Batteries and BESS beside a data hall

Reading order

Name the electrical object before you name the marketing object. A UPS that bridges a short interruption, a diesel or gas generator that covers a longer outage, and a battery that can charge and discharge against the grid are three plants. Write whether the battery is behind the hall meter, on a shared connection point, or on its own connection. Write import, export and duration as design figures with a date. If the only number on the slide is a hall megawatt, the battery cell is still empty.

Then name the counterpart. Svenska kraftnät’s connection guidance says you first contact the local network owner; the transmission-network application is a later, formal step and is often made by the distribution system. The 2025 principles paper lists directly connected battery storage among topics the connecting party must treat. A colour on the indicative capacity map is not a battery reservation.

Then name the legal track. Ei’s Innovation Centre explains the January 2025 IKN change that writes energy-storage installations into the internal-network exemption, and it states that a binding opinion can be requested when the exemption is unclear. The Electricity Act’s published text includes a provision that a network company may not own, develop, manage or operate an energy-storage facility. That sentence is about unbundling. It is not a permit for your skid. Planning and environment remain Boverket and Naturvårdsverket desks. Backup-fuel pages remain a different folder.

• UPS, standby generator, or grid-connected BESS?
• Behind the meter, shared point, or own connection?
• Local network owner first — not a map colour.
• IKN, RfG analogy, PBL and environment as separate papers.

Why co-location is several files

Co-location here means a battery and a hall that share a plot, a fence or a story. It does not mean they share a legal object. A battery that only covers the hall during an outage is an on-site resilience design. A battery that bids flexibility is a market resource. A battery that reduces a subscribed import is a tariff conversation with the network owner. Mixing those three into “we brought our own megawatts” hides the counterpart.

Ei’s Innovation Centre states that energy storage is not in today’s RfG network code but is expected in a revised edition, that chapter 3 section 1 of the Electricity Act still applies when connecting a battery, and that Svenska kraftnät’s recommendation is to start from RfG requirements of a corresponding size. Adding a battery to an existing plant does not by itself apply RfG to the whole plant; Ei points to decisions in its e-diary where the outcome depended on whether the production module’s capabilities changed substantially. Those are classification facts. They are not a project decision for your skid.

Measurement sits on the concessioned network. Ei says a network company must measure electricity transferred on the concessioned network, and that sub-metering on an IKN network is not inside Ei’s measurement supervision. A campus that shares one grid point between halls and a battery therefore needs a written measurement story from the network owner. The Innovation Centre also records that EIFS 2022:1 requires a time-differentiated capacity charge, with full implementation not mandatory until 1 January 2027. A 2026 brochure that treats the tariff as already uniform is early.

Planning and environment do not disappear because the marketing deck says “container.” Outdoor battery containers are buildings or technical installations in a PBL file. Fire, noise and transport cases can open an Environmental Code conversation. The backup-power page explains generator fuel, test hours and exhaust. Those rows do not describe a lithium or flow-battery yard. Do not paste a generator acoustic model onto a battery and call the environmental file closed.

What named primary sources show

Fortum’s 9 September 2026 notice is the dated Nordic adjacency example in this set. It says the companies signed a memorandum of understanding on new nuclear, renewables, flexibility and portfolio services, and that as a first step Fortum signed an agreement with Google to optimize a new 94 MW battery storage system which Google has contracted, to be located adjacent to Google’s new data center in Kajaani. Google’s same-day Finland notice restates the 94 MW battery near Kajaani as expected in late 2027. Those are Finnish grid and campus sentences. This register does not write them into a Swedish cell.

Svenska kraftnät’s connection portal, reviewed 23 April 2026 on the fetched page, repeats lowest-suitable-voltage and local-owner-first. The 2025 principles PDF names directly connected batteries. Ei’s Innovation Centre page, with a batteries block last updated 9 January 2025 in the fetched text, is the official colour for IKN 22 a § after 14 January 2025 and for RfG-not-yet-including-storage. The Electricity Act text published by the Riksdag includes the unbundling sentence on network-company ownership of storage.

Microsoft’s 2021 Sweden-region materials and the backup-power page remain generator and fuel evidence. They do not disclose a Swedish hall-plus-BESS rating in the sources used here. EcoDataCenter’s Falun megawatt rows, atNorth’s SWE01 12 MW and SWE04 announced site-power sentences, and evroc’s GPU envelope stay electricity or land rows. None of them is a public Swedish BESS commissioning certificate in this set.

Objects that get mixed on one slide

Keep one row per object. A generator test hour is not a battery cycle. A UPS minute is not a market duration. A Finnish contracted battery is not a Swedish import.

If a brochure says the campus is “flexible,” ask which market product, which prequalification and which meter point. The flexibility-and-ancillary page holds Svenska kraftnät’s reserve vocabulary. This page holds the plant and the plot.

Common misreads

The first misread is to treat a battery as spare grid capacity that the hall may use without a network-owner paper. The second is to copy Kajaani 94 MW into Horndal, Falun or Sollefteå. The third is to treat IKN 22 a § as a building permit. The fourth is to treat the Electricity Act unbundling sentence as a ban on a customer-owned battery. The fifth is to treat Microsoft’s fuel blend as a BESS. The sixth is to treat “in dialogue about flexibility” as a prequalification.

What to ask next

Ask the network owner whether the battery is a new import, a new export, or a change to an existing agreement, and how it will be metered. Ask Ei’s published IKN text — or a binding opinion — only when the internal-network question is actually open. Ask the planning and environmental desks about the outdoor plant. Ask whether any reserve product is intended; if yes, open the flexibility page.

If the only primary source is a neighbour-country press notice, keep that notice in the Nordic comparison set. Do not back-fill a Swedish project row from it.

1. Object named: UPS, generator, or BESS.
2. Import, export, duration, meter point dated.
3. Network-owner paper class written down.
4. IKN / RfG / PBL / environment each labelled or marked missing.
5. Finnish megawatts kept in a Finnish cell.

What this does and does not prove

This page proves that a battery beside a hall is a set of Swedish electricity, planning and environmental files, and that the 94 MW Kajaani sentence is a Finnish adjacency claim. It proves that Ei published IKN and RfG-classification colour for storage, and that Svenska kraftnät names batteries in connection guidance.

It does not prove that any reviewed Swedish hall has a commissioned BESS. It does not convert a battery rating into spare import for the hall. It does not write a concession outcome or a fire decision. Unknown Swedish batteries stay unknown.