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There's an estimate 10 000MW additional requirement of power for Swedish Industry (3000MW surplus in the north): - The Swedish fossil-free steel (& Direct-Redu

There's an estimate 10 000MW additional requirement of power for Swedish Industry (3000MW surplus in the north): - The Swedish fossil-free steel (& Direct-Reduced Iron) manufacture (9000 MW) - Amazon/google/microsoft datacenters (2000 MW) - Conversion to electric cars (1000 MW, currently 128MW).. - This gigafactory (?MW 50GW Capacity) The Swedish government plan on solving these needs with Wind turbines (Currently 7000MW capacity), which this weekend was at 1.4% capacity due to no winds. How is that going to work, do they plan on shutting down production when there's no wind? EDIT: If you're going to downvote, please explain why, these numbers are not made-up, they are public: Live stats: https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/ https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/ Capacity: https://svenskvindenergi.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Statistics-and-forecast-Svensk-Vindenergi-20190212.pdf https://svenskvindenergi.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/Stat... Steel: https://dagenslogistik.se/h2-green-steal-satsar-pa-vatgasproduktion-pa-iberiska-halvon/ https://dagenslogistik.se/h2-green-steal-satsar-pa-vatgaspro... Gigafactory: https://northvolt.com/articles/first-cell/ https://northvolt.com/articles/first-cell/ Average data-center consumption 100-200MW. Amazon 3x, Facebook 3x, Google 1x, Cloudflare 1x and Microsoft 1x, estimate total 2000MW.

