Believes in happy outcome of Statnett-SvK dispute
He is also a doctoral fellow at the Nordic Institute of Maritime Law at the University of Oslo and follows EU legislation for the power market closely.
Statnett announced on Tuesday that the capacity from Eastern Norway (NO1) to SE3 in Sweden cut from 2,145 MW to 1,100 – 1,200 MW indefinitely. The underlying reason is the extensive restrictions on power flow that Svenska Kraftnät has introduced in the opposite direction.
Statnett CEO Hilde Tonne will meet SvK CEO Lotta Medelius-Bredhe later today to discuss the situation.
Although Rump finds the escalation of the situation on Statnett’s side unusual, he believes that is the reason to believe that the outcome will be happy.
The Nordic TSOs are scheduled to set up one regional security coordinator in Copenhagen next summer, which will be tasked with collecting data from all the Nordic TSOs and modeling the entire Nordic network, carrying out calculation-coordinated analyzes and leading the way in system operations.
– CACM regulations [fra 2015] and the Clean Energy package [fra 2019] dictates that in future the exchange capacity of foreign cables should be calculated by independent regional actors on the basis of a common capacity calculation method. In my opinion, this can further improve cooperation in this area and possibly prevent a situation as we see it now, says Rumpf.
Statnettet has previously highlighted the joint safety coordinator in Copenhagen as one of the most important reasons why Norway should implement the Clean Energy package in the EU quickly. The package was adopted by the EU in 2019, but has still not gone further than for consideration in the Ministry of Petroleum and Energy (MPE).
Exception for capacity limitations
According to the researcher, whether Statnett’s decision to remove system protection, so that the transmission capacity to Sweden is halved, violates Norwegian law or the EEA agreement, depends on the technical events.
– The EU rules, which are also incorporated into EEA agreements and thus binding in Norway, require the TSOs to maximize transmission capacity and prohibit a purge of transmission capacity on foreign cables due to internal bottlenecks. However, both rules apply only as long as they are compatible with operational safety. If the technical conditions in the Norwegian network are temporarily required for a further capacity determination against southern Sweden, this is therefore not in principle contrary to EU law.
– Statnett has recently said that the resource situation in southern Norway is no longer electricity. Does Statnett’s decision violate EU rules if it is only a «retaliation» of Swedish capacity constraints?
– I do not know the exact statements from Statnettet, but a distinction must be made between the resources for electricity production (ie the degree of filling of the reservoirs) and the operational reliability of the transmission network. Both aspects of security of supply are often referred to as capacity, but they are completely different, says Rumpf.
For example, this means that in a situation where Norway has more than some water reserves for the whole winter, Statnett may still have to limit exchanges with neighboring countries due to an acute scarcity in the transmission network, he adds.
The Clean Energy package in the EU’s system operators is always at least 70% of the leased line capacity available to the market. SvK has been granted exemptions from the rule in 2020 and 2021, and has applied for new exemptions for 2022.
Rumpf says it is not yet clear whether Sweden’s border with Norway falls under these regulations, since Norway has not yet implemented the package.
Exemplary TSO collaboration
Several observers have the last week’s point on the Nordic power market is at a low point after the Danish, Finnish and Norwegian energy regulatory authorities have questioned Svenska Kraftnet’s application to evade 70 percent rules for available capacity at borders in the coming years .
If the inspections are not the only ones, the saw risks being forwarded to the EU Energy Agency Acer.
Like Rumpf’s belief in the TSOs finds solutions to problems that have stood.
Compared to other parts of Europe, he calls co-operation between the Nordic TSOs “exemplary” and says the escalating situation is reminiscent of the dispute between Sweden and Denmark, the so-called Swedish interconnectioncase, about ten years ago.
The European Commission investigated systematic restrictions on the exchange capacity between Sweden and Denmark, which ultimately led to Sweden having to split the country into four bidding areas in 2011.
– In my beauty, the case has not had any negative consequences for the cooperation between the TSOs in Sweden and Denmark or at the Nordic level.
Rumpf also points to other examples on the continent where conflicts are transformed into coordinating cooperation.
The Polish and Czech TSOs unilaterally shut down power exchanges with Germany in the early 2010s to prevent uncontrolled flow of power from wind power production as they claimed threatened their operational safety.
Despite the high level of conflict, I will have to start with it eventually to coordinate the process between the German TSO 50Hertz and its eastern neighbors, and one will only have to install technical equipment on both sides of the borders which mitigated the disadvantages in neighboring countries.
– In the end, this led to an improvement in the collaboration, says Rumpf.