Sweden Rejects a New Electrical Interconnection With Germany (enerdata.net) 103
sonlas writes: Germany's energy transition plan includes extensive interconnection projects to distribute its intermittent renewable energy production. However, these projects face significant challenges. The latest example is Sweden. One such project, Hansa PowerBridge, announced in 2017, intended to link Germany and Sweden via a 300 km HVDC line through the Baltic Sea. This 700 MW project, estimated at 600 million euro, aimed to stabilize Germany's volatile electricity prices. However, on June 14, 2024, Sweden rejected the project, citing incompatibility between the countries' electricity systems. The connection would link northern Germany to southern Sweden, an area with insufficient infrastructure. Concerns also arose about the volatile German market disrupting Sweden's and increasing local prices. Energy Minister Ebba Busch justified this decision by saying the German market is currently not efficient enough and a connection would risk leading to higher prices and a more unstable electricity market in southern Sweden.
This highlights the difficulty Germany faces with its Energiewende, or energy transition model. This model leads to erratic electricity price behaviors and significant challenges in balancing production capacities. While a possible solution for Germany lies in interconnection with neighboring countries, the examples of Norway (which cancelled the NorGer project too) and Sweden show that from the perspective of these neighbors, it looks more like an "export of German problems" rather than a solution.
This highlights the difficulty Germany faces with its Energiewende, or energy transition model. This model leads to erratic electricity price behaviors and significant challenges in balancing production capacities. While a possible solution for Germany lies in interconnection with neighboring countries, the examples of Norway (which cancelled the NorGer project too) and Sweden show that from the perspective of these neighbors, it looks more like an "export of German problems" rather than a solution.
That's the nature of sharing (Score:2)
One party is always helping the other for the longer term benefit of both.
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There's no benefit to Sweden, plus Germany could just turn the nuclear plants back on and solve this issue tomorrow. Their choice.
Re: That's the nature of sharing (Score:2)
Maybe angle of sphere can build a connection using his broad array of linked lists.
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>> just turn the nuclear plants back on
There's a surplus of energy, so why would that solve anything.
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There's a surplus of energy, so why would that solve anything.
Then they could get an interconnection to Sweden approved to sell their excess, making money in the process.
Sweden thought Germany would be a threat to their own grid because their production is unreliable due to their over reliance on renewable energy so they didn't want the interconnection since that could mean Sweden's problem of being a bit short on power would only get worse with Germany involved. If Germany had reliable supplies, and a true excess of electricity production, then the interconnection w
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>> Sweden believes
You're just making all that up. What Sweden actually said was;
"The German power market doesn't function in a way that gives correct price signals to power market players, mainly because Germany, unlike Sweden, isn't divided into electricity areas in a way that corresponds to the significant bottlenecks,"
This makes little sense. Why should it matter to Sweden what "electricity areas" there are in Germany? Germany is a single power market zone, with a unified wholesale price.
Re:That's the nature of sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
there is a surplus of energy, on the whole of the year, sure, but energy generation / consumption is measured in real time.
unless germany builds a battery that would be able to store the energy overproduction so that it can give it back over a period of 2 months, it won't work
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Or alternatively Germany does demand shaping with price signals.
That's the core of the problem here. Sweden doesn't want volatile pricing, it wants to limit supply so that the sale price is more stable. It's not particularly cheap either.
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Or alternatively Germany does demand shaping with price signals.
This is a funny way to say browouts and shattered industrial production.
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>> it wants to limit supply so that the sale price is more stable
Swedish grid operators said "imports from Germany would contribute to a more secure electricity supply in southern Sweden" and they were in favor of it.
> It's not particularly cheap either
And you know this how?
Re: That's the nature of sharing (Score:2)
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that's a 1T€ investment or so.
Germany has a project to strenghen their transport grid all over the country, which would cost 500G€...
one brand new nuclear reactor is 20G€.
their choice
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Germany has a project to strenghen their transport grid all over the country, which would cost 500G€...
Which the Greens still protest against every chance they get. Good luck keeping that project within projected cost.
Re:That's the nature of sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
They had nuclear plants. They decided to close them down ad go full solar/wind only as part of their Energiewende (energy transition). In order for their Energiewende to work, Germany pushed for interconnections with their northern neighbors (Norway, Sweden ...), so that they can solve the problem of intermittency they now have, which results in an unstable electricity market.
What actually does an interconnect to Sweden have to do with nukes anyway?
