The price of electricity soared in Sweden on Monday, reaching its highest ever price for July.
Units of electricity reached as high as SEK 6/kWh during certain hours of the day in southern Sweden, with the capital Stockholm expected to exceed that in the summer evenings.
Speaking to News Today, Emma Borgström, a sales manager at international energy company Eon, revealed that July prices had never been as high as they are now.
The sky-high prices have come at the same time that Russia cut off the supply of natural gas from the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to Germany; this was reportedly for maintenance, although many on the continent remain skeptical of the timing and fear Russia’s state-owned Gazprom won’t restart the supply as planned on July 21.
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At a time when countries are struggling to fill their gas storage reserves in preparation for a strained situation this coming winter, the electricity price-hikes will be a grave concern to many consumers in Sweden. The country’s electricity grid is connected to the continent, so the reduced supply of gas has a direct effect on Swedish electricity prices, particularly in the south, the independent News Today outlet reported on Wednesday.
“In Sweden, we generally do not use much gas, but after the closure of a number of reactors, our energy market is linked to the European market in a completely different way than before,” Per-Oscar Hedman, communications manager for Fortum, Sweden’s largest retail electricity company, told the Aftonbladet newspaper.
“So prices are generally more volatile now, and this is being driven by the fact that we have more weather-dependent electricity production such as wind and solar power in the system,” he added.
