So it also shows some reality to funding grid enhancement.

I should have ranted more clearly.

The electricity cost is in Sweden divided in two seperate bills - one from the producer and one from the grid owner. Producer is chosen while grid owner depends on ownership of the actual cabels, so it is decided by where you live. Up to this summer producers had to offer the same price in all of Sweden on a somewhat competitive market. Grid prices on the other hand is fairly strictly regulated as it is a natural monopoly.

This order apparently violated some EU regulation (which is unclear, saw somewhere that the danes were discriminated, the grid has however been the most common excuse) so Sweden is from this summer divided into four price areas for producers where the price somehow (mechanism unclear) is connected to how much power is produced in the same area. The line was drawn so that northernmost and northern gets the water, middle gets the nuclear power and southern gets nothing. The result is lower prices in northernmost and higher prices in the south.

How exactly the grid will be improved because waterpower-owners in northern Sweden gets to charge more from residents in Scania remains a mystery - after all it is not the grid owners that gets paid.

Crazy Horse:

ABB just received an €125M order for HVDC cabling from Svenska Kraftnat. This is to facilitate wind onshore and off, connection with Norway, and upgrade grid capacity particularly in the south.

Interesting that it will be underground, showing that it was deemed cost-effective to avoid opposition to overland cabling.

Depending on where they are cabling underground can also be a choice to avoid trees cutting down the lines. A lot of Swedish lines are drawn through forests where there are little opposition but quite a lot of trees. Storms (as Dagmar and Emil that visited during the holidays) has a tendency to move trees upon powerlines, thereby cutting them and making that cut hard to reach through a lot of other trees being in the way.

In general the connections between the Swedish grid and neighbouring grids are improving, a new cable was recently laid over to Finland.

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