Sweden halts Denmark power cable in EU clash over grid revenues
Sweden pauses Denmark power cable over EU grid rules
Sweden has paused Konti-Skan Connect, a planned electricity interconnector with Denmark, escalating a dispute with the EU over the use of congestion revenues. The Swedish government, led by Energy Minister Ebba Busch, removed the project from Svenska kraftnät's investment plan, arguing that EU rules would limit Sweden's ability to use these funds for domestic priorities like consumer protection and power production. The cable was meant to replace ageing links between southwestern Sweden and Jutland, and its suspension signals a tougher stance in Sweden's confrontation with Brussels over electricity market rules.
Sweden cannot be expected to solve everyone else’s problems.
- amiga386
This news is from May 2026.
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-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 ha […]
- esperent
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?
- contravariant
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.
- beezlewax
Why the constant EU bashing on this site now?
- christkv
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.