The only thing (the only thing) that limits electricity exports from Norway is capacity. Prices in the north of Norway are lower than in the south, simply because there's not enough capacity to transport that much to the south. That's actually a good thing, and would be a good thing for the cables from the south to the continent and elsewhere as well, because what's happening now is insanity. It makes no sense to dry out the water resources during summer and buy in the winter, from coal and whatnot.
If I was from Norway or Sweden I would demand the national grid to massively invest into the transmission lines to make all the electricity produced in the country actually usable anywhere in the country. Basically work to get rid of these pricing regions within the country. This is how the network here in Finland works
Also why they are now talking about adding new lines from south of Finland to Sweden (also mentioned in the article) so the electricity produced in north Sweden can be sold to south Sweden through Finland as the national grid of Sweden just can't get it done.
edit:
You can go to https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-... to check the day ahead prices in different price regions.
If energy from the north was enough to influence the German or British prices then maybe, otherwise it wouldn't really matter.
If there was a benevolent dictator making ideal decisions, they would build enough transmission capacity to minimize generation+transmission costs while still serving all users in the country.
However, if there is a private company building a transmission line, they have an incentive to under-build capacity to maximize their profits - since if they overbuild, then the price in all the regions is identical, and their profits by transporting energy are nil.
Yet, due to the nature of transmission lines, it doesn't make sense for 50 companies to build 50 independent transmission lines on the same route to compete on transmission pricing - the total cost of fifty 1 megawatt lines is far higher than one 50 megawatt line.
It's a good example of an economics problem where the free/restricted market doesn't work anywhere near as well as the benevolent dictator model.
There are lots of similar problems - for example shipping goods from a place where they are less valuable to a place they are more valuable.
Build better transmission within the country but not between countries. The transmission lines between countries is how you limit how much electricity you can trade with other countries.
What's the argument there? I'd think that since Norway isn't fully in the EU, they'd have more leeway in internal matters?
I think it's more true that the situation you are mentioning insulates northern Norway from continental prices, than the opposite.
The latest news was that most of the excess capacity will be used up within the next few years because the oil and gas industry is mandated to connect their plattforms to the electrical grid instead of producing their own power from gas.
The 'scapegoat', if you will, is the Acer contract - and that's not really a scapegoat, it's the real issue: Exports must continue until prices balances at both ends.
How can a contract mean you need to raise prices for the citizens? This can only be the case if the government is not acting in good faith, and has planned for this eventuality.
I'm still amazed how people think their government is there to help, especially in nordic countries, when it is plainly just an extraction and control device.
Because during normal times it actually leads to cheaper prices. It has only really been an issue now due to the crisis.
Also this is mostly a consequence of the free market. In the late 90s and early 2000s the Nordic countries freed the electricity markets of the very tight government control. The markets then over time decided that they can make more money by combining each other by joining nord pool (originally a Norwegian company)
So while currently there are certainly big issues with how the market functions due to Putin, anyone suggesting any major reform will have to think long and hard what the market mechanics are supposed to be, and what could be unintentional side-effects of that mechanism. At the moment there is a lot of political pressure to do something, anything, and it's very likely such hasty proposals will be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
See my other example of effects of the current market rules https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32798081
Something is wrong with how prices are formed in this market.
There were a lot of reports made before the cables were created indicating that prices would not change much. I believe these were created in good faith by incompetent people.
People in Norway are currently paying full price, but the government is refunding 90% of the cost above ~0.7 USD / KWh.
It reminds me of the App Store model where Apple takes 30% of the revenue instead of charging a charging a fixed fee of some sort.
Would be very interesting if there was a transfer fee for the new cables instead of a profit share model. Even more interesting if there was a bidding process for the transfer capacity like there is for actual electricity.
Exporting more power than you import on a yearly basis might still mean they you need to import power in certain periods during the year.
Sweden is divided into four price regions for electricity, SE1..4 from north to south.
Demand for power in SE4 (most south) comes from domestic use, and from export from SE4 to Denmark, Germany, Poland (typically, flows can also reverse).
The most expensive supplier sets the current price. Let's say domestic supply is 2 GW. Domestic demand is 1.7 GW and export demand (Denmark, Germany, Poland) is 0.7 GW.
The missing supply is solved by importing from Lithuania to SE4 (1.7 + 0.7 - 2 = importing 0.4 GW); this becomes the most expensive power supplied at this instant and sets the current electricity price in SE4 for domestic users and for those that receive the export. (So we have cheap Swedish electricity for the most part, but the expensive Lithuanian production sets the price in this example.)
In this way, SE4 has enough domestic supply to cover domestic demand. Imports are smaller than exports, but the imports still push up the price for everyone.
Note that import/exports are both on the synchronous grids where applicable as well as using HVDC connections.
In practice the loss of cheap gas from Russia results in higher demand (and price) for alternative sources of energy, including electricity, in those countries that relied on Russian gas. And since they are connected to the Nordics via the grid, it also spikes electricity prices in the Nordics. For energy producers this is great, but for consumers in the Nordics it is not good at all.
The analogue to the internet fails in the sense that you don’t have constraints with domestic production with internet data like you have with energy.
If country A has plentiful production but country B hasn't, the companies of country A are better off exporting to country B, but this will make prices go up in country A.
Definitely not a good thing for the average citizen of country A, which would be better off with a disconnected grid.
Something is super weird with this price increases all over Europe, they don\t make sense, I wish someone will start following where all this profits go and take care of those bastards.
The profits are going in part to induce LNG tankers to come to Europe. You can ban this, but then the LNG won't come and Europe will freeze. The rest of the profits are going to those companies that had the foresight to invest in non-gas power generation. There is some argument to seize those profits since the current price levels were surely unforeseen, but Europe has rule of law so such a seizure would need to be justified and would be challenged in the courts.