It’s still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it’s pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.
Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
Meanwhile in the USA the electric companies will mine BTC, and charge consumers more wherever they can. They will even sue people for going solar for “losing out on profits”.
A negative price is absurd and has no physical reality, it is the result of speculation and abstract rules not grounded on reality. It always costs to build and operate whatever power source and networks were involved, you don’t have to pay electricity to f*ck off if you produce too much of it.
you don’t have to pay electricity to f*ck off if you produce too much of it.
It’s not any different than most physical goods. Whatever you can’t sell before it goes bad, you have to pay someone to take off your hands using real resources (dumpsters, trucks, human labor).
Too much electricity in the system is harmful, and if nobody wants to buy it, then you have to pay someone to take it out of the system.
No, it does have a reality. The problem is that an electricity grid can collapse, due to too much electricity. However some power plants can not be easily shut down. Nuclear for example can be throttled to about 50%, but shutting it down requires a restart, which takes a day. So loosing a little money for a few hours can be cheaper then a full shut down. There are other effects, like district heating power plants, which are needed to provide heat, hydro power, which has too much water in the reservoir and waste power plants, which have to burn the waste at some point.
Then you got to keep in mind that Finland is fairly is a country with a small population, which is rather isolated. They cut the power lines to Russia and Sweden and the Baltic countries are also low population and especially Sweden also has a lot of low carbon electricity. So export is not an easy option.
The issue is baseload generation like nuclear: we can’t switch it on and off quickly; we can’t ramp it up or down fast enough to match actual demand. There are times where we have to keep it online during a surplus, when we know that surplus will drop off and leave us with a shortage.
Combine that with variations between forecasted and actual weather conditions affecting solar and wind production, and yes, we will occasionally have surplus power to deal with.
The long-term solution is better demand shaping methods, to make use of any amount of power in excess of normal consumption. But until we have the ability to switch on loads and suck up such excesses, we are going to have this problem from time to time.
Sure, but if there is too much electricity on the net, things will start to break. That electricity has to go somewhere. No one wants to buy electricity because everyone is trying to get rid of their surplus.
About the negative, I don’t know.
Welcome to the world of renewables. We have quite some negative hours in Germany in summer when sun and wind are active simultaneously. Unfortunately Finland relies on nuclear, does it?
Unfortunately Finland relies on nuclear, does it?
Yeah we though relying on Russian natural gas might pose some issues in the future so we went with nuclear instead. I hope we build more of it.
What’s wrong with nuclear?
It’s a poor solution for what people like to call “baseline power”.
The argument goes: solar and wind don’t provide consistent power, so there has to be some power generation that doesn’t fluctuate so we always have X amount of power to make up for when solar/wind don’t suffice. Nuclear is consistent and high-output, so it’s perfect for this.
Unfortunately, reality is a little different. First problem is that solar/wind at scale don’t fluctuate as much. The sun always shines somewhere, and the wind always blows somewhere. You have to aggregate a large area together, but that already exists with the European energy market.
Second issue is that solar/wind at scale regularly (or will regularly) produce more than 100% of the demand. This gives you two options: either spend the excess energy, or stop generating so much of it. Spending the excess requires negative energy prices so people will use it, causing profitability issues for large power plants. As nuclear is one of the most expensive sources of energy, this requires hefty subsidies which need to be paid for by taxpayers. The alternative is shutting the power plant down, but nuclear plants in particular aren’t able to quickly shut off and on on demand. And as long as they’re not turned on they’re losing money, again requiring hefty subsidies. You could try turning off renewable power generation, but that just causes energy prices to rise due to a forced market intervention. Basically, unless your baseline power generator is able to switch off and on easily and can economically survive a bit of downtime, it’s not very viable.
Nuclear is safe. It produces a lot of power, the waste problem is perfectly manageable and the tech has that cool-factor. But with the rapid rise of solar and wind, which are becoming cheaper every day, it’s economic viability is under strong pressure. It just costs too much, and all that money could have been spent investing into clean and above all cheap energy instead. I used to be pro-nuclear, but after seeing the actual cost calculations for these things I think it’s not worth doing at the moment.
As for what I think a good baseline power source would be: I think we have to settle for (bio-)gas. It’s super quick to turn off and on and still fairly cheap. And certainly not as polluting as coal. We keep the gas generators open until we have enough solar/wind/battery/hydrogen going, as backup. If nuclear gets some kind of breakthrough that allows them to be cheaper then great! Until then we should use the better solutions we have available right now (and no, SMRs are not the breakthrough you might think it is. They’re still massively more expensive than the alternatives and so far have not really managed to reduce either costs or buils times by any significant margin).
Maybe fusion in the future manages to be economically viable. Fingers crossed!
The sun always shines somewhere and wind always blows somewhere. Now we just have to install x-times the global energy demand in production capacity and also the infrastructure to distribute it around the world and also make sure that this hyper centralized system is not used against us and then already we have a perfect solution without nuclear. Ez pz, no more CO2 in 500 years.
You don’t need to install X-amount of global demand. Battery/hydrogen storage can solve the issue as has been demonstrated repeatedly in various research. And with home battery solutions you can even fully decentralise it.
I don’t understand your centralisation argument, nuclear is about the most centralised power source there is. And it can be threatened, as seen in the current Ukraine-Russia war.
Solar and wind can scale up to the demand. Nuclear actually has a much harder time doing that, as materials are far more rare and expensive, and it takes much longer to build. If anything, the time argument works against nuclear, not in favour of it.
Hydrogen storage, you have got to be kidding me. It is abysmally inefficient and the same kind of FUD spread by the fossile industry.
Batteries are so extremely expensive that also has to be a joke. How much does a battery for a single day cost? Say, relative to the GDP?
Nuclear is far more local than solar and wind transfer in-between continents, obviously.
Batteries are becoming less expensive every day. The market doubles almost every year, which is impressively high-paced.
You also don’t need battery storage to last a day. Most places only need approx. 6 hours, with particularly sunny countries being able to get away with having only 4 hours.
You maybe also be confusing local generation with centralised power generation. Nuclear is local, but also extremely centralised. Solar/wind transfer is very decentralised, same goes for battery storage.
