Politician - the only job that does not require knowledge or education

For transparency and my own agenda, I strongly dislike our previous government, the Social Democrats with the support of the Green Party and the tacit acceptance of the Left Party, who ruled Sweden for 8 years. At the last election, I voted for the current government.

The Swedish Social Democrats depended on the Green Party's support when forming a government between 2018-2022. A support they secured by introducing the third increase in the power tax, which made Sweden's clean, cheap and reliable nuclear power unprofitable and thus could close 6 of Sweden's 12 nuclear power plants. This shutdown, combined with an uncontrolled expansion of solar cells, has created an unstable electricity grid that on sunny days is flooded with solar electricity that needs to be taken care of.

In order not to overload the electricity grid and maintain grid balance these sunny days, electricity producers connected to Svenska Kraftnat (Swedish Powergrid) have negotiated a so-called "down-regulation bid". Which is a price for reducing electricity production during these days. In this way, Svenska Kraftnat gets help in preventing the electricity grid from collapsing, which would make it impossible to maintain frequency stability and, by extension, there is a risk that the grid voltage moves outside acceptable levels. That an electricity producer can negotiate that they reduce their production in an over-established market and get paid for it is fundamentally wrong.

The fact that those politically responsible for this area did not have any in-depth knowledge of grid balancing, costs of power generation, etc. has greatly contributed to this problem. It was a former hairdresser, Annika Strandhall, who was energy and climate minister in the former social democratic government in 2021-2022. There is no requirement in Sweden that one must have any education in the field in which one is appointed as a minister.

To eliminate this problem, a "responsibility law" should be introduced according to Sven Olof Andersson Hederoth at energinyheter.se. The "responsibility act" would require whoever supplies power to the Swedish grid to do so with an average availability factor of over 60%. Owners of large solar parks and wind turbines would thus have to invest in balancing power sources, such as gas turbines or nuclear power.

Leaving it to "someone else" to provide electricity when the wind is not blowing or the sun is shining would thus disappear and everyone would have to take their share of responsibility for maintaining the grid balance.