5 ms·

Norway has been almost all-in on electric for a good while now. I can't remember experiencing a blackout in like 15 years or so. As with many things, Norway may

by audunw 5y ago

Norway has been almost all-in on electric for a good while now. I can't remember experiencing a blackout in like 15 years or so. As with many things, Norway may be special in many ways, but I can't help but think if you start building everything in society around electricity (and free up some of the money needed to maintain gas and other parallel energy distribution infrastructures), you'll make really damn sure that it works 100% of the time. I've heard that some keep propane heaters for backup/emergency. I have used one at a cabin and it's damn effective. Your example sounds really inefficient.. modern houses should have balanced ventilation, and you should only need one compressor and 2-3 heads. I installed a small balanced ventilation unit (TwinFresh) in a bedroom, and that helps keep the room warm by pulling in warm air from the hallway which is connected to the living room with the heat pump head. We also have some electrical heaters in the other bedrooms just to make sure it can't get too cold there. Though maybe my perspective is a bit warped: everyone I know likes to sleeping in a cold room.

seneca 5y ago
> Norway has been almost all-in on electric for a good while now. According to a quick Google search: "The current population of Norway is 5,483,767 as of Friday, December 24, 2021" and NY state is estimated at 20.2 million as of April 2020, and New York City at 8.8 million. It seems you appreciate that Norway is a special scenario. It seems silly to assume something that works there would work in a country that has single cities with larger populations, and states with around four times the population of your entire country.
- Retric 5y ago
  Economies of scale make energy distribution more efficient as you scale population not less. New York City could for example use a relatively shallow bore hole to gather geothermal energy and get “low grade” heat (50-100C) for district heating where such systems don’t really work for single family homes.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    > Economies of scale make energy distribution more efficient as you scale population not less. This may be so, but New York also has one of the oldest electrical grids on the planet. Upgrading it to support larger and larger populations is a challenge, not just to manage it overloading with the density, but also in terms of logistics. You can't just tear up a major street in New York and upgrade the electrical for a block, without causing massive logistics problems for the city. Upgrading New York's grid is going to be a huge challenge
    - peter422 5y ago
      It’s going to have to happen eventually. Why keep putting it off?
      - csomar 5y ago
        That’s something for future Ted… High-population means high complaining ratio. Also lots of rich companies there who will sue when things go wrong.
      - labster 5y ago
        Why pay for today when tomorrow’s shareholders will pay for it instead? See also: PG&E
    - passerby1 5y ago
      How much would the upgrade cost, can anyone estimate?
    - Retric 5y ago
      It seems worse simply because it’s concentrated in a small area. The project would actually be less disruptive in NYC than doing the same thing for 8+ million people in the suburbs somewhere. Especially if they could reuse tunnels built for deprecated systems like copper phone lines. Hell NYC already has district heating, adding a tunnel under the existing building could swap things over for 1700+ customers with minimal disruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Also - isn't >90% of all Norway's electricity production hydro? It would seem a lot more feasible to go all in on electric when you have that much hydro. Since that much of the production is hydro - I'm assuming it's relatively economical, and not just Norway paying a massive premium to be green.
- toofy 5y ago
  > It seems silly to assume something that works there would work in a country that has single cities with larger populations it would also be silly were we to imply that scaling up automatically means less efficiency. in many situations things get significantly more efficient the more they scale. it also would seem silly to assume that we couldn’t take many of the pieces that are actually working in an entire country and adapt to our situation. We are very good at adapting things for various situations.
throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
NYC has more people then all of Norway. So any redundancy Norway has needs to be scaled to account for that. I would be curious though; as where i grew up in the upper midwest USA, there were always concerns of ice-storms or blizzards knocking out power lines. I'd assume norway would have similar concerns so i wonder how the problem is solved there.
- bluedino 5y ago
  If your power goes out you're not running a natural gas furnace anyway
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Why not? Mine growing up worked despite power outages IIRC.
    - bluedino 5y ago
      You need electricity for the blower motor to force the air through the ducts of your house
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        ~30% of the NYC area is still probably running steam heat which just uses physics to get where it's needed. Depending on the system size a car battery and inverter can run a forced hot water system for a pretty long time. Forced hot air is gonna be worse than that but the electricity to run the blower is still peanuts compared to a heat pump system.
      - captainoats 5y ago
        The original comment is comparing to radiator heat not forced air.
        _dark_matter_ 5y ago
        My boiler system has an electric pump. I'm not sure my boiler would run without electricity either.
Spooky23 5y ago
NYC increasingly depends on power imported from Quebec. The grid is a complex system that won’t age well.
- Scoundreller 5y ago
  There’s a new line being built from Quebec to nyc area In the works. This is not the one that’s being killed in Maine. https://gothamist.com/news/canadian-renewable-hydropower-heading-new-york-city https://gothamist.com/news/canadian-renewable-hydropower-hea...
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    Sure. The point is a big portion of the base load for the city was generated by a nuclear plant a few miles away, and will shift to a foreign hydroelectric system hundreds of miles away. When you think of a place as large as NYC and the scale of making any kind of change, it certainly adds an element of risk if conditions in Canada or failures between NYC and Canada take place.
    - Scoundreller 5y ago
      Knowing what (little) I know about the Quebec/NY grids, I’d put my money on Quebec-sourced power for reliability.
makomk 5y ago
Norway is almost entirely hydroelectric, which is pretty close to ideal in terms of providing reliable non-fossil-fuel power - and unfortunately something most countries don't have the geography to pull off, which is why Norway ended up so much more electricity-centric. I think they also accept the odd multi-day outage affecting small numbers of customers like everywhere else, especially in urban areas, just because weather gets in the way of providing 100% reliable power. Also, remember larger-scale outages are long-tail events which means it's not really possible to measure exactly how likely they are especially with a small country like Norway.