Hydrogen is in its infancy. The tech is promising but whether or not it will prove its worth is still to be seen.
There are about 2 weeks without sun and wind in the whole EU every once in a while (don’t remember, like every 3 years?). How are 6 hours supposed to help? How much would these only 6 hours of storage capacity cost (pick some country, perhaps not Norway or Iceland).
What’s your opinion on smaller scale power plants? It seems like a decent way to cut the costs and still get that extra power in those seasonal low power periods. Or do you think it’s not worth pursuing at all?
I’m in the US which is quite large. I’ve always though small scale power plants in conjunction with solar and wind would be good.
Especially since a lot of states turn the land surrounding the power plant into wildlife sanctuaries since nothing can be built in the safety zone anyway.
It’s like bird watching heaven at the power plant near me. I guess I just really like the idea of a power source that also incidentally protects forested areas.
SMRs (or small-scale nuclear plants in general) solve some problems with nuclear power. If you were to build a single design very often, the principles of economies at scale would apply and drive down costs.
I like the theory. But in practice there’s a couple problems that so far I’ve not seen addressed very often. First is the issue that not all costs of building a nuclear power plant can be brought down by simply having more of them. Particularly infrastructure costs can rise significantly, because instead of building one large plant with a connection to the grid, necessary buildings for operational control, infrastructure for the coolant water, roads, security etc… you have to build several instead, which multiplies the costs of these.
Then there’s the issue of personnel. You need people to operate and maintain the plant, security, management, etc… Per reactor you may need less people, but because you have so many reactors you end up needing more people overall. Most countries have a hard enough time as it is to get enough qualified staff, you’d also need to heavily invest in education for the next generation of nuclear engineers.
You also have these container-sized reactor concepts that basically promise to run themselves, requiring almost no maintenance other than the occasional refueling. But those are very much still in the concept-stage and also need to address the security issue. An unmanned container with nuclear fuel and expensive equipment inside could very well make a worthwhile target for criminals.
I like the utopian vision that nuclear promises but I worry the path to get there is full of pitfalls. I also don’t see the cost of nuclear coming down any time soon, and if we want to remain competitive in manufacturing for example, cheap energy is absolutely key.
Personally, I prefer investments in renewables and battery tech. Particularly battery tech I’m hopeful about. In theory there’s so much to gain still on that front, and it has the potential to improve so much other technology, from phones to drones to pacemakers to reliable, decentralised power. Nuclear tech is cool, but it only really promises to result in more nuclear power, rather than improvements in other areas as well. Fusion is interesting (and almost worth investing in just for the cool “it can be done”-factor) but at the same time still so far away. Too risky to rely on for now.
Especially since a lot of states turn the land surrounding the power plant into wildlife sanctuaries since nothing can be built in the safety zone anyway.
It’s like bird watching heaven at the power plant near me. I guess I just really like the idea of a power source that also incidentally protects forested areas.
Haha, I can see why that makes you more inclined to support nuclear! Though it does make me a little sad that in order to protect our forests and wildlife we first need to build a nuclear reactor next to it. Can’t we just designate them wildlife sanctuaries regardless of that power plant being there or not?
That was a wonderfully in depth explanation! Thank you! I have a lot to think about(in a good way)
I also wish we could have more wildlife sanctuaries without the power plants basically forcing them into existence, but I guess I’m at the point where I’ll take what we can get. However, I shouldn’t forget that we can do better too.
Hopefully we as a species can figure out our energy problems globally… and work together on it instead of fighting each other over which one is best.
Thank you again for your really informative answer! I really appreciate it!!
Hey thanks! I certainly don’t claim to know everything here, but I mostly dislike how the discourse regarding clean energy, nuclear etc… has… devolved so much. You always hear the same fairly boring catchphrases, arguments and rebuttals, but there’s genuine issues and questions that need all of us to come together and find the answers to. It’s developed its own little “politics” almost.
I hope we can breathe some new life into the discussions, as it’s a super-interesting problem to think about and I certainly hope we as a species find a solution.
In Finland they’ve been developing small scale reactors about the size of a shipping container but they’re not intented to produce electricity but instead just heat water and then push it into the district heating grid. This way the powerplant would also be much simplier to produce and maintain as well as safer due to the lower pressures and temperatures it operates at. Basically a nuclear powered kettle.
Look at the clean-up cost of Fukushima, it’s mental. Then look at the set-up costs, and how long it takes. Compare that to renewables.
Look at costs of dam failures. Or how many people they killed. Or look at the cost of climate change. Fukushima is nothing in comparison. You can also compare it to the cost of the tsunami that actually caused the issue to begin with.
What does the damage of the tsunami have to do with this?
Dams seem an awfully convenient thing to bring up since I didn’t mention them.
Because thousands died from it. How many died from the nuclear power? Ah about 0? 1? here the article about it 360 billion damage (vs <200 billion clean up) 20’000 dead (vs. 0 or 1) By 2015, 4 years after the flooding, still more displaced than Fukushima ever did!
Why should the “what about” about the power plant be do important but not the bigger disaster that caused it? Like who cares about 50’000 dollar cash that is lost when a house burns down and people die?
Why are you bringing up deaths of a tsunami and nuclear power? You’re very transparent; your straw man attempts are way too obvious.
Not that I want to disagree with you, but even without comparing to two of the biggest fuckups in human(energy) history nuclear energy is always much more expensive than renewable energy, because it needs a lot of safety mechanisms a much longer and more complicated supply chain, and then finally the costs of decontamination.
The toxic and deadly trash it makes. Deadly for centuries.
In Germany we still search for an area to dig for ages. We search since 30 years.
In the mean time, you seem to be a big fan of burning coal instead, which only pollutes the atmosphere instead of easily storable material to be buried when we feel we have found a sufficient deep hole that no one is going to look in.
If you look at the actual stats it isn’t really closed nuclear plants being replaced by coal, they got replaced by other renewables, while coal still kept going at about the same rate as while the nuclear plants were active.
Your entire argument is a fallacy of saying it is either nuclear or coal, when in reality it is either renewables or coal+nuclear.
