Expensive Autumn for Electricity Ahead – Households in Southern Sweden Hit Hardest

Electricity prices have risen sharply compared to last year and the trend may continue into the autumn. Households with high electricity consumption risk having to pay several thousand kronor more than in the previous year, with homeowners in southern Sweden being particularly affected.

Electricity prices in July were about double the levels seen in the same month last year. According to Expressen, prices on the futures market are also pointing towards a significantly more expensive autumn than 2025.

The impact is greatest for households that use a lot of electricity, for example for heating and charging electric cars. The difference is also most pronounced in southern Sweden, where electricity prices are normally higher and more sensitive to price levels on the European electricity market.

Prices Rose Already in the First Half of the Year

The trend started long before the summer. During the first six months of the year, electricity prices rose in all four Swedish electricity zones compared to the same period in 2025, according to statistics from Energiföretagen reported by Energinyheter.

There are several factors behind the price increase. The year began with cold weather, weak wind power production, and little precipitation. The hydrological balance—the amount of water and snow available for hydropower—has also been weaker than normal.

“The first half of the year was the opposite of last year. Severe cold, little wind, poor snowfall, and war have all pushed up electricity prices,” says Energiföretagen Sweden’s market analyst Magnus Thorstensson.

The Hormuz Conflict Pushed Prices Up

Developments outside of the Nordics have also played a major role. The conflict in the Strait of Hormuz pushed up natural gas prices in the spring, which in turn affected the electricity market, especially in southern Sweden. At times, prices there reached their highest levels since the 2022 energy crisis.

At the same time, Swedish electricity production in the first half of the year dropped to 82.1 terawatt-hours. Both nuclear power and wind power produced less than the year before, while hydropower and solar power increased. Nevertheless, Sweden remained a net exporter of electricity.

Futures prices now indicate continued significant regional differences during the final quarter of the year. Market prices for October–December are about 0.50 SEK per kilowatt-hour in northern Sweden, about 0.70 SEK in electricity area SE3, and nearly 0.90 SEK in the southernmost electricity area SE4.

For an electrically heated house, even relatively small price increases quickly amount to large sums as consumption rises in the autumn and winter. Thus, it is above all homeowners with high consumption in southern and central Sweden who are at the greatest risk of feeling the pinch from the more expensive electricity market.

Less Nuclear Power After Red-Green Energy Policies

At the same time, Sweden now has less dispatchable nuclear power than before. Four reactors—Ringhals 1 and 2 and Oskarshamn 1 and 2—have been shut down since the mid-2010s.

The shutdowns took place after the previous Social Democrat-Green government pursued a policy to transition the energy system away from nuclear power. Among other things, the government increased the output tax on nuclear power by 17 percent at a time when electricity prices were already very low. According to the government’s own documentation, the increased tax raised the fixed costs of nuclear power and thus contributed to the energy system transition.

The Green Party was simultaneously open about the ambition to close reactors. Even ahead of the change in government in 2014, the party anticipated that at least two reactors would be decommissioned during the mandate period.

Vattenfall formally decided to bring forward the closure of Ringhals 1 and 2, citing lack of profitability. However, that profitability was also affected by the politically determined output tax, which made nuclear power production more expensive. As a result, the Ringhals reactors disappeared from southern Sweden’s electricity production—the same part of the country where prices are now highest and where households are expected to be hardest hit by the expensive autumn for electricity.