Norway's fixed household power price completed its first twelve months on 30 September. The scheme, Norgespris, lets a household or cabin owner pay 40 øre per kilowatt-hour excluding VAT for electricity, whatever the hourly day-ahead price in their bidding zone. The grid company settles the difference: the state pays out when the market is above 40 øre and collects when it is below. It is optional, it has to be ordered through Elhub or the local grid company, and it caps eligible use at 5,000 kWh a month for a home and 1,000 kWh for a cabin. Households that do not sign up stay on strømstønad, the support scheme in place since the 2021–22 price crisis, which pays 90% of the hourly spot price above a threshold.
Energidepartementet has now published payout figures for all four quarters of the first year. They are calculated by the energy regulator RME from Elhub metering data and released by bidding zone, with a short caveat that the underlying data have not been corrected. The latest release, on 29 October, covers July to September 2026. Taken together with hourly day-ahead prices for the same period, the releases let the first year be costed in a way the budget documents do not, because the budget appropriations run from December to November and are built on forward prices rather than outturn.
Adding up the four quarters
TEI summed the Norgespris support line in the four ministry releases. The fourth quarter of 2025 came to NOK 2.73 billion, the first quarter of 2026 to NOK 8.56 billion, the second to NOK 3.92 billion and the third to NOK 4.47 billion. The total for October 2025 to September 2026 is NOK 19.67 billion including VAT. The 29 October release says RME's preliminary figure for the full first year is about NOK 19.8 billion. The small gap is explained by coverage: the fourth-quarter 2025 release counted only households in the three southern zones (NO1, NO2 and NO5) and left out cabins and the two northern zones, while the 2026 releases include households and cabins everywhere.
The same four releases put strømstønad for households at NOK 0.49 billion, NOK 2.77 billion, NOK 0.82 billion and NOK 0.78 billion, or NOK 4.86 billion in total. The fourth-quarter figure again omits NO3 and NO4, which is where strømstønad matters most because few people there chose Norgespris, so the true first-year strømstønad bill is somewhat higher. On the published numbers Norgespris accounted for 80.2% of the NOK 24.5 billion paid to households under the two schemes, and its payouts were about four times the strømstønad payouts.
Geography explains most of the bill. NO1, the southeast around Oslo, received NOK 9.94 billion, or 50.5% of all Norgespris support. NO2, the southwest, received NOK 6.86 billion (34.9%) and NO5, the west around Bergen, NOK 2.22 billion (11.3%). The three southern zones therefore took 96.6% of the total. NO3 in central Norway received NOK 0.66 billion, most of it in the third quarter. In NO4, the north, the net figure across the year is close to zero and was negative in both the second and third quarters, at minus NOK 0.33 million and minus NOK 0.39 million: households there paid the state more than they received.
What the hourly prices show
The payouts follow from the gap between the hourly spot price and 40 øre, so the size of that gap is the useful number. TEI used Nord Pool day-ahead prices for the five Norwegian zones, retrieved through the public hvakosterstrommen.no API, averaged the 15-minute prices that apply since 1 October 2025 into hourly values, and checked the third-quarter 2026 averages against NVE's quarterly market report. The match is close: 124.6, 132.5, 93.7, 23.1 and 122.6 øre per kWh for NO1 to NO5, against NVE's rounded 124, 132, 94, 23 and 123.
Across the 8,760 hours from 1 October 2025 to 30 September 2026, the time-weighted average spot price was 106.3 øre in NO1, 109.5 øre in NO2, 104.9 øre in NO5, 81.6 øre in NO3 and 34.9 øre in NO4. A year earlier, in October 2024 to September 2025, the same averages were 62.3, 71.9, 48.0, 17.4 and 6.8 øre. The rise was steepest in central and northern Norway in relative terms, though the absolute levels there remained lower.
Applying the two schemes' rules to those hours gives a support figure for a kilowatt-hour consumed evenly through the year:
- NO1: Norgespris 82.9 øre, strømstønad 39.6 øre
- NO2: Norgespris 86.9 øre, strømstønad 42.9 øre
- NO5: Norgespris 81.1 øre, strømstønad 37.3 øre
- NO3: Norgespris 51.9 øre, strømstønad 21.0 øre
- NO4: Norgespris minus 5.1 øre, strømstønad 6.1 øre
All figures include the 25% VAT except NO4, where most consumers live in Nordland, Troms and Finnmark and pay no VAT on electricity. The strømstønad line uses a threshold of 75 øre for October to December 2025 and 77 øre for 2026, the 90% coverage rate, and the hourly calculation NVE describes. Norgespris support is simply the hourly price minus 40 øre, with the VAT applied.
In the three southern zones a kilowatt-hour on Norgespris drew roughly twice the support it would have drawn under strømstønad, a gap of 43 to 44 øre including VAT. In NO3 the ratio was nearer two and a half because prices there spent more hours between 40 øre and the strømstønad threshold, where Norgespris pays and strømstønad does not. Only 52.5% of NO3 hours were above the threshold, against 77% to 83% in the south.
The flat-profile figures understate the winter weighting of household demand, but not by much in the warmer quarters. The ministry's own worked example for an NO2 household using 3,600 kWh in a quarter implies a consumption-weighted price of 105.4 øre in the second quarter of 2026 and 133.2 øre in the third, against time-weighted averages of 105.8 and 132.5 øre. The difference will be larger in January and February, which the ministry described as among the coldest months since 2010.