It is the same companies that want to continue both coal and nuclear, because it requires similar components in the power plants and similar equipment for mining.
Also the same government in Germany that expanded the nuclear power slashed the build up of renewables, resulting in the long time for coal in the first place.
Stop being a fossil shill. If you shill for nuclear you shill for coal too.
Congrats you’ve fallen for oil company FUD from the 70s.
In what world is nuclear + renewables not a possibility. Nobody here is wanting nuclear + coal. You sit here and bitch and whine about fallacies while your entire argument relies entirely on a strawman.
Most nuclear waste issues are vastly over-exaggerated. Most of the nuclear waste is not long term waste. It’s not things like spent fuel rods, it’s things like safety equipment and gear. Those aren’t highly contaminated, and much of it can almost be thrown away in regular landfills. The middle range of materials are almost always kept on site through the entire life of the nuclear plant. Through the lifetime of the plant that material will naturally decay away and by the time the plant is decommissioned only a fraction will be left to handle storage for a while longer from the most recent years.
Nuclear waste can be divided into four different types:
- Very low-level waste: Waste suitable for near-surface landfills, requiring lower containment and isolation.
- Low-level waste: Waste needing robust containment for up to a few hundred years, suitable for disposal in engineered near-surface facilities.
- Intermediate-level waste: Waste that requires a greater degree of containment and isolation than that provided by near-surface disposal.
- High-level waste: Waste is disposed of in deep, stable geological formations, typically several hundred meters below the surface.
Despite safety concerns, high-level radioactive waste constitutes less than 0.25% of total radioactive waste reported to the IAEA.
These numbers are worldwide for the last 4 years:
I. Germany we haven’t found this sufficient deep hole since 30 years.
And yet, Germany prefers to pollute the atmosphere with the smoke of coal and other fossil rules, than to simply maintain the storage of nuclear waste until a hole can be found or created.
At least we‘re on a track to carbon zero as you can see here: https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
It‘s not perfect and could be faster. However, we‘re way better than other countries that don’t move.
Edit: I forgot to mention, that half the year Germanies power is over 50% from renewables. Share is increasing every year.
Still your corrupt politicians are rather taking people’s homes in a town i forgot (with police going there daily so people sell their homes) and clearing forests to mine coal… fucking stupid corrupt politicians.
Fukushima, Tchernobyl.
It’s been a while since I read about it, but iirc Chernobyl is suspected to have been sabotage because they turned all the safeties off and then basically walked away until it started melting down.
Fukushima was doomed from the start. Iirc they were told not to build the plant there due to extreme earthquake and tsunami risk, but they did it anyway.
Those two disasters were caused by stupidity and negligence. You can argue that humans can’t be trusted with radioactive materials, but the process itself is pretty safe. Meanwhile coal plants release significantly more radiation over their lifetimes than nuclear reactors do.
The nuclear energy made up about 1.5% of our entire energy production in 2023 the final shutdown didnt really made any difference, since we were able to replace this fairly easy with renewable energy. This year we had the lowest use of fossile energy since about 60 years(if I recall correct). Yes, we still use coal and this is bad, but the nuclear energy didnt had any noticeable difference for our energy production. Also: the shutdown of nuclear energy was planned after Fukushima happened, so its nothing that was anywhere in the power of our current government.
In Finland we have Onkalo
Yepp, that is the luck of geology.
Many active reactors rely on old designs, we have new ones now that are far cleaner. Some even use existing waste as fuel, so we would be able to get rid of those old stock piles.
Ofc the oil industry is fighting that tooth and nail since it doesn’t jive with their FUD campaign
Yeah and because those new designs are so great we see them installed all over the world. Except the projects take decades, skyrocket in costs and get delayed for decades on top.
Advocating for nuclear power now is in the best interest of the oil lobby. And it is simply impossible to solve the urgent energy transition with it, even if all the miracles promised about it were true.
Except the projects take decades, skyrocket in costs and get delayed for decades on top.
France is doing just fine with none of those issues.
The budget could increase by 70-90% compared to initial estimates, with commissioning delayed up to four to six years.
In France, the government plans to build six EPR – with a possibility of eight more – at an average cost of €52 billion. The first commissioning is scheduled for 2035.
However, according to Les Échos, the costs have already been revised upwards by 30%. When for a comment, EDF CEO Luc Rémont “would not confirm any figures.”
Except the projects take decades, skyrocket in costs and get delayed for decades on top.
You’re literally spreading oil lobby propaganda, the only reason it’s like that is because of excessive regulation and red tape lobbied for by the oil execs and citizen pushback due to their fear mongering campaign
Not only doesn’t it follow their FUD, but their existing business cannot easily transition to it since the entire process is completely different. Oil, coal, and natural gas are all fairly similar from their perspective.
The only thing I’m curious about in terms of using waste as energy source is how much it costs. If we can build reactors that have a good efficiency and don’t cost too much its great. However if it costs way to much it isn’t really useful even if the Idea of reducing our waste is good, since ain’t anyone is paying for it if you can much cheaper renewable energy.
People still buying into oil company FUD from the 70s
And when the sun and wind aren’t active?
People will point to a few hours of negative energy prices as if it’s a triumph, but it just proves that there’s still nowhere near enough storage for renewables to provide baseline power.
And when the sun and wind aren’t active?
That is a serious issue. Under the hood the power grid is being reengineered to solve it. Lot of battery storages, pump lakes, and may be hydrogen conversion. Still this is an open issue. I love to follow the discussion in blogs and podcasts.
They are not the only forms of electricity generation.
for renewables to provide baseline power.
I think what people always forget is, that water energy exists. It is a form of renewable energy that has the potential to provide baseline power, since it isn’t that dependent on short term weather. I think in Spain they have a water power plant that produces as much energy as several nuclear power plants together.
Indeed, that’s why Hydro assets are generally already used to the greatest possible extent. Nuclear is needed to supplement that baseline power. The problem is with Variable Renewable Energy (VRE) not renewables as a whole.
That’s why I added this, because it wasn’t specifically stated.