callesgg 5y ago
What are you even talking about?
- emptyfile 5y ago
  Electrical power supply.
- bjoli 5y ago
  All the green projects (steel, batteries etc ...) are estimated to need over 40TWH/yr if they come to fruition. That is a shitload of energy that meeds to be produced, and there is really no good answer to how to do it reliably. Most people that write like the parent does usually reply "nuclear". I am not comvinced, but somfar there seem to be few good answers.
brtkdotse 5y ago
I’m especially annoyed by the data centers. The politicians got taken for a ride, trading precious gigawatts of electrical infrastructure for a few dozens of jobs and a photo-op with a tier 3 VP from MANGA.
- konschubert 5y ago
  Sweden is a great place to produce hydro and wind. They should do more of that and then charge a good price for it. No need to be annoyed.
  - brtkdotse 5y ago
    Hydro capacity is at max right now. The generation is less of a problem than transmission, a lot of new infrastructure needs to be built because data centers are hogging a lot of it. Oh, and the data center owners got a tax rebate on the electricity: > Sweden’s 2017 tax reform made a 97% tax cut on any electricity used by datacentres, which had the potential to reduce an individual datacentre’s total electricity bill by up to 40%. The country’s ministry of enterprise and innovation estimates that the datacentre industry saved €44m in energy consumption costs in 2018 because of the tax reduction. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466488/Tax-changes-lead-to-review-of-Swedens-datacentre-development?amp=1 https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466488/Tax-changes-le...
    - b112 5y ago
      EU wants local datacentres, so EU data is local. Infrastructure remains (fibre, buildings) even if corps leave in a few years. It is hard to insist data be local, then make it less competitive to build local. This deal you cite, may address that.
      - brtkdotse 5y ago
        > EU wants local datacentres, so EU data is local. Not 100% up to speed but didn’t SCHREMS II basically say that a local data center isn’t enough?
gbrindisi 5y ago
where can I find those numbers?
fulafel 5y ago
Your claimed power levels are nonsensical. A big nuclear plant produces 1 GW. (edit: it was edited since, was talking about tens of TW before)
- bjoli 5y ago
  He/she means TWH. Hybrit (green steel) is estimated to use about as much energy as all the hydro power in luleälven (15TWH).
  - cormacrelf 5y ago
    I don't think so. TWh (Terawatt-hours) are not units of power, but a convenient conversion from Joules (J), which measure work, aka energy. When you say "steel uses so-and-so TWH" you are omitting over how long a period it does that; if it's an annual figure or something, then that makes sense, but you can't omit that. If my house consumes 1MWh (Megawatt-hour) of energy in one year, then it's a normal house. If it draws the same amount in an hour, then my house is not a house but a mid-sized city. You shouldn't expect people to guess what time period you are talking about. You should see the error in describing "all the hydro power" in TWh, because it simply is not a measurement of power. Usually when you're talking about electricity generation, you are trying to weigh up demand and supply. These quantities are each most naturally represented as rates of energy use, because those rates fluctuate intra-day. We mostly care about the highest point of the graph of demand in a region over a 24-hour period, because you can't build a wind farm in an hour to meet extra demand. Using Watts avoids ever having to talk about the period in question. One Watt is one Joule of energy per second. The OP clarified in an edit that they mean Watts. When you're talking about batteries, yes, you do need absolute quantities. Currently they're only good for smoothing out small peaks and troughs in supply, so the absolute amount of energy is proportional to how long it can cover for a wind farm when the wind farm slows down. Note that when the article talks about production capacity being "60GWh per year", they don't mean watts; the batteries are presumably shipped without much energy in them. They mean "produce enough batteries that the amount of capacity in total is 60GWh". It says nothing about the energy it will take to build them, which you would measure in Watts so that you can plug it into the instantaneous supply-demand calculation. 60GWh only tells you how much total supply smoothing capacity it will be able to provide to customers. When you are talking about carbon emissions, you aren't as interested in peak demand, and you might instead think about absolute quantities in a year, and proportions of that that have been generated by renewable sources.
Phenomenit 5y ago
Isn't the point of building the manufacturing plant in the north to utilize abundant hydropower?
- alkonaut 5y ago
  That’s one factor yes, perhaps the most important. Power must be cheap and reliable. Other factors include having access to cooling water (a river), access to a port, railway, and obviously cheap land.
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Maybe even two ports: Depending on the exact location, the railway could give access to Narvik, besides Luleå or whatever. Hmm, this all feels so familiar... Let's see if it becomes a repeat of the Stålverk 80 debacle. (Link in Swedish only: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A5lverk_80 https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A5lverk_80)
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      I doubt it can be compared to that now, given how it's already a reality and in production (unlike that historic debacle)
thathndude 5y ago
I’m all for wind. But concerns like running at 1% capacity due to no wind for a month bring me back to nuclear time and time again. Like Elon says, we have this amazing thermonuclear reactor (the sun) that we can harness, among other resources. But we also have the ability to make thermonuclear reactors safely on the planet and harness 100x+ more of the energy from the reaction. Seems like a no brainer. Just to provide a couple cites that OP didn’t: A data center can use 100+ MW easily. https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-really-use/ https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d... Nuclear Plants generate 500 MW- 1TW.
- Hypocritelefty 5y ago
- alex_duf 5y ago
  wind alone can't. But wind, solar, inter-continental connections, hydro, storage, and tidal probably can. Now whether we put nuclear in there or not becomes a matter of cost rather than necessity.
- ben-schaaf 5y ago
  > But we also have the ability to make thermonuclear reactors safely on the plane We most certainly do not have the ability to make fusion reactors, at least not yet. Nuclear reactors on the other hand...
  - Ygg2 5y ago
    I'd take a hundred Chernobyls over the end of modern society.
    - darthrupert 5y ago
      Exactly. Since we've used a lot of the oil dinosaurs graciously gave us, there's not gonna be another chance at modern civilization if we fuck this up. At least for us humans.
LeoPanthera 5y ago
You may be being downvoted because you have provided no citations or justifications for your claims, and because anti-electric shilling is, unfortunately, very common on the internet. The oil industry has really amazing PR. Is "TW" supposed to be a terawatt? Because that is an enormously large amount of power. Annual human global power consumption is only 20TW. (Edit: Since I replied to this, you changed your units, and provided sources which I haven't yet checked.) Obviously, wind and solar cannot provide constant power, as fossil fuels can, but by building them in carefully selected locations, and combining them grid energy storage (which can be, but does not have to be, batteries[1]), un-evenness in supply can be smoothed out. [1]: Pumped storage hydroelectricity is another example.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  Yeah, I changed the units to be clearer.
  - maxnoe 5y ago
    Clearer? You shrank them by 3 orders of magnitude aka a factor of 1000. That's not "clearer", that's a huge adjustment.
    - tmikaeld 5y ago
      I'm sorry, the units where wrong, it's been corrected. It should, of course be 1GW = 1000 MW, to be clearer I changed it to MW.
      - stavros 5y ago
        Where was the terawatt? I only see tens of gigawatts in the new numbers.
      - maxnoe 5y ago
        No, they are not the same. You exchanged 10 TW with 10,000 MW. 10,000 MW = 10 GW = 0.01 TW.
- 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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ginko 5y ago
At least the fossil-free steel is reduced with green hydrogen made through on-site electrolysis. That means a local hydrogen store can act as an energy buffer offsetting some of the fluctuations in the grid.
- lstodd 5y ago
  That is interesting. As you must know, steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, the carbon in question coming from, you know, coal. So how exactly it can be "fossil-free"?
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    Fossil free steel is steel produced by not burning carbon in the process. It simply means it doesn’t burn fossil fuels and emit (fossil) CO2. Carbon can still be used for the alloy itself. That’s not an environmental problem.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    "fossil free steel" is a marketing term which means that (fossil) carbon is no longer used for reduction and process heat. This accounts for the vast majority of the carbon needed in steel production.
