos 1mo ago
      There has been a lot of EU-bashing in general for many years of course, but I hadn't noticed an uptick on HN yet.
- zdragnar 1mo ago
  Ask the Europeans, most of the US wasn't online when this hit the front page.
- drstewart 1mo ago
  Good one. If anything, this is a refreshing change from the daily "look how independent and free Europe is now that the commune of Nowhereaux's planning committee switched from Excel to LibreOffice" article
- abc123abc123 1mo ago
  Because EU is a socialist and authoritarian project that will lead to war and disaster. Only the nationalist right has realized this, and the people are angry. It's boiling under the surface. The EU will either slowly sink down into irrelevance, or if noting is done, and the evil expands, it will lead to outright war.
baggachipz 1mo ago
Sweden bullying Denmark, a tale as old as time.

57 points by leonidasrup 1mo ago

theturtle 1mo ago

[dead]

tyrabound 1mo ago

[flagged]

esperent 1mo ago

So a bureaucratic dispute between Sweden and the EU has led to an infrastructure project being paused. This sounds... exceptionally uninteresting. Am I missing something here? Or is this just a dog whistle for the HN crowd who like to complain about anything related to EU regulations?

tokai 1mo ago
You're not missing anything. Its extremely uninteresting and nothing out of the ordinary in the early phases of large infrastructure projects. I guess EU/Denmark/power generation is a sure thing to reach the HN front page nowadays.
aaron695 1mo ago
[dead]
villish 1mo ago
> Or is this just a dog whistle for the HN crowd who like to complain about anything related to EU regulations? Only topped by the number of people who love to cheer for US vs China while living in neither.
zdragnar 1mo ago
Most of the US isn't online yet, so I would expect this to be mostly people from the East side of the pond voting on it. In any case, onto the merits of the article itself: Renewable, net zero energy requires massively expanding the grid to regions that cannot supply enough from regions that can. I.e. hydro during Dunkelflaute. Here, we find yet another type of stumbling block in setting up such a system. Yeah, not super riveting stuff, I suppose...
throwa356262 1mo ago
From an economical and political point of view this is actually interesting. The free market in EU caused the high electricity prices in Germany to be partially transferred to Swedish consumers, despite Sweden being a net exporter. From a political POV, Sweden couldn't really stop this (or the government didnt want to as they were making bilions on transfer fees). And this cable would make things significantly worse for the swedish consumers
- silvestrov 1mo ago
  This is a good live map of how Europe is partitioned into zones and what their prices are. Right now you can see a large price difference between Sweden and Denmark and also with Norway. Britain is often suffering high prices, likely due to lack of capacity in connections with the mainland EU. https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK2/live/fifteen_minutes?signal=electricity-price https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/zone/DK-DK2/live/fifteen...
- cotillion 1mo ago
  Germany cleverly designed this particular variant of the 'free market' to ensure that access to cheap energy can't be used as a competitive advantage against their industries when they closed their nuclear plants. Having the same price in northern Sweden and Norway in winter as in central Europe is insane. Now Sweden is stuck in a terrible situation where we're forced to quickly sell our excess energy to Google/Microsoft/Facebook before the EU will force the use of the bottleneck fees to build more cables to Germany.
  - yxhuvud 1mo ago
    Northern Sweden don't have the same prices as central Europe or even close to that. The underlying reason is that the transfer capability doesn't handle equalizing it. However, southern Sweden is a lot closer - Sweden is divided into 4 different price regions with insufficient transfer capability between them.
gpvos 1mo ago
Europe is scrambling to expand its electricity network, which doesn't have enough capacity. I don't know how badly Sweden and Denmark are affected, but in e.g. the Netherlands it inhibits the move away from fossil fuel for both homes and companies, and even disrupts building developments. So, anything that delays this for unexpected reasons is news. Is it interesting enough for HN? That's for you to decide.
- geon 1mo ago
  Sweden is very well positioned due to well developed hydro, but when germany was forced to give up russian gas, more electricity was exported, causing record high prices. Interestingly, the hydro plants are located in the north and the national power grid is not dimensioned for massive export, so the export to germany from the south of sweden caused a strong price gradient.
  - gpvos 1mo ago
    Yes, I read that in other comments too, and it's the main factoid for me to take away.

