To ensure that there is enough electricity even when electricity consumption is at its highest, SVK started a procurement process in 2019 and received a bid from the Öresundsverket – a cogeneration plant with the capacity to supply the Malmö area with electricity. However, the procurement was canceled after SVK did not want to accept Malmöbolaget’s bid as it was considered too high. But the need for an extra power reserve remained.
According to the radio program, the authority assumed that private industrial companies themselves would take responsibility for reducing their consumption in the event of a risk of electricity shortages. Something they have done in the past for compensation – but no such agreement exists today.
This strategy is not good, believes Lennart Eberleh, CEO of the Rottneros pulp mill:
“Because it’s associated with losses when we shut down, because we can’t produce and deliver to our customers,” he says to the radio.
Today, Svenska kraftnät regrets it, says the authority’s director general Lotta Medelius-Bredhe, to Kaliber:
— Yes, it is clear that it would have made it easier, all electricity production would have made it easier given the situation we have today.