  - Jolter 5y ago
    Carbon that is absorbed into the alloy will stay there for a long time. Until the metal rusts away completely, which is ideally decades at least. But you’re right that it’s not stored indefinitely, it does go into the atmosphere eventually.
maxnoe 5y ago
Your numbers and/or units are wrong. Sweden's power consumption in 2020 was 172.7 TWh [0]. That's an average power supply of 19.7 GW (172.7e3 GWh / 365 / 24h). So either you show numbers for annual consumption but have the wrong unit (TW where it should be TWh) or your numbers are absurdly high. [0]https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/energy/energy-supply-and-use/annual-energy-statistics-electricity-gas-and-district-heating/pong/tables-and-graphs/electricity-supply-and-use-20012020-gwh/ https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  Units where unclear, it's been corrected. Numbers are correct though, see the sources.
silvestrov 5y ago
Sweden and Norway has a lot of hydro power. When wind mills in Denmark are running then Norway stops their hydro and imports cheap electricity from the Danish wind mills. They save up the water. When the Danish wind mills stands still then Norway sells expensive electricity from hydro. Denmark is a very good place for wind mills so the combination is a win-win. It's crazy to look independently at each country because that is not how the electricity market works in Northern Europe. The countries are very interconnected. It just so happends that the wind often blows during the day in Denmark and stand stills during night. So this back and forth happends almost every day. When you ignore hydro power in NO/SE it shows that you don't know anything about the electricity market in Northern Europe.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Does interconnect serve 100% required capacity? IIRC in a lot of places they are like 10-20% tops.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- rekoil 5y ago
  It is true that we have a lot of hydro power, however it is pretty much fully utilised as it stands (they're talking about hundreds of additional MW when they talk about expansion, which will not do much in the grand scheme of things), and with all of this additional load, as well as fast ongoing electrification of our vehicles, it seems unlikely that additional wind farms will be able to pick up the slack. Obviously I'm hoping I'm wrong here, because the alternative is nuclear which is apparently still a no-no word in most political circuits over here, and thus is unlikely to happen. Even if nuclear were to happen, ramping it upp will take much longer than the pace of this additional industry and electrification... I'm worried we're going to end up in a crisis where we have to build up capacity quickly, and the only reliable and fast way of doing so is through fossil fuels.
  - tmikaeld 5y ago
    According to "Energikommissionen"s research, Swedish hydro could be greatly built out with minimal effects on the environment. [0] (2015 article) https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/dags-att-bygga-ut-vattenkraften-6344594 https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/dags-att-bygga-ut-vattenkraf...
Seanambers 5y ago
On demand power generation is going to be key in any attempt to transition to a (more) renewable energy mix. What Storage options exists today that can produce substantial amounts of power other than pumped hydro? The utter disregard for what works is insane. In Norway which basically is the land of hydro prices has spiked 3-5X because Germany and UK decided to fuck up their power generation and decommission a bunch of nuclear and fossil plants making them reliant on wind and russian gas.
- fifilura 5y ago
  > other than pumped hydro What your reason to exclude pumped hydro in this logical reasoning? And also regular hydro power as a storage already complements wind power since you can choose to not use it when there is wind. You don't need to pump the water.
- 7952 5y ago
  The UK is not reliant on Russian gas. Most imports come from Norway. And we have an active program to build new nuclear power stations to replace those at end of life. Also, the UK currently has 20GW of battery storage in the pipeline. It starts quickly and is even being designed for frequency response providing full load within 1 second. That is very useful in dealing with nuclear or grid failures.
samwillis 5y ago
> How is that going to work, do they plan on shutting down production when there's no wind? This isn’t completely mad. We are entering a new era of power where it’s price is going to fluctuate throughout the day/week (more than before) and industry will scale up and down depending on price/availability. Automated production lines are “easy” to start/stop. I think we will also see compute pricing in the cloud react dynamically to cost of power. It makes more sense to run compute intensive (none real-time) tasks during peak power availability.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  That's if you can assume that peak usage can be supplied, if it can't, there will be a loss of frequency (<50hz). When that happens, entire regions have to be forcefully shutdown, meaning there's no electricity to use even if you wanted to. Sweden have been dangerously close to this already, I expect it to happen now when the real winter starts.
  - samwillis 5y ago
    My point is that prices will be dynamically raised as 100% usage is approached. That way larger energy users in industry are pushed to scale down operations temporarily. Already governments/suppliers have agreements with large users to scale down during peek usage to ensure no loss of frequency, my suggestion is this is expanded to the whole of industry and made dynamic based on pricing. I suspect that some consumer protection would need to be introduced so domestic customers don’t see quite the same level of price fluctuation.
    - tmikaeld 5y ago
      My point was that, if you stop and start frequently, the balance of the network will be extremely hard to maintain so you'll get blackouts that can span wide areas or even the whole net. Even if that wasn't the case, I'm not sure that Swedish industries CAN scale down even if they wanted to, because the cost to start up again would be greater than shutting down.
rob_c 5y ago
From pointing out that renewable isn't the whole story yet in the past on here good luck with not getting down voted. There needs to be a solid configurable baseline that is low carbon which is combined with some transient energy store such as these batteries (if they're designed to not just make giant fire mountains when they fail). Nuclear meets that very well as does diversifying into wave or hydro.
gameswithgo 5y ago
Either they: have plenty of other power sources they can ramp up when there is no wind plan to use large scale storage some combination of the above or it will not work.
Gwypaas 5y ago
Thankfully HYBRIT is a smart consumer with the explicit goal of taking advantage of cheap wind power. The hydrogen production is oversized to allow a buffer to be used. What sweden sorely needs is off-shore wind power which has higher capacity factors and do not completely correlate with on-shore wind. Currently there is only one miniscule park located in Öresund. Hopefully the military soon starts agreeing to some projects...
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
You had time to look up all these links with big scary numbers, but couldn't take the time to find out how wind power works as part of an integrated low carbon grid? Your own link shows the hydro working to complement wind. Mentioning that wind isn't constant is about as insightful as the regular "sun doesn't shine at night" input whenever solar comes up. The giant billion dollar global industry that has been building out renewables at an increasing rate for decades has, somewhat unsurprisingly, already spotted those two facts. It baffles me that people keep bringing them up like they've won an argument by revealing the big secret that everyone is ignoring. btw your wind capacity figure is correct, for 2017, but it's doubled in the 5 years since, just like it doubled the 5 years before.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  How you complement something doesn't matter if the total capacity isn't there and if multiple countries are all consuming their energy, which is currently happening (this driving prices waaay up), you're looking at potential grid shutdowns due to networks not being able to maintain their frequency. Also, if you go below or too high in frequency, which can happen often in the summer with renewables (like in Germany, you got paid to use the electricity), you're unable to export it because, again, the frequency won't match the other countries grid. Germany shutting down 10GW of nuclear in 2022 is going the an interesting experiment in how bad it can go when you don't have enough planable electricity any more. [0] https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinahe-blackout/ https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinah... Not sure why the 2017 figure matters, if it's 1% of capacity it's still a fraction of total capacity if it's 2x or 5x more.
  - lima 5y ago