GIven the explanation above, this is pretty simple, and it was actually explained in the summary if you had bothered to read: nuclear plants in Germany would help make their market more efficient/stable, and thus more desirable for Sweden. Currently, Sweden doesn't want to import Germany's problems.
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Erm, so if Germany had nukes the Swedes would agree to build an interconnect?
if Germany had a more efficient electric grid, with less price volatility and less intermittency, Sweden would agree to build an interconnect.
Nuclear plants can help do that, and actually pair well with solar/wind, as shown in various countries, including France and, ironically, Sweden.
Sorry, you lost me somewhere in the middle part.
No worries, Getting lost seems to be an habit for you.
The idea of an interconnect is to deliver excess power to Sweden and store it in pumped storage plants.
No. That was not the idea. Sweden doesn't need excess power from Germany. Germany, on the other hand, needs power from Sweden to stabilize its electric grid, and do as if
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Take your pills, my friend.
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The German government owns nothing in the energy market. You mean the "state" perhaps. What they own are shares, but no plant and they do not own an energy company fully.
The power plants are NOT fully owned by Uniper. They own one fully, and two partly. During the Russian Gas crisis, the German State bought a relatively big stake of shares of Uniper, that is right. However the main share holder of Uniper is E.ON, and E.ON is/was also the owner of the nukes in Germany.
No idea what point you want to make.
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Germany can't turn the nuclear plants back on. They are old and worn out, and in need of very expensive repairs and monitoring. The reactor vessels are cracking and need very careful, regular inspections to try to catch expansion of those cracks before they become critical. Even if they did it, the reactors could be forced offline with little warning.
Besides, if Germany wants nuclear power they can buy it from their friends in neighbouring France. The French are desperate to sell it to them, because their n
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Re:That's the nature of sharing (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed. The problems are to a quite great extent solvable with renewables, for a price. The lack of cold starting can be addressed with grid forming inverters. The lack of inertia and short term stability can be solved with synchronous condensers. And the weather problem can be solved with a mix of storage, massively increased long distance grid capacity and responsive loads.
All solvable, none of it for free. I wouldn't quite say it's externalized because as the fraction rises the attendant price will start to bite. The grid operators will start paying for stabilization services, which may include thermal power plants, and the prices will go on the bill ultimately.
Also WTF is with all the ragging on France. Since the 1970s France has dumped vastly less CO2 into the atmosphere and killed and maimed vastly fewer people from pollution from electricity generation than all of its peers. Sure it was "expensive", but that's because everyone else externalized the costs.
The people promoting the environmental choice bloody well ought to know this. From an environmenal perspective, France's record here is way better than the one of whichever high horse they're riding.
But oh no! Nookular.
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'Balancing' services would make sense, but who would pay for them? Network operators? This is still renewable o
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The problem is that if external costs are not addressed, those 'freeriding' solutions can price out and force to shut down everything else causing even worse problems down the line.
Indeed and for the claims that Sweden is afraid of becoming less competitive as Germany greens its grid, well it's already about 10x better than Germany in terms of CO2/TWh, so free-marketizing them and having "costly" plants shut down will likely make Sweden a worse CO2 emitter.
'Balancing' services would make sense, but who wo
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My heresy is loosely claiming that had all developed countries walked the path of France, we'd be in the state of 2005, climate wise.
Perhaps some here are just too deep into a German bubble? Perhaps the
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Volatile prices are not external costs. It is like every other market also works.
Also despite all nuclear fans on slashdot endlessly repeating how Germany's energy transition is a huge failure, it actually works quite well. Germany has a stable grid with no issues (despite constant predictions of such from nuclear fans on this site since at least a decade that there will be blackouts). Production from coal and lignite is at a historical low in 2023 (128 TWh vs. 263 TWh in 2010) . Electricity production wit
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Re:That's the nature of sharing (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no benefit to Sweden.
Well apart from
Apart from that, what have the Romans done for us?
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the chance to play a part in saving humaninity from global warming
Germany: 381g OC2/kWh
Sweden: 41
I think Sweden is already doing it's bit, more so than Germany for sure.
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That's precisely the point. It's not just the amount of CO2 per KWh, it's also the absolute quantity. Sweden should be buying electricity from Norway, which should in turn be buying it in mass quantities from Scotland. Germany should be charged through the nose, but the Swedes should sell them grid stability. At a price. I'm happy with the Germans paying for their failure to build North-South connectivity.
Re:That's the nature of sharing (Score:4, Insightful)
However what Merkel did later was criminal.