I know nuclear isn’t ideal but to rule it out completely while the alternative for stable baseline power is still coal and gas seems problematic to me
It’s not ruled out, Finland already has nuclear, it exists.
Yes indeed. Best is to move to renewables as fast as possible. This will make power very cheap in the middle run.
Storing solar and wind isnt cheap enough. The battery costs are outrageous, not to mention the thing you dont want: the materials Arent easy renewable. Nuclear can generate 30% of you base powerload while the rest is powered by solar and wind (that way you dont need coal of gas).
Storing electricity from wind/solar with hydrogen isnt efficiënt and would drive up energy prices just like with batteries
Shutting down their nuclear power plants is probably the worst thing the Germans have done.
Well maybe the second worst thing
Might want to think about this for a bit longer.
Renewables dipped below $0 for us in California too this year. Fortunately for the utilities, those savings don’t get passed along to customers and I still paid $0.53 kW/h. /s
Lucky you.
I still paid $0.53 kW/h.
That is surprisingly expensive, it’s more than here (Cambodia), which is notoriously high for the region at around 20c.
If you want people to use less energy this is the only way
Alternative: Create more energy, preferably renewable. Penalize heavy users only (raise costs). Incentivize (lower costs) those using renewables like solar panels. Raising costs for all is the laziest way.
In the case of PG&E, they have to pay for killing a bunch of people and burning down some towns, so they’re passing the expenses onto everyone else. Privatize the gains and socialize the losses baybeee. Gotta love state sanctioned monopolies.
Nah fam, here in Cali, you get charged extra for solar.
You’re charged a monthly fee to be able to sell your excess energy back to the grid. But you can’t opt out and disconnect from the grid, because CA regulations require all homes to be connected to the grid (probably for emergencies).
And pay pennies on the dollar for your excess energy.
I’ve heard that in fees alone, you still end up paying around $100/mo even if you’re breaking even on energy (excess sold during the day >= grid consumption at night).
Ohh, and it’s $0.53 / KwH during peak hours. Off-peak is $0.50, saving you a whopping 3 cents per kwh!
And then there’s super off peak at around $0.22 which is like 10pm-5am (might be off by an hour or two), which is only good to do like one load of laundry before bed, and charge an EV over night.
Good info, thanks. Generally, that’s what I would expect from any area owned by the oil and gas industry (and/or just exceptionally corrupt). Kind of surprised that California still doesn’t have more progressive energy policies. And allows PG&E to regularly embarrass the state.
Why /s there?
Also fuck PG&E. Fuck that company. Assholes.
A lot of that is the cost of transmission, which PG&E charges us out the ass for
It’s pretty common in the UK to get proper negative prices so it actually pays me to charge my car and run my AC. Octopus Agile tariff for example.
Why does it feel like every Nordic country is much better then Sweden these days.
The energy prices in Sweden were also mostly negative yesterday, and today as well. Although probably not quite as much as in Finland.
UK too.
Currently it’s gone back up to 7p (about half to normal price), but the solar has kicked in and I’m supplying power to the grid anyway.
Because we have been riding high on believing that our infrastructure is the best in the world.
Eeh? The price dipped to -70 öre in southern sweden today… And you should probably not use negative prices as a messurement of success anyways. :)
Because Sweden wants to be Nordic America these days.
And the current right wing government is looking closely at US republicans in particular
Try Norway. Our electric companies were sold to private investors who sold our electricity to the EU, and then they sold too much so they had to buy it back at exorbitant prices and the public is footing the bill for their dumbassery.
It’s not as bad as it was a year ago but it’s still about 15 times more expensive than it was just 4 years ago.We each have our problems but I have to admit that I haven’t heard many positive news coming from there recently.
This will hopefully lead to storage methods, maybe exportable ones like hydrogen
Hydrogen is not good for energy storage. Round trip efficiency is abysmal and its incredibly difficult to store in the first place
Of course not, hydrogen is pathetic compared to batteries and similar stored mass energy solutions, but hydrogen does have its place, the future should be a mixture of different solutions because many methods have their advantages and disadvantages, but having a mixture means we can apply the best solution to the viable problems. Let’s take transportation, you have a truck that earns money by travelling. If we want to transition away from fossil fuel, hydrogen makes sense over batteries that takes an hour to multiple hours to charge and the weight of the batteries reduce the overall payload of the truck.
There are two solutions to trucks:
- Better batteries
- Trains
The first will almost certainly happen in the next few years. Batteries have been improving kwh/kg at 5-8% per year. There are still enough lab research projects making their way into actual manufactured batteries that we expect this to continue for a while longer. It’s been at the higher end of the range for the last few years. That growth compounds every year; at 8%, you’ve more than doubled capacity in 10 years. Which is about where trucks would need to be.
How much would you want to invest in a parallel set of hydrogen infrastructure and trucks when batteries are likely to overtake them in a few years?
The better solution is to replace most long haul trucking with trains. If the trains kept running on diesel, it’d still be a huge win. Even better is electrified overhead wires, but diesel will do fine if we have to.
The US commercial train system has deliberately avoided competing with most long haul trucking for decades. It doesn’t have to be that way, and the investment needed may not be that much.
As far as grid storage goes, we have flow batteries, pumped hydro, flywheels, heating up sand, or sodium batteries. They all have advantages and disadvantages, but hydrogen doesn’t have much of a niche.
The first will almost certainly happen in the next few years. Batteries have been improving kwh/kg at 5-8% per year. There are still enough lab research projects making their way into actual manufactured batteries that we expect this to continue for a while longer. It’s been at the higher end of the range for the last few years. That growth compounds every year; at 8%, you’ve more than doubled capacity in 10 years. Which is about where trucks would need to be.
we’re also moving away from wet lithium cell tech and into solid state tech, as well as other non rare metals based technologies, though those are all in the very super alpha states (except for solid state lithium cells)
nickel hydrogen might become something interesting if a company picks it up. Cheap and relatively reliable, though unconventional.
also flywheel energy storage is almost exclusively used for frequency stabilization of the grids, as opposed to actually storing energy. It mechanically couples a source of inertia to the frequency, which in an all renewable grid, is required to some degree.