    See comment below about the linked article being part of a misinformation campaign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29736480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29736480
    - tmikaeld 5y ago
      Thanks for pointing it out, I can't edit the comments any more.
jillesvangurp 5y ago
The simplest explanation of why Sweden is not plagued by regular massive blackouts is that your facts, math, and assumptions are wrong/incomplete. Simply put, it's not a closed system. Sweden is connected to the rest of Europe. So, German, Danish, British, Norwegian, etc. grids can import and export power as needed. The entire continent of Europe produces wind (and other power) at a pretty steady and predictable pace. Power is big business since selling it in the market is pretty lucrative. And since wind is pretty affordable, a lot of the supply is wind based these days. Basically, Sweden can produce cheap power locally most of the time and import more expensive power when they need to. Having a surplus means they export more power than that they import over time. It's just market dynamics. Because the way weather works, if there is no wind locally, that just means there definitely is some wind elsewhere. That's why Europe gets away with having so much wind power. The amount of wind power it produces fluctuates but not nearly as dramatically as you seem to believe. It's a rapidly growing market because as you note there is plenty of demand for more power. Hence, the rapid roll out of the cheapest way to produce it world wide: wind.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  Yes, it is connected, which means that when multiple countries are at a loss, then other can help out - but when all countries area at a loss or when the frequency don't match, which is currently happening, prices sky-rocket, electricity cannot be transported and black-outs are bound to happen unless turning to regional shut-downs. Which, by the way, is what happened in Germany recently [0], they had to be saved by multiple countries, shut down of large industry (Costing a lot in damage) - all to prevent black-outs. How will that be handled when Germany shuts down 10GW of nuclear power 2022, if it's already not enough? If you have 0% wind and you add 0% more wind, you get 0% wind... [0] https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinahe-blackout/ https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinah... Not sure how different facts would help, when issues are actually happening.
  - lima 5y ago
    You probably didn't realize, but EIKE is a right-wing climate change denier "think tank", falsely claiming that antrophogenic climate change does not exist[1]. Their claims are widely discredited and considered pseudoscience[2][3]. The linked article is an alarmist piece about the alleged risks of renewables and does not quote any reliable sources. I couldn't find any independent claim that anything unusual or alarming happened on August 14. Load shedding is a normal procedure and almost certainly didn't cause "a lot of damage" - it's industrial customers buying electricity at a discount in exchange for disconnecting from the grid when needed. This is only done for industrial processes that can be safely interrupted (like aluminium processing plants). If anything, it shows that the mechanism works as intended. There wasn't any notable frequency deviation on Aug 14 in the European grid. All the graphs look normal - there was a ~15 GW deficit in Germany which was compensated[4], well within normal operating parameters. In spite of the increasing complexity of managing the power grid due to renewables (a real problem which requires significant investments to solve), the German power grid is more reliable than ever[5]. [1]: https://eike-klima-energie.eu/die-mission/grundsatzpapier-klima https://eike-klima-energie.eu/die-mission/grundsatzpapier-kl... [2]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4isches_Institut_f%C3%BCr_Klima_%26_Energie https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4isches_Institut_f%C... [3]: https://www.quarks.de/podcast/quarks-science-cops-der-fall-eike-so-dreist-tricksen-klimawandel-verharmloser/ https://www.quarks.de/podcast/quarks-science-cops-der-fall-e... [4]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&week=32&legendItems=11111111111111100&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&... [5]: https://app.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiewirtschaft-dauer-der-ausfaelle-auf-rekordtief-das-deutsche-stromnetz-ist-so-zuverlaessig-wie-nie/27541356.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-de-DE&ticket=ST-9678295-m2k2U3L9VJI3exOepQDr-cas01.example.org https://app.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiewirt...
clomond 5y ago
An attempt at a serious answer now that it looks like you fixed the units in your post. One key part is recognizing that “energy TRANSITION” accounts inherently that we are not talking about the design of the final end state 50-100 years from now, as doing so is not useful to the conversation as there are too many unknowns that far ahead. Better to recognize that you do not need 1:1 mapping of energy storage to power usage requirements in this “toy” example as fulfilled by li-ion production. In practice: - Solar and wind generation compliment each other structurally (sunnier when less windy, windier at night, seasonally too) meaning that in practice you only need a fraction of power capacity per amount of solar and wind generation. The best summary I’ve come across for this is some of Tony Seba’s/RethinkX’s work on “super power”[1] - it is always sunny or windy somewhere. More renewables increase the incentive for deeper and longer distance grid interconnections, meaning continental differences in generation can be “smoothed out” - li-ion energy storage is great for same day fluctuations(storage measured in hours), less so for longer. Other energy storage tech platforms have different economic properties leading to more sensible deployments (the other end of the spectrum is making hydrogen gas via electrolyzer to then convert back via fuel cell - best for storage measured in months) - You also need to factor in the nuclear and hydroelectric sources existing 50 years from now, as well as the natural gas to bridge the variability until then. Could go on but there is lots out there discussing the involvement and feasibility of having a very renewables heavy grid. The key thing is that we need to build as much of all renewables, in as many places as possible ASAP. Penetration of both solar and wind as we can already see can operate well on grids with virtually 0 energy storage. Worst case you can always curtail production. Curtailed production represents someone’s energy storage opportunity. [1] summary/intro - but read source material https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/01/16/solar-wind-storage-superpower/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/01/16/solar-wind-storage-su...
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  It's not that easy, if you consider the environmental issues with digging down large power cables, creating power converters for every single unit, maintenance and replacing after 20 years, employment and network balancing - compared to a single nuclear facility that lasts up to 80 year, it's an order of magnitude easier to maintain, convert and install. There's been studies and books written on the subject [0], sources at the end. [0] https://www.analys.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lcaer-om-karnkraft-i-debatten-rapport2018.pdf https://www.analys.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lcaer-om-ka...
mikaeluman 5y ago
Yes we will of course need nuclear. But our ministers in charge claim it's an "old" technology. Makes me wonder if they ever go sailing...
yxhuvud 5y ago
Regarding feeding > The Swedish fossil-free steel (& Direct-Reduced Iron) manufacture (9000 MW) with wind power, then yes, it make total sense. What most of that energy consumption is used for is splicing water to hydrogen (which is then later on used in the steel process). Having a couple of weeks of hydrogen in a buffer may not be totally free or problem free, but it is quite straightforward and totally feasible. That means the electricity demand can become very elastic and sensitive to demand, which is a great feature for electric stability. If production would need to shut down due to lack of wind then there is a need to build a bigger buffer.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  The steel plant isn’t built along the south coast though, where the wind turbines will be, it’s built in the opposite end of Sweden (boden).
  - cinntaile 5y ago
    The north of Sweden is exactly where most of the big wind turbine parks will be. You have plenty of open space and limited NIMBY. NIMBY is also the reason why you were under the impression that most turbines are going to end up in the south of Sweden, it leads to disproportional attention in the media.
    - tmikaeld 5y ago
      Hm, you're right, from the maps I saw in state media, it all looks like it would be along the south coasts and Germany's coast. But there's just as much if not even more MW going to the north!
      - cinntaile 5y ago
        It's probably a projection error as well. The normal maps really don't show how big the north of Sweden really is.
        5y ago