Who came out behind
Norgespris is a fixed price, so in hours when spot is below 40 øre the household pays more than it would have on a spot contract. In the south that happened rarely in the first year: 6.0% of hours in NO1, 6.2% in NO2 and 4.4% in NO5. In NO3 it was 16.1%. In NO4 it was 76.8% of all hours, which is why the scheme's net payout there was negative from April onwards and why sign-up in the north has stayed very low. NVE's third-quarter report estimates that a household using 20,000 kWh a year in NO4 would have paid NOK 530 more for the quarter on Norgespris than on a spot contract with strømstønad. The corresponding west-coast household saved NOK 1,469.
The comparison households make is with strømstønad, not with an unsupported spot contract, and the ministry's headline savings figures are calculated against spot. That makes them larger than the household's actual gain from switching. On TEI's flat-profile numbers, the extra support from choosing Norgespris over strømstønad was about 44 øre per kWh in NO2 over the first year. For a household using 16,000 kWh, the consumption level the ministry uses for its 2027 example, that is roughly NOK 7,000 before allowing for the winter load shape. The ministry's figure for the same household's saving against spot in 2027 is about NOK 8,700.
Take-up rose through the year as prices climbed. The ministry counted more than 1.4 million metering points registered by late January, more than 1.6 million orders by late April, just under 1.8 million by late August and more than 1.95 million by 23 October. In NO2 the share of households on Norgespris went from 75% in April to 79% in October, and the share of cabins from 80% to 84%. Statistics Norway estimates that just under 58% of household consumption was on Norgespris at the end of June, with about 82% in NO2, 26% in NO3 and very little in NO4.
The budget record
The cost has run ahead of the budget estimates. The 2026 budget, built on forward prices from July 2025, set aside NOK 9.1 billion for Norgespris on electricity and NOK 1.9 billion for strømstønad. In the revised budget on 12 May the government raised the Norgespris line to NOK 15.4 billion and strømstønad to NOK 4.85 billion, with district heating on top, an increase of about NOK 10 billion against the adopted budget. The ministry pointed to an unusually cold January and February and to the reservoir drawdown that followed. Budget appropriations run from December to November, a different window from the scheme year used above. Even so, the first-year outturn of NOK 19.7 billion is NOK 4.3 billion above the revised appropriation, and October 2026 prices, which fall inside the budget window, are far higher than those of October and November 2025, which fall outside it.
Hydrology has been the main driver in the south. NVE's third-quarter report describes a snow-poor winter in central and southern Norway, inflow 11 TWh below the historical average for the quarter and reservoir filling in NO2 of 51% at the end of September, close to the 20-year minimum. Net exports fell to 2.2 TWh in the quarter, 3.2 TWh less than a year earlier, and the cable from NO2 to the Netherlands was out for much of the period. With less water to spare, southern prices moved closer to continental levels, where NVE estimates fuel and carbon cost for a 50% efficient gas plant at 180 to 190 øre per kWh at the end of the quarter.
October has not eased the position. Day-ahead prices from 1 to 29 October averaged 137.9 øre in NO1, 146.2 øre in NO2 and 132.8 øre in NO5, higher than the average of any full quarter in the first year.
45 øre in 2027
The 2027 budget, presented on 7 October, proposes raising Norgespris to 45 øre per kWh excluding VAT from 1 January and lifting the strømstønad threshold to 79 øre. The government says the 5 øre step is in line with typical annual price changes before the energy crisis, and that any annual change should be limited to that size. It appropriates NOK 12 billion for Norgespris on electricity and just under NOK 3.5 billion for strømstønad, based on July 2026 forward prices and participation as of June.
The higher fixed price reduces the support per kWh by 6.25 øre including VAT. Applied to first-year prices, that would have brought the flat-profile support in NO2 from 86.9 øre to 80.6 øre, a reduction of about 7%. Most of the cost of the scheme is set by the market price and the number of participants, and comparatively little by the level of the fixed price.
TEI also made a rough estimate of the volume behind the southern payouts, by dividing each quarter's payout in NO1, NO2 and NO5 by that quarter's average price gap including VAT. The result is about 22.5 TWh for the first year. This leans on time-weighted prices, which flatter winter demand, and on a fourth quarter that excludes cabins, so it should be read as an order of magnitude. On that volume, each øre on the fixed price is worth about NOK 280 million a year to the state, and the 5 øre increase about NOK 1.4 billion. The NOK 12 billion appropriation would cover a first-year volume at 45 øre only if southern spot prices averaged somewhere around 88 øre over the budget period. First-year southern prices averaged 105 to 110 øre, and October 2026 is running well above that. NVE reports that gas prices rose by half during the third quarter, after the July forwards the budget relies on were struck.
Customers must reorder Norgespris for 2027 through Elhub, with ordering opening on 5 January; orders placed by 14 January apply from 1 January. The Storting votes on the budget in December, and some parties have said they want to keep the price at 40 øre. The next RME payout figures, for October to December 2026, are due in early 2027, and Statistics Norway updates its quarterly support series on 16 November.