by audunw 5y ago

seneca 5y ago

> Norway has been almost all-in on electric for a good while now. According to a quick Google search: "The current population of Norway is 5,483,767 as of Friday, December 24, 2021" and NY state is estimated at 20.2 million as of April 2020, and New York City at 8.8 million. It seems you appreciate that Norway is a special scenario. It seems silly to assume something that works there would work in a country that has single cities with larger populations, and states with around four times the population of your entire country.

Retric 5y ago
Economies of scale make energy distribution more efficient as you scale population not less. New York City could for example use a relatively shallow bore hole to gather geothermal energy and get “low grade” heat (50-100C) for district heating where such systems don’t really work for single family homes.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  > Economies of scale make energy distribution more efficient as you scale population not less. This may be so, but New York also has one of the oldest electrical grids on the planet. Upgrading it to support larger and larger populations is a challenge, not just to manage it overloading with the density, but also in terms of logistics. You can't just tear up a major street in New York and upgrade the electrical for a block, without causing massive logistics problems for the city. Upgrading New York's grid is going to be a huge challenge
  - peter422 5y ago
    It’s going to have to happen eventually. Why keep putting it off?
    - csomar 5y ago
      That’s something for future Ted… High-population means high complaining ratio. Also lots of rich companies there who will sue when things go wrong.
    - labster 5y ago
      Why pay for today when tomorrow’s shareholders will pay for it instead? See also: PG&E
  - passerby1 5y ago
    How much would the upgrade cost, can anyone estimate?
  - Retric 5y ago
    It seems worse simply because it’s concentrated in a small area. The project would actually be less disruptive in NYC than doing the same thing for 8+ million people in the suburbs somewhere. Especially if they could reuse tunnels built for deprecated systems like copper phone lines. Hell NYC already has district heating, adding a tunnel under the existing building could swap things over for 1700+ customers with minimal disruption. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
Also - isn't >90% of all Norway's electricity production hydro? It would seem a lot more feasible to go all in on electric when you have that much hydro. Since that much of the production is hydro - I'm assuming it's relatively economical, and not just Norway paying a massive premium to be green.
toofy 5y ago
> It seems silly to assume something that works there would work in a country that has single cities with larger populations it would also be silly were we to imply that scaling up automatically means less efficiency. in many situations things get significantly more efficient the more they scale. it also would seem silly to assume that we couldn’t take many of the pieces that are actually working in an entire country and adapt to our situation. We are very good at adapting things for various situations.

throw_nbvc1234 5y ago

NYC has more people then all of Norway. So any redundancy Norway has needs to be scaled to account for that. I would be curious though; as where i grew up in the upper midwest USA, there were always concerns of ice-storms or blizzards knocking out power lines. I'd assume norway would have similar concerns so i wonder how the problem is solved there.

bluedino 5y ago
If your power goes out you're not running a natural gas furnace anyway
- azinman2 5y ago
  Why not? Mine growing up worked despite power outages IIRC.
  - bluedino 5y ago
    You need electricity for the blower motor to force the air through the ducts of your house
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      ~30% of the NYC area is still probably running steam heat which just uses physics to get where it's needed. Depending on the system size a car battery and inverter can run a forced hot water system for a pretty long time. Forced hot air is gonna be worse than that but the electricity to run the blower is still peanuts compared to a heat pump system.
    - captainoats 5y ago
      The original comment is comparing to radiator heat not forced air.
      - _dark_matter_ 5y ago
        My boiler system has an electric pump. I'm not sure my boiler would run without electricity either.

Spooky23 5y ago

NYC increasingly depends on power imported from Quebec. The grid is a complex system that won’t age well.

Scoundreller 5y ago
There’s a new line being built from Quebec to nyc area In the works. This is not the one that’s being killed in Maine. https://gothamist.com/news/canadian-renewable-hydropower-heading-new-york-city https://gothamist.com/news/canadian-renewable-hydropower-hea...
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Sure. The point is a big portion of the base load for the city was generated by a nuclear plant a few miles away, and will shift to a foreign hydroelectric system hundreds of miles away. When you think of a place as large as NYC and the scale of making any kind of change, it certainly adds an element of risk if conditions in Canada or failures between NYC and Canada take place.
  - Scoundreller 5y ago
    Knowing what (little) I know about the Quebec/NY grids, I’d put my money on Quebec-sourced power for reliability.

makomk 5y ago

Norway is almost entirely hydroelectric, which is pretty close to ideal in terms of providing reliable non-fossil-fuel power - and unfortunately something most countries don't have the geography to pull off, which is why Norway ended up so much more electricity-centric. I think they also accept the odd multi-day outage affecting small numbers of customers like everywhere else, especially in urban areas, just because weather gets in the way of providing 100% reliable power. Also, remember larger-scale outages are long-tail events which means it's not really possible to measure exactly how likely they are especially with a small country like Norway.