callesgg 5y ago

What are you even talking about?

emptyfile 5y ago
Electrical power supply.
bjoli 5y ago
All the green projects (steel, batteries etc ...) are estimated to need over 40TWH/yr if they come to fruition. That is a shitload of energy that meeds to be produced, and there is really no good answer to how to do it reliably. Most people that write like the parent does usually reply "nuclear". I am not comvinced, but somfar there seem to be few good answers.

brtkdotse 5y ago

I’m especially annoyed by the data centers. The politicians got taken for a ride, trading precious gigawatts of electrical infrastructure for a few dozens of jobs and a photo-op with a tier 3 VP from MANGA.

konschubert 5y ago
Sweden is a great place to produce hydro and wind. They should do more of that and then charge a good price for it. No need to be annoyed.
- brtkdotse 5y ago
  Hydro capacity is at max right now. The generation is less of a problem than transmission, a lot of new infrastructure needs to be built because data centers are hogging a lot of it. Oh, and the data center owners got a tax rebate on the electricity: > Sweden’s 2017 tax reform made a 97% tax cut on any electricity used by datacentres, which had the potential to reduce an individual datacentre’s total electricity bill by up to 40%. The country’s ministry of enterprise and innovation estimates that the datacentre industry saved €44m in energy consumption costs in 2018 because of the tax reduction. https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466488/Tax-changes-lead-to-review-of-Swedens-datacentre-development?amp=1 https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466488/Tax-changes-le...
  - b112 5y ago
    EU wants local datacentres, so EU data is local. Infrastructure remains (fibre, buildings) even if corps leave in a few years. It is hard to insist data be local, then make it less competitive to build local. This deal you cite, may address that.
    - brtkdotse 5y ago
      > EU wants local datacentres, so EU data is local. Not 100% up to speed but didn’t SCHREMS II basically say that a local data center isn’t enough?

gbrindisi 5y ago

where can I find those numbers?

fulafel 5y ago

Your claimed power levels are nonsensical. A big nuclear plant produces 1 GW. (edit: it was edited since, was talking about tens of TW before)

bjoli 5y ago
He/she means TWH. Hybrit (green steel) is estimated to use about as much energy as all the hydro power in luleälven (15TWH).
- cormacrelf 5y ago
  I don't think so. TWh (Terawatt-hours) are not units of power, but a convenient conversion from Joules (J), which measure work, aka energy. When you say "steel uses so-and-so TWH" you are omitting over how long a period it does that; if it's an annual figure or something, then that makes sense, but you can't omit that. If my house consumes 1MWh (Megawatt-hour) of energy in one year, then it's a normal house. If it draws the same amount in an hour, then my house is not a house but a mid-sized city. You shouldn't expect people to guess what time period you are talking about. You should see the error in describing "all the hydro power" in TWh, because it simply is not a measurement of power. Usually when you're talking about electricity generation, you are trying to weigh up demand and supply. These quantities are each most naturally represented as rates of energy use, because those rates fluctuate intra-day. We mostly care about the highest point of the graph of demand in a region over a 24-hour period, because you can't build a wind farm in an hour to meet extra demand. Using Watts avoids ever having to talk about the period in question. One Watt is one Joule of energy per second. The OP clarified in an edit that they mean Watts. When you're talking about batteries, yes, you do need absolute quantities. Currently they're only good for smoothing out small peaks and troughs in supply, so the absolute amount of energy is proportional to how long it can cover for a wind farm when the wind farm slows down. Note that when the article talks about production capacity being "60GWh per year", they don't mean watts; the batteries are presumably shipped without much energy in them. They mean "produce enough batteries that the amount of capacity in total is 60GWh". It says nothing about the energy it will take to build them, which you would measure in Watts so that you can plug it into the instantaneous supply-demand calculation. 60GWh only tells you how much total supply smoothing capacity it will be able to provide to customers. When you are talking about carbon emissions, you aren't as interested in peak demand, and you might instead think about absolute quantities in a year, and proportions of that that have been generated by renewable sources.

Phenomenit 5y ago

Isn't the point of building the manufacturing plant in the north to utilize abundant hydropower?

alkonaut 5y ago
That’s one factor yes, perhaps the most important. Power must be cheap and reliable. Other factors include having access to cooling water (a river), access to a port, railway, and obviously cheap land.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Maybe even two ports: Depending on the exact location, the railway could give access to Narvik, besides Luleå or whatever. Hmm, this all feels so familiar... Let's see if it becomes a repeat of the Stålverk 80 debacle. (Link in Swedish only: https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A5lverk_80 https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A5lverk_80)
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    I doubt it can be compared to that now, given how it's already a reality and in production (unlike that historic debacle)

thathndude 5y ago

I’m all for wind. But concerns like running at 1% capacity due to no wind for a month bring me back to nuclear time and time again. Like Elon says, we have this amazing thermonuclear reactor (the sun) that we can harness, among other resources. But we also have the ability to make thermonuclear reactors safely on the planet and harness 100x+ more of the energy from the reaction. Seems like a no brainer. Just to provide a couple cites that OP didn’t: A data center can use 100+ MW easily. https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-data-centers-really-use/ https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d... Nuclear Plants generate 500 MW- 1TW.

