Text version

Method

The electricity price is not one price but several. What appears on the bill is the sum of a market price, a fee to a monopoly and taxes set by the Riksdag. Here is how they are set, and how we chose the figures.

The spot price

The electricity itself is bought and sold on the Nordic power exchange, the day before, hour by hour. Sweden is divided into four bidding zones, from SE1 in the north to SE4 in the south, and each zone gets its own price. Every generator needed in a zone gets the same price, the one asked by the most expensive generator still needed. That is how the electricity market works across the EU. When the lines between the zones are enough, the price is the same; when they are full, the price splits. This hourly price, the spot price, is the basis of variable-price contracts. With a fixed price the supplier pays the spot price and charges for the risk.

The grid and the taxes

The grid is owned by grid companies, each with a monopoly in its area. No one can choose their grid company, so the Energy Markets Inspectorate sets a cap on how much each company may collect, and the companies can appeal the cap in court. The energy tax is set by the Riksdag and is the same across the country, with a lower tax for industry. VAT is 25% and is charged on everything, including the energy tax.

Units

Household prices are given in öre per kilowatt-hour (100 öre make one krona). Exchange prices are often given in euros per megawatt-hour: a megawatt-hour is a thousand kilowatt-hours, so one euro per megawatt-hour is a tenth of a euro cent per kilowatt-hour. Annual generation and use are given in terawatt-hours, a billion kilowatt-hours. Kronor are current prices unless stated otherwise. Where we compare over a long period we use the Swedish Energy Agency’s series in constant prices and say so.

The map of Sweden is built of cubes from an open world map. The borders between the bidding zones are straight lines of latitude near the real ones, which follow municipal borders.

Where researchers disagree

No agency and no researcher has split the price rise of 2021–2023 into shares for gas, weather, closed reactors, interconnectors and the transmission grid. The only model study of what Ringhals 1–2 would have meant covers a single autumn and was made for a research company owned by the energy industry and Svenska kraftnät. The source says so. The effect of new interconnectors depends on whether one models a crisis year or an ordinary one. Where results differ, we show the range and say what it depends on.

How we choose figures

The content rests on research, official statistics and public records: agency reports, court judgments, government bills, EU decisions and public registers. Figures that circulate in the debate, from the industry, interest groups, parties and the media, we have followed to the study or dataset behind them. Organisations’ consultation responses show what they argued, never what is true. Where we have only seen a figure in a summary, we mark the source as second-hand. Where we have done arithmetic ourselves, such as adding up the bidding zones’ generation, it rests on the table in the source.

The same standard applies whichever side a figure helps. The site does not tell anyone what to do or think, and no individual is singled out.

Languages

The site was written in Swedish and translated into English without changing a figure. Sources in Swedish say so beside the link.

Every stop, step and fact is in the text version, and every source in the list of sources.