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Nuclear isn't cheap and the more it runs less efficiently (reducing power output because the grid doesn't need it), the more expensive it is.
Do you know what is even more expensive? Industry shutting down because renewables happen to not produce any power right now and combined battery storage of the whole country probably would not last more than 10 minutes at full power. Yes, nuclear is not cheap, but unless you have specific natural advantages (ability to deploy large scale hydro or geothermal), you have the choice of cheap, clean or reliable - pick any two. In the end, having too much energy is infinitely better problem to have than too litt
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Trade usually benefits both sides. Norwegian electricity companies must then make a lot of profit, which should overall benefit the economy in Norway. If the higher prices hit Norwegian households too much, this could certainly be fixed in different ways, e.g. with tax breaks, which should still be cheaper than not having the interconnection.
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One party is always helping the other for the longer term benefit of both.
Works entirely differently when there are lots of parties though.
Hmmmm (Score:2)
If only there was some dependable energy source. One that worked equally well at any time of day, and didn't depend on foreign fossil fuels. Something that was so energy dense that you didn't have to refuel it for years and years.
Oh, well, I guess that's just science fiction in Germany. Nothing to be done.
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>> some dependable energy source
You mean the one that the voters rejected because it is dangerous? And that does rely on foreign energy sources?
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You mean the one that the voters rejected because it is dangerous? And that does rely on foreign energy sources?
No, the other one.
I find it humorous to see people meltdown at the suggestion that Germany created their own energy problems with their policies. Sweden is not obligated to solve Germany's energy problems, so if Germany is too scared of producing their own energy then they have to live with their decision. The solution to Germany's energy problems will come to them eventually, and I can't wait to see how people will react to that.
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>> Sweden is not obligated to solve Germany's energy problems
Apparently you didn't bother to read the article or the links. This was a project where Germany would export electricity to Sweden, not vice versa. Germany is in fact a net exporter of electricity even to France, the darling of nuke advocates.
"Due to the technical problems affecting French reactors, Germany for the first time sold more power to France than it received from its neighbour, doubling its year-earlier export volume there."
https:/ [reuters.com]
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Apparently you didn't bother to read the article or the links. This was a project where Germany would export electricity to Sweden, not vice versa.
The article tells me that electricity would flow in either direction depending on demand.
Germany is in fact a net exporter of electricity even to France, the darling of nuke advocates.
Notice the key word "net" in that sentence. At the end of a year the totals show more energy flowing out of Germany than out of France but electricity flows both directions on the international electrical links. There's going to be daily and seasonal variation on production capacity and demand for both nations that dictate which direction the electricity flows.
I admit that I'm reading between the lines here but the is
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so does the energywende with most solar panels and windmills being sourced from china
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You mean the one that the voters rejected because it is dangerous? And that does rely on foreign energy sources?
One must live with the consequences of their choices. Germany faces a dilemma:
- On one hand, it can experience a highly unstable electricity market, leading to soaring prices and blackouts. More realistically, this could cause industries to leave Germany, as has been happening over the past decade, weakening the economy and making the country poorer.
- On the other hand, it can continue burning fossil fuels, exacerbating climate change and ending up on the wrong side of history, yet again.
The choice they mad
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>> soaring prices and blackouts
You're just making all that up. The German electric grid is among the most reliable in the world, and Germany is a net exporter of electricity.
Including to France; "Due to the technical problems affecting French reactors, Germany for the first time sold more power to France than it received from its neighbour, doubling its year-earlier export volume there."
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
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The German electric grid is among the most reliable in the world
Yes, because it can depend on its neighbors to supply electricity during the night. And to do that, Germany needs interconnections with its neighbors. Did you see what TFA was about? Sweden rejecting the interconnection with Germany, because their electricity market is not efficient.
Germany is a net exporter of electricity
Not every year, unfortunately. There's a story behind that: Germany often dumps its surplus solar and wind electricity when there's low demand, forcing its neighbors to adapt. On the other hand, Germany must import electricity m
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>> Sweden rejecting the interconnection with Germany, because their electricity market is not efficient.
The statement was "mainly because Germany, unlike Sweden, isn't divided into electricity areas". Which makes no sense. "Germany is a single power market zone, with a unified wholesale price." That should have no bearing on Sweden, and the Swedish grid operators were in favor of the project.
>> Not every year, unfortunately.
