Published 2026-09-12 · Event 2025-09-17

Strömstad’s Tolvmanstegen yes is a planbesked, not an adopted hall plan

On 17 September 2025 Strömstad’s municipal executive board gave a positive planbesked for Skärje 1:9 at Tolvmanstegen, to test the land for electricity-intensive activity next to the wind farm and transformer. A positive planbesked is not an adopted detailed plan and not a grid contract.

Strömstad Municipality’s executive-board minutes of 17 September 2025 are the dated zoning source used here. Under KS § 137 the board decided to give a positive planbesked under chapter 5 section 2 of the Planning and Building Act for Skärje 1:9, to start plan work at once, and that the plan is judged able to be adopted by 30 June 2027. A positive planbesked is not an adopted detailed plan.

The purpose sentence must stay the purpose sentence printed in the minutes. An application had come in for an area in the east of the municipality next to the wind farm and transformer station at Tolvmanstegen. The purpose is to test the land’s suitability for electricity-intensive activity. The area is given as 120 hectares. The comprehensive plan designates the area for wind power, and an electricity-intensive use is judged a complement. Those are suitability sentences. They are not a hall envelope and not reserved megawatts.

Expected follow-on effects stay expected follow-on effects. The decision text says a further effect of an establishment could be that other nearby activities locate in the area and use surplus heat the activity may generate. That is a planning motive. It is not a district-heat contract. The minutes also note that a nature-value inventory exists and that an environmental impact assessment plus stormwater and geotechnical studies will be needed. Those studies remain later work.

The later municipal page must stay a later municipal page. Strömstad’s establishments overview, last updated 22 January 2026, names the project Datacenter Tolvmanstegen, says the detailed plan has started and is expected to be ready for adoption at mid-year 2027, repeats 120 hectares of which about 40 hectares would be used for a new centre building, says surplus heat is expected, and names Orvelin Group as developer. A started plan and an expected surplus-heat sentence are not a signed offtake. Named neighbouring papers — Ellevio’s Bohuslän snapshot and other west-coast notes — stay on their own files.

DataCenterSweden records 17 September 2025 as a Strömstad positive planbesked for Skärje 1:9. No project identifier is attached. The next update would need a later primary source that names an adopted detailed plan, a building permit or a reserved offtake. Until then, 120 hectares stays a planbesked area — not a commissioned Strömstad hall.

Why it matters

A 120 hectare electricity-intensive planbesked next to a transformer is easy to file as a west-coast campus. The September minutes are usable only if planbesked stays planbesked.

What remains unknown

The minutes and the later municipal page do not print a reserved offtake megawatt, an adopted detailed plan, a building permit or a signed heat contract.

Sources