Today’s market area NO1 will be devided into two areas. Norway will then have four market areas for electricity: eastern Norway and western Norway north of Bergen (NO1), south-western Norway (NO2), central Norway (NO3) and northern Norway (NO4).

The new market area is established to ensure efficient operation of the power grid in its entirety and for the utilisation of the resources. In many operational situations a bottleneck now occurs between eastern and south-western Norway. Regulations under which Statnett operates dictate that a new market area must be established in order to handle the bottleneck. This situation will last until the transmission capacity across the Oslo fjord is increased, a project which is in progress.

The new market area will be delineated by the following cables:

• 420 kV line Rød (Telemark) – Hasle (Østfold)
• 420 kV line Rjukan (Telemark) - Sylling (Buskerud)
• 300 kV lineVemork (Telemark) – Flesaker (Buskerud)
• 300 kV line Tokke (Telemark) – Flesaker (Buskerud)
• 300 kV line Hof (Vestfold) – Flesaker (Buskerud)
• 300 kV line Modalen (Hordaland) – Refsdal (Hordaland)
• 66 kV (50 kV) line Granvin (Hordaland) – Bu (Hordaland)
• 66 kV line T/Gravenfoss (Hordaland) – Gomsrud (Hordaland)

The boundaries between the new market areas NO2, NO3 and NO4 are similar to today’s boundaries between NO1, NO2 and NO3.