Hypocritelefty 5y ago
alex_duf 5y ago
wind alone can't. But wind, solar, inter-continental connections, hydro, storage, and tidal probably can. Now whether we put nuclear in there or not becomes a matter of cost rather than necessity.
ben-schaaf 5y ago
> But we also have the ability to make thermonuclear reactors safely on the plane We most certainly do not have the ability to make fusion reactors, at least not yet. Nuclear reactors on the other hand...
- Ygg2 5y ago
  I'd take a hundred Chernobyls over the end of modern society.
  - darthrupert 5y ago
    Exactly. Since we've used a lot of the oil dinosaurs graciously gave us, there's not gonna be another chance at modern civilization if we fuck this up. At least for us humans.

LeoPanthera 5y ago

You may be being downvoted because you have provided no citations or justifications for your claims, and because anti-electric shilling is, unfortunately, very common on the internet. The oil industry has really amazing PR. Is "TW" supposed to be a terawatt? Because that is an enormously large amount of power. Annual human global power consumption is only 20TW. (Edit: Since I replied to this, you changed your units, and provided sources which I haven't yet checked.) Obviously, wind and solar cannot provide constant power, as fossil fuels can, but by building them in carefully selected locations, and combining them grid energy storage (which can be, but does not have to be, batteries[1]), un-evenness in supply can be smoothed out. [1]: Pumped storage hydroelectricity is another example.

tmikaeld 5y ago
Yeah, I changed the units to be clearer.
- maxnoe 5y ago
  Clearer? You shrank them by 3 orders of magnitude aka a factor of 1000. That's not "clearer", that's a huge adjustment.
  - tmikaeld 5y ago
    I'm sorry, the units where wrong, it's been corrected. It should, of course be 1GW = 1000 MW, to be clearer I changed it to MW.
    - stavros 5y ago
      Where was the terawatt? I only see tens of gigawatts in the new numbers.
    - maxnoe 5y ago
      No, they are not the same. You exchanged 10 TW with 10,000 MW. 10,000 MW = 10 GW = 0.01 TW.
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ginko 5y ago

At least the fossil-free steel is reduced with green hydrogen made through on-site electrolysis. That means a local hydrogen store can act as an energy buffer offsetting some of the fluctuations in the grid.

lstodd 5y ago
That is interesting. As you must know, steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, the carbon in question coming from, you know, coal. So how exactly it can be "fossil-free"?
- alkonaut 5y ago
  Fossil free steel is steel produced by not burning carbon in the process. It simply means it doesn’t burn fossil fuels and emit (fossil) CO2. Carbon can still be used for the alloy itself. That’s not an environmental problem.
- adrianN 5y ago
  "fossil free steel" is a marketing term which means that (fossil) carbon is no longer used for reduction and process heat. This accounts for the vast majority of the carbon needed in steel production.
- Jolter 5y ago
  Carbon that is absorbed into the alloy will stay there for a long time. Until the metal rusts away completely, which is ideally decades at least. But you’re right that it’s not stored indefinitely, it does go into the atmosphere eventually.

maxnoe 5y ago

Your numbers and/or units are wrong. Sweden's power consumption in 2020 was 172.7 TWh [0]. That's an average power supply of 19.7 GW (172.7e3 GWh / 365 / 24h). So either you show numbers for annual consumption but have the wrong unit (TW where it should be TWh) or your numbers are absurdly high. [0]https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject-area/energy/energy-supply-and-use/annual-energy-statistics-electricity-gas-and-district-heating/pong/tables-and-graphs/electricity-supply-and-use-20012020-gwh/ https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subje...

tmikaeld 5y ago
Units where unclear, it's been corrected. Numbers are correct though, see the sources.

silvestrov 5y ago

Sweden and Norway has a lot of hydro power. When wind mills in Denmark are running then Norway stops their hydro and imports cheap electricity from the Danish wind mills. They save up the water. When the Danish wind mills stands still then Norway sells expensive electricity from hydro. Denmark is a very good place for wind mills so the combination is a win-win. It's crazy to look independently at each country because that is not how the electricity market works in Northern Europe. The countries are very interconnected. It just so happends that the wind often blows during the day in Denmark and stand stills during night. So this back and forth happends almost every day. When you ignore hydro power in NO/SE it shows that you don't know anything about the electricity market in Northern Europe.

dzhiurgis 5y ago
Does interconnect serve 100% required capacity? IIRC in a lot of places they are like 10-20% tops.
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rekoil 5y ago
It is true that we have a lot of hydro power, however it is pretty much fully utilised as it stands (they're talking about hundreds of additional MW when they talk about expansion, which will not do much in the grand scheme of things), and with all of this additional load, as well as fast ongoing electrification of our vehicles, it seems unlikely that additional wind farms will be able to pick up the slack. Obviously I'm hoping I'm wrong here, because the alternative is nuclear which is apparently still a no-no word in most political circuits over here, and thus is unlikely to happen. Even if nuclear were to happen, ramping it upp will take much longer than the pace of this additional industry and electrification... I'm worried we're going to end up in a crisis where we have to build up capacity quickly, and the only reliable and fast way of doing so is through fossil fuels.
- tmikaeld 5y ago
  According to "Energikommissionen"s research, Swedish hydro could be greatly built out with minimal effects on the environment. [0] (2015 article) https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/dags-att-bygga-ut-vattenkraften-6344594 https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/dags-att-bygga-ut-vattenkraf...