Don’t store it in diatomic form. Ammonia is the common alternative for hydrogen storage and transport, iirc
And even if round trip efficiency is poor, if renewables are in excess, it would be so much better to dump that energy into something that to have to curtail.
There’s no shortage of solutions better than hydrogen for storing grid energy.
There were niches where hydrogen might have made sense 10 years ago. Other solutions have gotten better and better–not just lithium batteries, either–and it’s gotten squeezed out. There’s still a few where it might, like trucks and planes, but even those seem to getting overtaken by better tech elsewhere.
Any significant investment in hydrogen infrastructure is likely to be overtaken before it can see a return on investment.
You just sent me down a rabbit hole, I had heard of electrolysis but didn’t realize that it was able to store energy on a large scale. Seems like a waste of water though.
Well the water isn’t disappearing anywhere and I believe that works on salt water as well
How is it not disappearing if it’s turned into hydrogen?
Hydrogen reaction to oxygen in a fuel cell turns it back into water
So no water is lost?
Yes, basically. Enegy is used on H2O gets split and turned into H2 and O2, the H2 then in the fuel cell gets to react again with O2 to produce energy, less than what was used to split it, why it is inefficient, and now stable H20
That’s right!
Two H2 molecules (hydrogen) react with one O2 molecule (oxygen) to become two H2O molecules (water)
If I had to guess, it’s a temporary influx of “renewable” energy ( read solar nuclear energy as pretty much everything on earth including coal / water and so on ). You can’t copy this into other countries. Both Scandinavian and alpine countries have abundance of water and wind energy
You can absolutely copy this. Just build solar where there’s no wind.
No, you can’t. You can’t get the same of solar energy in Nordic countries as in Sahara desert. It’s simple, you can’t. Totally different ratio of solar energy per square meter by ranges making it in north Scandinavia virtually unusable
This post is about Finland. If fucking Finland has too much energy, then Sahara has too much energy for sure
You missed the point entirely. Finland has little to none solar energy. They have only wind and water energy. Same with most Nordic, Baltic and northern Poland. There is not enough solar energy provided by sun to make it affordable ( whole life cycle including utilization costs )
I live in Finland. Can confirm we have solar energy. It’s extremely useful considering that in the summer we have near 24 hours of sunlight.
And in winter reverse. How much do you get from solar during the summer season ( north region or close to polar circle) ?
By not putting the solar farms in Rovaniemi?
They’re in Uusimaa region, which still gets some sunlight in winter. Either way, they produce massive amounts of energy in the Summer, and in the winter we use the nuclear reactors more.
There is not enough solar energy provided by sun to make it affordable
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Typical per capita electricity consumption in developed economies is 6–12 megawatt-hours (MWh) per person [4]. This may double to around 20 MWh per capita [5] to accommodate electrification of most energy functions.
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The power and area of solar panels required to supply 20 MWh of electricity per capita per annum are 14 kilowatts (kW) and 70 m2, respectively, assuming an average capacity factor of 16% [7] and an array solar conversion efficiency of 20%.
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For ten billion people, this amounts to 140 TW and 0.7 million km2, respectively. This can be compared with the global land surface area of 150 million km2 and the area devoted to agriculture of 50 million km2 [8].
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The simple calculation above shows that the world has sufficient land area to provide energy from solar PV for ten billion affluent people.
https://www.mdpi.com/2673-9941/3/3/23
TL; DR; full solar electrification with current technology for 10 billion affluent people is possible if we dedicated less than 2% of the real estate currently in use by global agriculture to electricity production
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You see, “Other countries” includes the rest of the world. You build whatever fits the country, be it wind or solar or hydro. I don’t understand what you’re saying.
If you don’t know what energy output per meter is, total output and total cost of solar panel ownership, how it varies across geography in relation to equator, the fact there is no cheap way to store it (or you have to use it somehow in that very moment), it means it’s pointless to talk any further. Simple physics. It doesn’t matter though whether if it is solar, wind or water
You’re making zero sense. What is your argument I don’t even get it.
It’s simply supply exceeding demand. Finland has so much wind turbines that when it’s summer time (no need for heating) and windy then the price drops to zero but then again in the winter time when it’s cold and calm the opposite is true and we can see insane spikes in the price.
This also happened in Spain a few months ago, though. Which have drastically different climate and landscape to Scandinavian countries.
Maybe, but Spain has an huge sea shoreline. Sea breeze could be here an advantage for Spain
You can’t copy this into other countries.
I’m currently paying $.20/kWh on a Texas grid that is heavily based on natural gas, despite being ripe for a solar/wind boom.
If you could cut my bill in half, particularly during the summer when my AC usage explodes, that would be much appreciated.
Yes, solar energy is tempting but the “advertised prices” and “cost savings” are mostly overstretched. Right now a lot of “renewable energy” sources are subsidized in Europe for only political reasons. Subsidies for solar installations are now gone but still you don’t have to have costs of utilization. You will have them in 15 - 25 years for sure and then you will be able to make a proper assessment. Regarding Texas, I think solar energy could be profitable but for sure in Alaska it won’t be. Still you need to do correct calculations and check what’s the outcome of that installation would be. EU “green energy” savings analysis is just misleading. Germany, the main political proponent of the green deal is the best case for this. Energy prices are only going up and up after ditching atom energy. Russian “green” gas won’t save them
Right now a lot of “renewable energy” sources are subsidized in Europe for only political reasons.