The charts here say you are wrong, see figure 1.
https://www.ffe.de/en/pu [www.ffe.de]
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the Swedish grid operators were in favor of the project
In 2017. When Germany was saying it would fix its problems. Fast forward 7 years later in 2024, and Germany has closed its nuclear plants, its electricity market is more volatile than ever, and their Energiewende is a pipe dream. No wonder Sweden is no longer in favor of that project.
They don't want to be the ones having to deal with the export of German problems. Especially since their electricity mix is already heavily decarbonized (19g CO2eq/kWh in 2023 [nowtricity.com]) and quite cheap due to their usage of hydro/nuclea
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>> In 2017. When Germany was saying it would fix its problems.
No evidence as usual? Not interested in your personal opinions on this.
"Grid operators Svenska Kraftnat and 50Hertz had aimed for the project to allow more renewable power to be sent from the Nordics to Germany, while imports from Germany would contribute to a more secure electricity supply in southern Sweden."
"southern Sweden, which has a large deficit in electricity production"
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"because it can depend on its neighbors to supply electricity during the night. "
No, certainly not. Germany has plenty of conventional generation capacity than easily exceeds demands at all time and especially at night. It does not depend on imports.
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No, certainly not. Germany has plenty of conventional generation capacity than easily exceeds demands at all time and especially at night. It does not depend on imports.
My bad, I didn't explain my point clearly enough.
Germany's grid is reliable today because they don't care about burning fossil fuel at night, or when there is not enough sun/wind. They also particularly like importing from France during those periods. Just tonight for instance, they are importing 7.5GW of capacity from France [rte-france.com], the equivalent of 2-3 nuclear plants.
In order to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, they desperatly need interconnections with their neighbors, all that because they don't want to co
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You mean the one that the voters rejected because it is dangerous?
You mean coal? Can’t be since it is still polluting and harming.
And that does rely on foreign energy sources?
Ah, you mean chinese PVs and batteries?
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>> You mean coal?
No I meant nuclear. Coal is being phased out ASAP and for very good reasons. Meanwhile "chinese PVs and batteries" aren't an energy source.
Germany Wanting Sweden To Solve Its Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
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That takes grid scale batteries to act as capacitors to smooth the flow. These don't exist.
It's far worse. Germany periodically experiences periods of Dunkelflaute in winter: no wind, no sun (due to the short day and clouds), and low temperatures. These periods can last for _weeks_, and about once a century for a _month_ straight.
No amount of batteries can supply that much buffer capacity. Right now coal and gas are used to ride out these cold spells.
Re: Germany Wanting Sweden To Solve Its Problems (Score:2)
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At 70-80% efficiency, it is better than battery storage. You need a second tank downstream although, not sure how ecologically sound would something like pumping sea water upstream be.
Also dams already built were usually built to have a surplus of water most of the time so they dump water downstream on a regular basis and/or just let it constantly overflow. Thus, having more water in the tank wouldn't be that much profitable most of the time.
Ideally, strictly for energy storage, you need two tanks, one that
Re: Germany Wanting Sweden To Solve Its Problems (Score:2)
In many cases, plain old hydroelectric power does as well as pumped storage. Think of the cyclical nature of pumped storage (water goes down, water is pumped up) offset by normal steam flow such that the peak in the storage part of the cycle is just zero. That's where a plain old hydro plant just lets the reservoir fill.
It's just a matter of sizing the reservoir and generation correctly.
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Maybe new dams should be built with that in mind, big them bigger than the natural water flow would justify and have them double as pumped energy storage for renewables. Some existing dams could possibly be retro-fitted for that purpose as well by augmenting capacity
This may work in some places. I live in Manitoba, Canada, and most of our electricity is generated by hydro dams in the north. We have a large lake - Lake Winnipeg - which acts as a reservoir. The utilities operating license requires them to keep the lake within a certain height, because people actually live there. This limits how much water can be stored at any given time.
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These renewable projects need to be balanced locally.
But that takes INVESTMENT and RESOURCES. Building a thousand windmills is a start, but both solar and wind need buffering to handle modern usage. People do not consume power on a solar schedule, and wind doesn't know a schedule.
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Nuke shills would do us all a favor if they came out at the start of the comment, not in the last half sentence.
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also, there are long periods (very cold or very hot) when windmills produce nothing for lack of wind... last winter, there was almost no production from either windmills or solar for 2 months
Re:Germany Wanting Sweden To Solve Its Problems (Score:5, Insightful)
Whever someone talks about "Germany" when speaking of an electrical grid problem you can see they don't have much of a clue. "Germany" doesn't get too much electricity. The northern tip of Germany gets too much electricity. They were looking for links to Sweeden and Norway to export wind in an effort to avoid building thousands of km of transmission lines between the north and south.