contravariant 1mo ago

So congestion revenues are essentially arbitrage? Is that something that really requires that much more regulation? If there's one thing markets tend to be good at solving it's arbitrage.

m101 1mo ago
It does require regulation if you, as the state, find it inconvenient where the proceeds of the arbitrage end up.
- yorwba 1mo ago
  Sweden has already successfully regulated so that the state-owned grid operator is collecting the profits. But other countries have privatized grids and don't particularly enjoy it when an operator forgoes grid expansion in favor of collecting on the price difference. I guess this will result in a compromise where grid operators are required to invest a minimum amount of their bottleneck revenues into grid expansion, while Sweden can take out the rest in a way that's less enticing for private operators. After all, that Sweden is negotiating at all indicates they would like new electricity market regulations in principle, just not this particular aspect of the current proposal.
adolph 1mo ago
> So congestion revenues are essentially arbitrage? There are significant capital costs to moving power. As I understand it, an example within the US is the relationship between the regional transmission operator (RTO) SPP and MISO, who have overlapping territory. In order for move power between certain areas of SPP, it travels over MISO lines. This eats into MISO capacity. As a result the two RTOs are working on a joint project. https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news/electric-power/092024-spp-miso-joint-transmission-portfolio-draws-support-criticism-in-comments-to-ferc https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/news-research/latest-news...

christkv 1mo ago

The Danish traders are parasites on the energy infrastructure earning billions in arbitrage fees taking advantage of being the transit of Norwegian and Swedish power exports. All I can see from the EU energy market is an enormous wealth transfer from the users to the middle men. The market does not work unless the goal is to enrich the financial elite.

boxed 1mo ago
Spain tried to kick out all the bankers (in this case "the jews"). It was a financial disaster. That you don't understand financial markets doesn't mean the realities of those marks won't hurt you really really badly if you try to adjust it with communist misapprehensions.
- vrganj 1mo ago
  Trying to conflate anticapitalism and antisemitism is intellectually deeply dishonest and indicative of ideological capture. There's a strong tradition of a Jewish Left fwiw.
  - boxed 1mo ago
    I'm not the one who conflated it, Spain did, fwiw. The point is that banking is something you remove at your peril.
Hikikomori 1mo ago
Danskjävlar
- botprizm 1mo ago
  De är bittra att de förlorade Skåne
  - geon 1mo ago
    Tillbaka till r/unket med dig.

amiga386 1mo ago

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.

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
contravariant 1mo 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".

beezlewax 1mo ago

Why the constant EU bashing on this site now?

gpvos 1mo ago
I'm not sure this is EU bashing, it could equally be Sweden bashing.
- distances 1mo ago
  The article isn't, but many accounts now dish out anti-EU narratives in any topic remotely touching Europe. A lot of it for sure is either direct propaganda, or internalized anti-EU sentiments after reading too much of that propaganda on other platforms. Weak Europe is what both Russia and the current US administration are explicitly promoting, so it's not surprising to see an uptick of those comments. Most countries now have pro-Russian alt-right/left parties, and their supporters are very exposed to foreign state sponsored messaging.
  - gpvos 1mo ago
    There has been a lot of EU-bashing in general for many years of course, but I hadn't noticed an uptick on HN yet.
zdragnar 1mo ago
Ask the Europeans, most of the US wasn't online when this hit the front page.
drstewart 1mo ago
Good one. If anything, this is a refreshing change from the daily "look how independent and free Europe is now that the commune of Nowhereaux's planning committee switched from Excel to LibreOffice" article
abc123abc123 1mo ago
Because EU is a socialist and authoritarian project that will lead to war and disaster. Only the nationalist right has realized this, and the people are angry. It's boiling under the surface. The EU will either slowly sink down into irrelevance, or if noting is done, and the evil expands, it will lead to outright war.

baggachipz 1mo ago

Sweden bullying Denmark, a tale as old as time.