I can assure you the same is true for fossil fuels in Texas right now, so I don’t see how this is a strike on renewable energy
I heard only shale gas but good to know about oil. As far as I know, USA is not one of the main oil exporters, mostly middle east countries, especially of Arab peninsula. Venezuela, Iran, too but they are under sanctions. American oil / gas, please, correct me if I am wrong serves mostly as strategic reserves so it may be that USA that it’s better for Texas to use solar energy. However, most of calculations don’t track the whole lifecycle of solar panels and their environment conditions - I mean whole energy produced for the solar panels lifespan (15 - 25 years) minus the costs of production and utilization. The analysis needs to be done per each case not mandated for all because it doesn’t make sense with the total costs adjusted like in Poland. I know many owners of solar panels in Poland and it’s not that ‘rosy’ with the solar energy savings
To be honest, I’m struggling to keep track of the points you are making because you brought in several tangential topics all at once without much context (shale gas vs. oil, oil exports, LCOE, Poland all in a thread about solar energy in Finland compared to fossil fuel energy in Texas). I’ll just point out that the US is #4 in oil exports, by either barrels or export value (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_exports) and the number one oil producer (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production), so I think it is pretty obvious that the investments into fossil fuel infrastructure in the US are well and above what is necessary for a “strategic reserve” use case
It brought it up because I know that most these analysis are just misleading at best. Once again, I know exact numbers for Poland and these are very, very poor. It’s beyond my surprise that somebody says that in Finland where they have polar days and nights and almost in arctic circle (the strongest sun radiation is on equator), its energy effectiveness balance could be positive. Nobody has provided numbers so far
Here: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/12/07/finlands-gold-rush-navigating-the-solar-landscape/
While Finland has made commendable progress in solar development, the government has recently decided to halt subsidies for solar projects. Backing will instead be allocated to hydrogen projects.
We shall see only then how the solar panels market develops without subsidies. It can’t be done without energy storage which will be beyond expensive (which is the most cases for now) and power networks / providers don’t want to buy the energy back. That’s the current state in Poland - I know, my father has solar panels
People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.
Resistive load. Gotta dump excess energy somewhere.
My electric company here in the us mines bitcoin with it and charges us a “peak time incentive” pricing model.
Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to be born somewhere like Finland.
Your face would hurt from smiling all the time. Sounds awful.
Colder and darker for sure
Only for half a year. The other half is colder and brighter!
Can I get a link to this that sounds so fucked
Luckily my energy company found a way around all of this to always charge more! We have “Basic Customer Charge”, “Summary of Rider Adjustments”, “Renewable Energy Rider”, and then Sales Tax on all of it. My base charge is over 100$ before they start calculating your actually energy usage. Yay electrical monopolies!
Following the massive rate spikes during the Texas ice storms which were somehow legal, we get a couple hundred dollars added to our bill ever month for like a century. Even if you have solar and have net-negative electricity use you have to pay the fee for being connected to the grid.
And you have to be connected to the grid to have a certificate of occupancy. Otherwise we’d just have solar and a backup generator.
Such good freedom though
It might be cheap now, but I’m fearing the December - February i.e. the coldest part of the year when the price can get salty. Especially when/if the OL3 (or any other) plant trips offline, the price will bump up a lot.
The good part of having excess eletricity is that doing a “electric-kettle” district heating becomes feasible. So instead of reducing the (windmill) production, it makes sense to dump the excess generation capacity into district-heating. (which has large capacity to store the heat)
When you get energy that cheap you can always spin a few Bitcoin miners up. The rewards you get are rewards the other miners on fossil fuels won’t get
Or I could just ignore crypto, and not contribute to the heat death of the planet.
Sure, so you will have people turning on useless heaters outside
Big picture, you’re encouraging people to use this fake money by taking part in it. And it usually uses a lot of energy to do it.
Yeah, I’m sure you use exclusively gold and silver coins to pay your groceries. Of course you wouldn’t use fake money. As a reminder, this post is about excess energy
So which crypto do you use at the grocery store?
If nobody wanted to use crypto, energy usage (excess or otherwise) wouldn’t be an issue.
I use bank euros, which are fake euros, which are fake gold. Bitcoin’s energy consumption has never been an issue. It is only worth mining Bitcoin when demand on your local grid is low
Bitcoin alone accounts about half a percent of the world’s electricity usage. Even if “demand on your local grid is low”, that doesn’t mean supply of renewables alone is necessarily high, especially if that happens overnight when solar output is low and a fossil plant is keeping things running. In that case we could have just as easily, you know… Not feed a ponzi scheme.
PS: if you think an arbitrary metal would have solved the world’s economic problems if only we stuck with it, I’ve got bad news for ya.
Does it ever make you want to turn on every appliance in the house just for the hell of it? Lol
No, since we pay a flat transfer rate on top of that, about 2-6 cents per kWh depending on the area.
Of course, that doesn’t stop idiots from turning on all their stoves during these times anyway.
Interesting. In the UK we have a fixed standing charge per day (about 45p), so when the price goes negative it is in your interest to use as much as you can. The most negative I’ve seen is -10p/kWh, but most of the time it’s fractions of a penny.
That’s still pretty cheap though
Yeah in summer the electricity here can be very cheap in summer but in winter it can go to 0.20-1€/kw/h
This is not a good thing. Any time generation has to pay to produce, solar and wind rollouts are slowed.
We need better demand shaping methods, to increase load on grids during periods of excess production, and decrease loads during shortages. We need to stabilize rates at profitable points to maintain growth of green energy projects.
We also need long-term grid storage methods, to reduce seasonal variation. A given solar project will produce more than twice as much power during a long summer day as it will during a short winter day. If we build enough solar to meet our needs during October and March, we will have shortages in November, January, February, and surpluses from April through September. We will need some sort of thermal production capability anyway; hydrogen electrolysis or Fischer-Tropsch synfuel production can soak up that surplus generation capacity and produce green, carbon-free or carbon-neutral, storable fuels for thermal generation and/or the transportation sector.
Or just export it - there must be nearby counties that don’t have such a good renewable electric situation.
“just export it” sounds so simple, but the required infrastructure is actually incredibly expensive. Also most of Europe is already pretty tightly connected and trade does happen to a significant degree, but I have no idea what the actual percentage is or if it’s used to balance oversupply and/or shortages. Kinda hard to find reliable sources for that.
Luckily, several interconnects already exist and more are planned.
As to percentages, most electric grids will publish those - for example FinGrid’s current status - the price today has apparently gone down to -5.5.
and who will you sell it to? the other countries will be building their own infrastructure eventually and they’ll be trying to sell to you.
You sell it to places with different weather conditions (or as noted, to places with storage capacity) - and if everyone in the grid becomes as successful as Finland, well “good job done!”