In this regard Germany is as much a cohesive grid as the USA is a cohesive grid. There are different areas with different challenges and much like Texas, there are areas that don't currently play well with the rest of the country. Renewables don't need to be balanced locally, they need to be balanced over a large area. Hence efforts to upgrade grids and interconnect them.
As for storage, firstly grid scale batteries acting as capacitors definitely exist, quite a few of them are in deployment, the first popped up in south Australia. For larger storage there are alternate technologies which also exist, e.g. Ammonia based storage systems (which has plants currently under construction, with a 55% end to end efficiency, and the ability to simply use big tanks to increase capacity (I say simply, this shit is toxic so it's an engineering challenge). Load balancing is also part of the solution. E.g. the very north of Germany currently has a large electrolysis plant being put up to stabilise the electricity grid generating green hydrogen when electricity is abundant, and dropping back to SMR when it's not, and then feeding a local refinery in effect using the intermittency to reduce the carbon footprint of a fixed consumption carbon emitter.
By the way I've never met a solar or wind proponent who doesn't also recognise energy storage as being a required part of a stable grid. However...
Right now, until grid scale batteries exist, nuclear is the only option.
Option for what? Germany needs a solution now and in the next 10 years, not something that may be commissioned in 20+ years. Nuclear has zero position to play in any current electrical grid problems or any current climate goals. It's the time to construction that the the nuclear fanatics refuse to see and won't admit to.
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In the case of Germany it is also the question of nuclear waste. The first nuclear power plant in Germany has been connected to the grid over 60 years ago, yet to this day Germany has no end storage facility for the waste, all storage sites are interim.
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Nuclear has zero position to play in any current electrical grid problems or any current climate goals.
It's a bit ironic then that Germany wants to buy electricity from a nation that gets 40% of their electricity from nuclear.
Nuclear power wouldn't take "forever" to build if only people stopped complaining about how nuclear power takes too long to build and so keeps delaying any construction. Shut the fuck up about how long it takes to build, start construction with a purpose, and then in 10 years (or whatever bullshit build time you come up with) your energy shortage is solved. Because people have been us
Re:Germany Wanting Sweden To Solve Its Problems (Score:4, Interesting)
Germany needs a solution now and in the next 10 years, not something that may be commissioned in 20+ years.
Germany has been saying that for the last 30 years, and failing so far. Will that be your excuse in 20+ years too, when Germany is still the top EU emitter?
Re: Germany Wanting Sweden To Solve Its Problems (Score:3)
By the way I've never met a solar or wind proponent who doesn't also recognise energy storage as being a required part of a stable grid. However...
However when it comes to paying for it, they are nowhere to be found. Scheduling backup sources and spinning reserve and power exchange agreements all cost money. Particularly when the system operator calls and tells you to go on line on a windless day. The power biz has had these issues solved for more than a hundred years. But now, some people want their own set of rules. Nope.
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The 100% renewable energy storage problem is quite vast though, and the scale of the challenges involved are often downplayed quite strongly.
I've noted many of the numbers quoted for the energy storage required assume 2-3 days, or maybe a week. You can definitely assume some renewable capacity will still be online during a reduction in generation (maybe a large bushfire reduces your solar output significantly), so you don't need enough storage to cover all power consumption... but you still need a lot. And
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Why would Sweden buy the electricity if they don't need it?
What you mean is that at times the price of electricity in Germany is extremely low, and Swedish energy producers are worried that it will undercut them. Meanwhile they don't see the opportunity to sell electricity to Germany as profitable enough, because as Germany's (and the continent's) grid gets greener the average price will keep falling.
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What you mean is that at times the price of electricity in Germany is extremely low, and Swedish energy producers are worried that it will undercut them. Meanwhile they don't see the opportunity to sell electricity to Germany as profitable enough, because as Germany's (and the continent's) grid gets greener the average price will keep falling.
Yeah. That's exactly the opposite, but keep telling you that.
Germany wants and needs this interconnection. Sweden does not want it and does not need it. There isn't much else.
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TFA actually explains it:
Germany is a single power market zone, with a unified wholesale price. However, congestion on its grid, which lacks connections to move power from the wind-rich north to consumption centres in the south, has increased calls for a split into at least two zones.
Germany opposes such a move, which it fears could increase prices in the south and impact industrial activity.
By comparison, Sweden is divided into four power price zones.
