Sweden has ordered the expansion of a key power interconnector to Denmark to be halted after failing to reach agreement with the European Commission over bottleneck fees.

Sweden’s Energy and Climate Minister Ebba Busch on Friday announced that she was ordering Sweden’s grid operator Svenska Kraftnät to stop work on the renewal and expansion of the Konti-Skan Connect cable between Gothenburg and northern Jutland. 

“The EU should not be able to steal Swedes’ electricity money,” Busch told the TT newswire, saying that there were aspects of the Commission’s new proposals on using bottleneck fees paid to grid operators that were “unacceptable to Sweden”. 

“We are lifting and pausing the Konti-Skan Connect interconnector to Denmark until we are heard by the EU,” she said.

The Konti-Skan Connect interconnector links Gothenburg with northern Jutland. Photo: Anders Humlebo/TT

The suspension follows a conflict earlier this year between Sweden and the Commission over a proposal to allow the EU to use 25 percent of members states’ bottleneck fees – the fees paid by electricity consumers to help fund the expansion of transmission and distribution grids. 

In March, the Commission agreed that Sweden would not have to share bottleneck fees paid to Svenska Kraftnät with other EU countries.

But a new conflict has blown up over some of the Commission’s other proposals. According to TT, the Commission will not agree to let Sweden use the bottleneck fees to fund power production as well as grid expansion. 

The two cables, Konti-Skan 1 and 2, began operating in 1965 and 1988 respectively, and the Konti-Skan Connect, which is being carried out together with Denmark’s grid operator Energinet, will replace the two cables with a modern HVDC-link, boosting transmission capacity to 1000 MW from today’s 715 MW. 

The dispute over bottleneck fees involves a significant amount of money, with approximately 85 billion Swedish kronor (59 billion Danish kroner) currently in Svenska Kraftnät’s bottleneck account, and a further 130 billion kronor in bottleneck revenue expected over the next ten years.