Hundreds of households and businesses help secure electricity supply in western Sweden this winter

This winter, batteries from hundreds of households and businesses are participating in Göteborg Energi Nät's and Mölndal Energi Nät's local flexibility market to ensure an efficient electricity supply, facilitated by the energy services company CheckWatt.

"When grids become constrained due to the electrification of society, flexibility is a cheaper and faster way to achieve sufficient capacity compared to building new grids. This can benefit the entire customer collective through lower grid fees, and battery owners gain a new revenue stream," said Dan-Eric Archer, CEO of CheckWatt.

This is the fourth winter that Göteborg Energi Nät and Mölndal Energi Nät are collaborating within the framework of Effekthandel Väst, which operates on the NODES marketplace. Electricity demand is highest during the cold season. In addition to batteries, other participants will be paid to temporarily reduce their electricity consumption or increase their electricity production.

During the season, CheckWatt will deliver flexibility from 500 installations, including both residential systems and commercial systems in larger properties. This amounts to 5.5 megawatts, with 4.8 megawatts in Göteborg's and 0.7 megawatts in Mölndal's electricity grid.

In total, Effekthandel Väst can free up 25 megawatts of capacity this winter, and in the long term, this trade is predicted to free up at least 100 megawatts of grid capacity, which is equivalent to the peak electricity consumption of two towns the size of Partille on a cold winter day.

"Flexibility will be one of our most important tools for meeting the electricity grid capacity needs in Western Sweden. It is very exciting that CheckWatt is contributing with so many resources and that households are also indirectly participating in Effekthandel Väst. Aggregating flexible resources has great potential and allows us to achieve larger volumes faster in the local flexibility market, so we are very pleased with CheckWatt's participation this winter," said Therese Caesar, Head of Flexibility at Göteborg Energi Nät.

The households and businesses that own the batteries will receive both a fixed availability fee and a variable fee based on how often the batteries are activated.

The batteries can also continue to be used for other purposes in addition to participating in Effekthandel Väst, such as selling ancillary services to Svenska kraftnät (the Swedish transmission system operator) and providing services within their own properties.

Flexibility markets are expected to become increasingly important, partly because electrification and the green industrial transition—which is progressing rapidly, not least in Western Sweden—will increase grid congestion, and because grid expansion is both expensive and slow.

"Today, approximately 10 percent of CheckWatt's customers live in areas where the local grid owner procures flexibility. EU legislation and electrification are driving this development, so within a few years, almost all Swedish grid companies will likely have flexibility markets to operate their grids more efficiently. We recommend that all grid owners collaborate with each other and create a jointly owned flexibility platform for local flexibility markets to become the success for societal benefit, electrification, and transition that they can be," said Dan-Eric Archer.

For additional information, please contact:

Daniel Dickson, Communications Strategist, CheckWatt, +46 (0)726-48 03 91, daniel.dickson@checkwatt.se

About CheckWatt

CheckWatt is Sweden’s largest independent aggregator of flexible energy resources contributing to a more stable and renewable energy system. Through the virtual power plant Currently, companies and households can maximize the profitability of their battery storages and other flexible resources by selling support services to national grid operators and streamlining the use of the electricity grid via local flexibility mechanisms. CheckWatt’s portfolio includes 14,000 solar power plants (400 MW in total), 600 wind turbines (1,000 MW) and 13,000 battery storage facilities (250 MW), where batteries are growing rapidly. CheckWatt has offices in Stockholm and Gothenburg.