"The German power market doesn't function in a way that gives correct price signals to power market players, mainly because Germany, unlike Sweden, isn't divided into electricity areas in a way that corresponds to the significant bottlenecks," the Swedish government said.
It's exactly what I said. In Sweden they like to have price discrimination based on location, because it is more profitable. A divided market is easier to exploit. The more freedom people have to buy energy from the cheapest source, the worse it is for them.
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Germany is a single power market zone for the wholesale prices only. End users are discriminated based on location (sometimes the prices differ even between city districts) and have a lot of freedom to buy energy from hundreds of different sources.
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Nope. Sweden simply doesn't want to be the one solving Germany's problems (grid instability and intermittency), because it would cost them money to solve those problems. Germany should and will be the ones paying and assuming their choices.
Sweden solved those problems by having a good electricity mix [nowtricity.com]: 42% hydro, 22% wind, 30% nuclear (in 2023). They don't need Germany's "cheap" electricity, especially when it is at time where they already have enough electricity themselves. Germany, on the other hand, is fr
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The free market doesn't solve all problems. One in particular it doesn't solve well is stability and consistency. All countries regulate their grids heavily to promote stability and consistency and Germany is no exception.
There's a lack of interconnections in the German grid. Sweden doesn't want to have its energy producers pushed into unprofitability and therefore close, so Germany doesn't need to build those interconnections. Because then Sweden will be on the hook for their own ones.
Aren't we all a bit German? (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"the volatile German market disrupting Sweden's" (Score:2)
This smells like protectionism, but perhaps it is justified. Germany has loads of excess electricity at times and is looking to export it, probably at very cheap prices. That could undercut national power sources in Sweden and stress their viability.
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Yes, that is also the experience in Australia. The existing generators in Australia cannot be run economically at 3 c /kW, and so are taken offline when the wind blows and the sun shines. The lower profitability deters maintenance-why bother maintaining an asset that government policy wants closed in 1-10 years? The lie is then told that FF plants are unreliable - no they were fine until they had to go intermittent.
But of course when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesnt shine, as happens for 10 hours 3
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his smells like protectionism, but perhaps it is justified. Germany has loads of excess electricity at times and is looking to export it, probably at very cheap prices.
They also have massive shortages at times and import lots of electricity to cover it, raising prices in the neighboring countries. Which is cool for the energy industry, not so much for local users.
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>> raising prices in the neighboring countries
Show evidence. Germany is a net exporter of electricity.
"The trade figures show that Germany's neighbours remain dependent on surplus power from Europe's biggest economy if their own generation supplies fall short."
"Due to the technical problems affecting French reactors, Germany for the first time sold more power to France than it received from its neighbour, doubling its year-earlier export volume there."
https://www.reuters.com/busine... [reuters.com]
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>> it is upon you to show evidence that the tables have turned
The internet is easily searchable. If you have evidence contrary to what I showed its up to you.
Here's more recent info. Figure 1 shows that Germany exports more than it imports.
https://www.ffe.de/en/publicat... [www.ffe.de]
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>> Germany made a mess
Germany has excess electricity at times. That doesn't make their energy system a mess and Sweden doesn't say it is.
Sweden vaguely claims that "The German power market doesn't function in a way that gives correct price signals to power market players", and most likely that simply means the Swedish companies wouldn't be able to compete on price.
Tiny Europian contries on "power" they lack. (Score:1)
Sure sure, the EU, it's a like a "Union" of "Europiean countries" except not.
Electricity is easy. Maintaining a close ratio of generation to use is not, and that's why we have power grids (no, Texas, ERCOT is not one).
AC? Sure. DC? Sure? Long distance high voltage low current transmission lines? Sure. AC kinda sucks because of needs for substations and capacitors and transformers. DC kinda sucks because a power line on the road REALLY WIL KILL YOU.
Sweden (love them folks) took 7 years to tell Germa
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AC kinda sucks because of needs for substations and capacitors and transformers. DC kinda sucks because a power line on the road REALLY WIL KILL YOU.
I'd argue the substations and transformers are way way more expensive for DC than AC. The main advantage of AC is the substations are cheap (relatively), robust and bidirectional. The advantage of DC is for high powers at long distances.
Are these anchor proof? (Score:2)
Seems like every other week I see a story about one or more undersea network cables getting cut by "accident", but I never see anything about undersea power cables. Are these cables better protected? Are they less newsworthy?
Obligatory Germans are dumb (Score:2)
Odd (Score:2)