Or water batteries for dams if your neighbors don’t need your surplus, this way you don’t need to extract lithium to produce regular batteries to store the surplus
https://www.science.org/content/article/how-giant-water-batteries-could-make-green-power-reliable
Lithium isn’t going to be the way to store electricity on the grid. I wish people would stop bringing it up.
There isn’t going to be a single thing. Pumped hydro, flywheels, sodium-ion, flow batteries, and heating up sand all have a place.
In a region like Finland, sand batteries appear to be worthwhile for seasonal storage. Might be an avenue to pursue
Then there’s always green hydrogen as well
When I was growing up, my parents house had thermal storage electrical heating. Generally the heat was only “on” at night when electricity was cheap, then we’d control the temperature during the day with circulation fans. I remember it working really well while saving a ton of money.
Where is the thermal storage heating now? I specifically could use a mini-split heat pump, where the head unit is thermal storage, but I don’t see any such thing online
thermal storage is kind of complicated and sucks a little bit, probably.
You can still do the heating thing, using your home as a thermal battery for example. You could also put a large thermal mass within your home, thousands of gallons of water (for example) directly integrating a thermal battery and optimally using it probably just isn’t as viable as not worrying about it and doing something else.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, or the complexity is related to the use case. Does not need water or moving parts.
Consider a single radiator in a house. You only need storage sufficient to use that radiator for one day. And it doesn’t matter too much if it can’t cover extreme temperatures, as long as it is sufficient to cover peak prices most of the time
I finally found one. Why aren’t there choices like
Edit to circle back to the goal: now I can move toward cleaner energy by electrifying my house. I can save energy/money by using the most efficient heating technology. If there was thermal storage, I could save even more money with “time of use” metering and the utility can shift their load to make up for the peakiness of sources like solar. If I installed solar on my roof, I could potentially heat my house entirely with “free” energy
yeah, but if you’re not doing it in a complicated manner you could just stick an IBC tote full of water in the middle of your home and it would provide a similar effect.
Personally i would probably just install a ground loop, and then use that to provide a source for heating and cooling, it’s also very consistent year round, though if you live in an area of deep frost lines, or permafrost, it’s probably going to be more exciting.
Unfortunately a ground loop can be expensive, especially for those of us in urban areas.
I read an analysis once that you could never make back the cost on energy saved. Whether or not that’s always true, I know I live in a high cost area with a yard that a drill couldn’t get to, cris-crossed with 80 years of utilities.
Generally the heat was only “on” at night when electricity was cheap
That is exactly why rates are going negative during the day now. Baseload generation benefits from artificial increases in the base, off-peak load. With solar and wind generation increasing, we now have a need to reduce that base, overnight load, and increase peak, daytime load.
At risk of starting a whole new fight, this is why hybridizing renewables with nuclear doesn’t work. They don’t cover for each other’s faults very well.
ok so, solar, naturally produces the most power during the daytime, when the sun is up, which in places where it’s warm is when you get the most significant energy bump due to AC and what not. There is also a bit of a trailing period in the evening where people get back from work and cook dinner/relax and whatever. But that’s not super far off from noon peaking in the grand scheme.
Nuclear plants are baseload, so they produce 100% power output for 100% of the time they exist (at least in an ideal world) usually they have a capacity factor of about 80-90% though i’ve seen plants go past 100% before. This load is super useful for leveling out the power demand overnight, as well as shortening the day time peak loading a little bit. As well as providing a very consistent and regular source of power than can be used for things like hydro storage, and battery charging for example. So paired with a large thermal battery a nuclear plant might even be able to adapt to the midday loading cycle pretty functionally, as it can recoup most of it’s lost energy over the night, through the baseload averaging out.
Nuclear plants are actually really well suited to be used with a thermal battery solution (given that they output thermal power, obviously) It’s more common for modern plant designs to integrate thermal battery technology to some degree, but those are all gen IV designs, so they don’t exist yet.
As for wind, i’m not sure what the effects on it during the day/night cycle is, but i imagine during the day they generally produce more power, though they will also produce some power over night. So those are a relatively low yield but high regularity power source, similar to nuclear, however you have much greater control over them as you can change the blade pitch during rotation in order to increase/decrease output as needed. Though ideally you would always be outputting, as often as possible.
Even in the event that you have a total grid blackout, nuclear plants are a potential source of blackstart power sources, though presumably it’s not nearly as big of a deal in a solar plant for example. It’s unclear how much those rely on being secondary producers, or how well they can function as primary producers to me. Presumably it will be dealt with at some point if it hasn’t been already.
Ignoring the paragraphs of mansplaining about how nuclear works . . .
As for wind, i’m not sure what the effects on it during the day/night cycle is, but i imagine during the day they generally produce more power, though they will also produce some power over night.
Wind speed at 100m tends to drop in the late afternoon and pick up during the night. See page 49 here:
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy15osti/61740.pdf
Even in the event that you have a total grid blackout, nuclear plants are a potential source of blackstart power sources
What? No. Much of the Ercot failure in Texas to deal with the 2021 winter weather was nuclear plants being knocked offline.
Nuclear isn’t particularly good for leveling the daily demand curve, no.
But, it can be very useful for leveling the seasonal variation. Slowly ramping up nuclear production to make up for the short winter days of December, January, February. Slowly rolling it back for the long summer days of June, July, August.
Nuclear is also an excellent option for meeting overnight demand.
But you’re right: it is terrible for making up for inclement weather, and other short-term variation. We will continue to require short- and medium-term storage. We will continue to need peaker plants, although we will hopefully be able to fire them with hydrogen instead of carbon-based fuels.
ok just so we’re clear here, you wouldnt ramp up or down nuclear power output, unless you’re doing maintenance. It’s at or near 100% power output, always. Most plants sit at a capacity factor of about 80-90%
You would however, ramp down wind turbines, or dump solar, or even store that solar since you’re in a peaking cycle.
Solar and wind are cheaper and potentially more plentiful, more distributed than nuclear. Renewables are going to be the primary source of power; nuclear and every other type of generation will augment the renewables.