Seanambers 5y ago

On demand power generation is going to be key in any attempt to transition to a (more) renewable energy mix. What Storage options exists today that can produce substantial amounts of power other than pumped hydro? The utter disregard for what works is insane. In Norway which basically is the land of hydro prices has spiked 3-5X because Germany and UK decided to fuck up their power generation and decommission a bunch of nuclear and fossil plants making them reliant on wind and russian gas.

fifilura 5y ago
> other than pumped hydro What your reason to exclude pumped hydro in this logical reasoning? And also regular hydro power as a storage already complements wind power since you can choose to not use it when there is wind. You don't need to pump the water.
7952 5y ago
The UK is not reliant on Russian gas. Most imports come from Norway. And we have an active program to build new nuclear power stations to replace those at end of life. Also, the UK currently has 20GW of battery storage in the pipeline. It starts quickly and is even being designed for frequency response providing full load within 1 second. That is very useful in dealing with nuclear or grid failures.

samwillis 5y ago

> How is that going to work, do they plan on shutting down production when there's no wind? This isn’t completely mad. We are entering a new era of power where it’s price is going to fluctuate throughout the day/week (more than before) and industry will scale up and down depending on price/availability. Automated production lines are “easy” to start/stop. I think we will also see compute pricing in the cloud react dynamically to cost of power. It makes more sense to run compute intensive (none real-time) tasks during peak power availability.

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tmikaeld 5y ago
That's if you can assume that peak usage can be supplied, if it can't, there will be a loss of frequency (<50hz). When that happens, entire regions have to be forcefully shutdown, meaning there's no electricity to use even if you wanted to. Sweden have been dangerously close to this already, I expect it to happen now when the real winter starts.
- samwillis 5y ago
  My point is that prices will be dynamically raised as 100% usage is approached. That way larger energy users in industry are pushed to scale down operations temporarily. Already governments/suppliers have agreements with large users to scale down during peek usage to ensure no loss of frequency, my suggestion is this is expanded to the whole of industry and made dynamic based on pricing. I suspect that some consumer protection would need to be introduced so domestic customers don’t see quite the same level of price fluctuation.
  - tmikaeld 5y ago
    My point was that, if you stop and start frequently, the balance of the network will be extremely hard to maintain so you'll get blackouts that can span wide areas or even the whole net. Even if that wasn't the case, I'm not sure that Swedish industries CAN scale down even if they wanted to, because the cost to start up again would be greater than shutting down.

rob_c 5y ago

From pointing out that renewable isn't the whole story yet in the past on here good luck with not getting down voted. There needs to be a solid configurable baseline that is low carbon which is combined with some transient energy store such as these batteries (if they're designed to not just make giant fire mountains when they fail). Nuclear meets that very well as does diversifying into wave or hydro.

gameswithgo 5y ago

Either they: have plenty of other power sources they can ramp up when there is no wind plan to use large scale storage some combination of the above or it will not work.

Gwypaas 5y ago

Thankfully HYBRIT is a smart consumer with the explicit goal of taking advantage of cheap wind power. The hydrogen production is oversized to allow a buffer to be used. What sweden sorely needs is off-shore wind power which has higher capacity factors and do not completely correlate with on-shore wind. Currently there is only one miniscule park located in Öresund. Hopefully the military soon starts agreeing to some projects...

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

You had time to look up all these links with big scary numbers, but couldn't take the time to find out how wind power works as part of an integrated low carbon grid? Your own link shows the hydro working to complement wind. Mentioning that wind isn't constant is about as insightful as the regular "sun doesn't shine at night" input whenever solar comes up. The giant billion dollar global industry that has been building out renewables at an increasing rate for decades has, somewhat unsurprisingly, already spotted those two facts. It baffles me that people keep bringing them up like they've won an argument by revealing the big secret that everyone is ignoring. btw your wind capacity figure is correct, for 2017, but it's doubled in the 5 years since, just like it doubled the 5 years before.

tmikaeld 5y ago
How you complement something doesn't matter if the total capacity isn't there and if multiple countries are all consuming their energy, which is currently happening (this driving prices waaay up), you're looking at potential grid shutdowns due to networks not being able to maintain their frequency. Also, if you go below or too high in frequency, which can happen often in the summer with renewables (like in Germany, you got paid to use the electricity), you're unable to export it because, again, the frequency won't match the other countries grid. Germany shutting down 10GW of nuclear in 2022 is going the an interesting experiment in how bad it can go when you don't have enough planable electricity any more. [0] https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinahe-blackout/ https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinah... Not sure why the 2017 figure matters, if it's 1% of capacity it's still a fraction of total capacity if it's 2x or 5x more.
- lima 5y ago
  See comment below about the linked article being part of a misinformation campaign: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29736480 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29736480
  - tmikaeld 5y ago
    Thanks for pointing it out, I can't edit the comments any more.

jillesvangurp 5y ago

The simplest explanation of why Sweden is not plagued by regular massive blackouts is that your facts, math, and assumptions are wrong/incomplete. Simply put, it's not a closed system. Sweden is connected to the rest of Europe. So, German, Danish, British, Norwegian, etc. grids can import and export power as needed. The entire continent of Europe produces wind (and other power) at a pretty steady and predictable pace. Power is big business since selling it in the market is pretty lucrative. And since wind is pretty affordable, a lot of the supply is wind based these days. Basically, Sweden can produce cheap power locally most of the time and import more expensive power when they need to. Having a surplus means they export more power than that they import over time. It's just market dynamics. Because the way weather works, if there is no wind locally, that just means there definitely is some wind elsewhere. That's why Europe gets away with having so much wind power. The amount of wind power it produces fluctuates but not nearly as dramatically as you seem to believe. It's a rapidly growing market because as you note there is plenty of demand for more power. Hence, the rapid roll out of the cheapest way to produce it world wide: wind.

