Norway TSO ends power transmission curbs to southern Sweden

OSLO (Reuters) - Norwegian transmission system operator (TSO) Statnett said on Tuesday power transport capacity to Sweden has improved substantially this year, allowing it to end some measures that have limited capacity since last year.

Available capacity has increased thanks to close cooperation with its Swedish counterpart Svenska kraftnaet, Statnett said.

Statnett said it will be reinstating the use of system protection, which increases trading capacity but also carries a certain operational risk, in the connection to southern Sweden from Dec. 12.

This will improve resource utilisation in the power market and contribute to improved cross-border power access in several situations, the company added.

Southern Sweden is seeing an increased power supply risk this winter amid unplanned nuclear outages, according to analysis from Entso-E, the European association of TSOs.

Statnett curbed power flows to southern Sweden at the end of last year, with available capacity dropping to 1,450 megawatt (MW) from 2,200 MW following a dispute over lower Swedish power exports due to domestic flow issues.

(Reporting by Nora Buli, editing by Terje Solsvik)