What you’re saying is what nuclear has been, not what it will be.
potentially, that’s always an option, but unlike something like oil where it’s a generic concept, energy is kind of an ethereal concept. I see it much more likely that if nuclear plants get sufficient development time and funds, that they will pair nicely with renewables as you can buy the electricity wholesale at price, but the versatility of the pricing will offset the increased cost as you can subsidize it using cheaper renewables.
Allowing you to minimize energy storage and some amount of renewable production as well.
I wouldn’t be surprised if grids ended up using solar primarily for day time production consumption and short time storage (evening consumption time) and then used nuclear as the primary producer for power consumption over night, along with wind somewhere in the mix. But this would require nuclear power to be built in the first place.
The trouble with that kind of variation is that the economics of nuclear don’t make much sense. Nuclear is a large up front investment with (relatively) low marginal cost. If it’s running at a low level for half the year, then it can’t make back that huge initial investment in its expected lifetime.
We are currently charging very low overnight rates because we need to increase night time load on nuclear. With solar and wind being cheaper, grid operators are going to want to drive consumers to daytime consumption wherever possible. Night time rates are going to naturally increase, and I would expect artificial incentives on top of that to drive as much consumption as possible to the day, especially to clear, windy days.
The alternatives to nuclear are pumped storage, (which isn’t sufficiently scalable); traditional baseload generation (which is significantly more expensive); and various forms of peaker plants (which are much more expensive).
Basically, overnight and winter rates are going to rise to wherever nuclear needs them to be to remain profitable, because every other option has either limited feasibility, or higher costs.
You left out a large number of storage options. There’s plenty out there. Not every one is going to work for everything, but there’s almost always something that’s going to work.
But, it can be very useful for leveling the seasonal variation.
Which isn’t actually necessary. Winter has less sunlight, but also more wind.
We can be smart about this. We have weather data for given regions stretching back decades, if not more than a century. We can calculate the mix of power we’d get from both wind and solar. There will be periods where both are in a lull. Looking again at historical data, we can find the maximum lull there ever was and put enough storage capacity to cover that with generous padding.
And then you just don’t need nuclear at all. Might as well keep what we have, but no reason to build new ones.
Looking again at historical data, we can find the maximum lull there ever was and put enough storage capacity to cover that with generous padding.
Baseload storage is a pipe dream. The storage and generation capacity necessary to make that work would be about two orders of magnitude more expensive to maintain and operate than the equivalent nuclear capacity, and the environmental impact would be far greater still.
That’s not to say that storage is useless; it certainly isn’t. But its utility is in leveling spikes and dips, not replacing baseload generation during a “lull”.
That’s simply not true. This has been well studied, and a 100% renewable + storage option is quite feasible. It’s even easier if you focus on going 95% first (that last 5% gets much, much harder).
Let me rephrase: “ the heat was only “on” … when electricity was cheap” which at the time was overnight. That was 1970’s tech so basically a mechanical timer, but the timer could be set to whenever, plus surely current technology could be used for a smarter solution
I read about a, Finnish?, project whete they heated up sand, but in large silos in IDK 500°C or more. Could sit there for months apparently.
Yeah, I’m sure the solution would require both large scale storage and point of use storage
Technology Connections has been arguing to just use the air in your house for this purpose - e.g. running air conditioning only at night, or allowing the power company to run it in advance of peak demand.
I got this, works decently for a short period.
My smart thermostat allows me to opt in to a program where the power company can adjust the AC during peak periods, and I get an annual bonus on my bill. It does actually precook the house: sets the temp down two degrees for a bit, before peak where it sets the temp up two degrees.
However my house isn’t sufficiently weatherproofed: their changes can be 2-3 hours but the pre-cooling doesn’t help for that long
Thermal storage needs to be quite large though, at least with the stone/brick like mass they used back then. And you need to isolate it, otherwise you have no control over the release of that stored heat. I wonder if new materials, maybe something that undergoes phase change in that temperature range, could be a lot more space efficient.
or you know, we could subsidize spending some of this excess power on something like “folding at home” except its actually in a government datacenter subsidizing power production peaking.
Although that’s like, really boring.
Negative pricing IS a demand shaping method, you need to have a certain % of the electricity produced that is consumed at the same time, otherwise you risk having an unstable electricity grid.
Variable pricing is a demand shaping method. Negative rates are an indication of insufficient flexibility to adequately shape demand. If we were able to adequately shape demand to match available supply, rates would fluctuate, but they would never go negative.
If we were able to adequately shape demand to match available supply, rates would fluctuate, but they would never go negative.
I don’t see why that would follow.
If supply is higher than demand, then getting rid of that excess supply costs money, and the producer might have to pay someone to take it away. It applies to grocery stores that over order inventory of perishable goods, to oil companies that run out of space to store oil, and electricity grids that need to get rid of damaging/dangerous excess power.
If supply is higher than demand, then getting rid of that excess supply costs money, and the producer might have to pay someone to take it away
That is all absolutely correct, and that is all completely irrelevant. That scenario only exists after shaping efforts have failed to match supply and demand.
The purpose and intent is to sell power at a profit. Where demand cannot be increased enough for rates to remain profitable, demand shaping has not achieved its intended purpose. Negative rates are not an example of demand shaping. Negative rates are an indication that demand shaping has failed.
It applies to grocery stores that over order inventory of perishable goods
The dumpster behind the grocery store is “disposal”, not “demand”. The solution to negative rates is not for the power companies to find a dumpster in which to dispose of their excess power.
The supply shaping solution to this problem is reduced solar and wind production, augmented by flexible peaker plants, and drawing on previously stored grid power.
The demand shaping solution to this problem is flexible loads that can be added or removed from the grid as needed, and storing grid power for future use.
I don’t know why you’re framing this as solely a demand problem, or why you think the elasticity of demand won’t extend to negative prices. Negative prices tend to show up only during periods of very high supply, due to a confluence of factors like weather, so supply is part of it (low or even negative prices can induce producers to curtail production). There’s nothing special about the number zero.
And negative prices therefore take the place of disposal: oversupply and the need to expand real resources taking that energy off of the grid in that particular moment. That’s demand, too: incentivizing people to do what needs to be done, and get rid of that excess energy by disposing it or whatever.