tmikaeld 5y ago
Yes, it is connected, which means that when multiple countries are at a loss, then other can help out - but when all countries area at a loss or when the frequency don't match, which is currently happening, prices sky-rocket, electricity cannot be transported and black-outs are bound to happen unless turning to regional shut-downs. Which, by the way, is what happened in Germany recently [0], they had to be saved by multiple countries, shut down of large industry (Costing a lot in damage) - all to prevent black-outs. How will that be handled when Germany shuts down 10GW of nuclear power 2022, if it's already not enough? If you have 0% wind and you add 0% more wind, you get 0% wind... [0] https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinahe-blackout/ https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinah... Not sure how different facts would help, when issues are actually happening.
- lima 5y ago
  You probably didn't realize, but EIKE is a right-wing climate change denier "think tank", falsely claiming that antrophogenic climate change does not exist[1]. Their claims are widely discredited and considered pseudoscience[2][3]. The linked article is an alarmist piece about the alleged risks of renewables and does not quote any reliable sources. I couldn't find any independent claim that anything unusual or alarming happened on August 14. Load shedding is a normal procedure and almost certainly didn't cause "a lot of damage" - it's industrial customers buying electricity at a discount in exchange for disconnecting from the grid when needed. This is only done for industrial processes that can be safely interrupted (like aluminium processing plants). If anything, it shows that the mechanism works as intended. There wasn't any notable frequency deviation on Aug 14 in the European grid. All the graphs look normal - there was a ~15 GW deficit in Germany which was compensated[4], well within normal operating parameters. In spite of the increasing complexity of managing the power grid due to renewables (a real problem which requires significant investments to solve), the German power grid is more reliable than ever[5]. [1]: https://eike-klima-energie.eu/die-mission/grundsatzpapier-klima https://eike-klima-energie.eu/die-mission/grundsatzpapier-kl... [2]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4isches_Institut_f%C3%BCr_Klima_%26_Energie https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4isches_Institut_f%C... [3]: https://www.quarks.de/podcast/quarks-science-cops-der-fall-eike-so-dreist-tricksen-klimawandel-verharmloser/ https://www.quarks.de/podcast/quarks-science-cops-der-fall-e... [4]: https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&week=32&legendItems=11111111111111100&stacking=stacked_absolute_area https://energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&... [5]: https://app.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiewirtschaft-dauer-der-ausfaelle-auf-rekordtief-das-deutsche-stromnetz-ist-so-zuverlaessig-wie-nie/27541356.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-de-DE&ticket=ST-9678295-m2k2U3L9VJI3exOepQDr-cas01.example.org https://app.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiewirt...

clomond 5y ago

An attempt at a serious answer now that it looks like you fixed the units in your post. One key part is recognizing that “energy TRANSITION” accounts inherently that we are not talking about the design of the final end state 50-100 years from now, as doing so is not useful to the conversation as there are too many unknowns that far ahead. Better to recognize that you do not need 1:1 mapping of energy storage to power usage requirements in this “toy” example as fulfilled by li-ion production. In practice: - Solar and wind generation compliment each other structurally (sunnier when less windy, windier at night, seasonally too) meaning that in practice you only need a fraction of power capacity per amount of solar and wind generation. The best summary I’ve come across for this is some of Tony Seba’s/RethinkX’s work on “super power”[1] - it is always sunny or windy somewhere. More renewables increase the incentive for deeper and longer distance grid interconnections, meaning continental differences in generation can be “smoothed out” - li-ion energy storage is great for same day fluctuations(storage measured in hours), less so for longer. Other energy storage tech platforms have different economic properties leading to more sensible deployments (the other end of the spectrum is making hydrogen gas via electrolyzer to then convert back via fuel cell - best for storage measured in months) - You also need to factor in the nuclear and hydroelectric sources existing 50 years from now, as well as the natural gas to bridge the variability until then. Could go on but there is lots out there discussing the involvement and feasibility of having a very renewables heavy grid. The key thing is that we need to build as much of all renewables, in as many places as possible ASAP. Penetration of both solar and wind as we can already see can operate well on grids with virtually 0 energy storage. Worst case you can always curtail production. Curtailed production represents someone’s energy storage opportunity. [1] summary/intro - but read source material https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/01/16/solar-wind-storage-superpower/ https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2021/01/16/solar-wind-storage-su...

tmikaeld 5y ago
It's not that easy, if you consider the environmental issues with digging down large power cables, creating power converters for every single unit, maintenance and replacing after 20 years, employment and network balancing - compared to a single nuclear facility that lasts up to 80 year, it's an order of magnitude easier to maintain, convert and install. There's been studies and books written on the subject [0], sources at the end. [0] https://www.analys.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lcaer-om-karnkraft-i-debatten-rapport2018.pdf https://www.analys.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lcaer-om-ka...

mikaeluman 5y ago

Yes we will of course need nuclear. But our ministers in charge claim it's an "old" technology. Makes me wonder if they ever go sailing...

yxhuvud 5y ago

Regarding feeding > The Swedish fossil-free steel (& Direct-Reduced Iron) manufacture (9000 MW) with wind power, then yes, it make total sense. What most of that energy consumption is used for is splicing water to hydrogen (which is then later on used in the steel process). Having a couple of weeks of hydrogen in a buffer may not be totally free or problem free, but it is quite straightforward and totally feasible. That means the electricity demand can become very elastic and sensitive to demand, which is a great feature for electric stability. If production would need to shut down due to lack of wind then there is a need to build a bigger buffer.

tmikaeld 5y ago
The steel plant isn’t built along the south coast though, where the wind turbines will be, it’s built in the opposite end of Sweden (boden).
- cinntaile 5y ago
  The north of Sweden is exactly where most of the big wind turbine parks will be. You have plenty of open space and limited NIMBY. NIMBY is also the reason why you were under the impression that most turbines are going to end up in the south of Sweden, it leads to disproportional attention in the media.
  - tmikaeld 5y ago
    Hm, you're right, from the maps I saw in state media, it all looks like it would be along the south coasts and Germany's coast. But there's just as much if not even more MW going to the north!
    - cinntaile 5y ago
      It's probably a projection error as well. The normal maps really don't show how big the north of Sweden really is.
      - 5y ago