To meet new regulations and the demand for a more sustainable energy system, the electricity grid will play an important role. Since the grid owners operate in a monopoly environment a regulating authority, the Swedish Energy Markets Inspectorate (Ei), sets a revenue cap that determines their profits. Changes were made for the regulating period 2016-2019, which now states that grid operators no longer can charge their customers with already depreciated grid components. To spur the grid operators to invest in smarter and more efficient technology, Ei also introduced two new economic incentives to make companies decrease their electricity losses and use the grid more evenly. The first aim of this thesis was to investigate how this new regulatory framework affected the grid operators, by performing interviews and sending out a survey. The result showed that the new regulatory decreases the grid operators’ profitability and also affects their investment strategies. The age of a grid has become more important than both efficient use of the grid and voltage quality when considering investments, since age now has a major impact on the profits. The new incentives however, has almost no effect on the way the grid operators act. The second aim of this study was to investigate how much a grid operator could save with these new incentives. A case study were conducted at Upplands Energi, a small local grid operator, and calculations with their usage data were performed in MATLAB. The results showed that load management by installing control equipment on costumers’ heat pumps and thereby decreasing their power peaks, could save money. By connecting 500 customers Upplands Energi could save about 150 000 SEK per year, and with 5 000 customers they could save almost half a million SEK per year.

The Swedish energy markets inspectorate (Ei) regulates the Swedish DSOs revenue cap, to ensure reasonable prices, efficiency, and quality of supply towards the end users. In combination with directives from the European Union and Sweden's environmental goal, Ei implemented efficient grid utilization to the DSOs revenue cap in 2016. The efficient grid utilization can be divided into two incentives: load flow and network losses. Criticism regarding the load flow incentive, and the indicator used to calculate it, has been raised from the industry. The purpose of this degree project was to investigate the possibilities of a new indicator that also could be affected by the DSOs actions. The project identified four main indicators to test, weighted load factor, utilization factor, adjusted utilization factor and a utilization factor that incorporates all local production units. The indicators were calculated with data from a regional and local grid, provided by the Swedish DSO Ellevio. Other parameter changes such as peaks and seasonal based calculations were also tested. To see the impact DSOs could have on the indicator, with today's regulations, was detected to be through load shaving and shifting, demand side management (DSM). MATLAB was used to test the impact DSM had on the indicators. Further, a load prediction for the years 2023–2035, based on provided historical data, was executed to test the indicators long-term outcome. The project concluded that the regional grid had little to non-impact on the indicators with DSM whilst the local grid resulted in high increased outcome for most indicators. The project continues to conclude to separate indicators for the regional and local grid, to better represent the two grids characteristic and purpose in Swedish society. The adjusted utilization factor was proposed for the regional grid, due to its non-negative impact from installing renewable energy resources, and the weighted load factor for the local grid due to being highly affected by DSM. Lastly, the project concluded that the indicator needs to be changed and further developed for regional DSOs, for them to have the opportunity to affect it.