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> 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

> 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.
    - lstodd 5y ago
      It's like, surely you can "scale down" an electric smelter. Only that would mean almost rebuilding the furnaces afterwards. And it's sort of "simple" for the iron smelters. Try to shut down an aluminium smelter at an hour's notice. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be cheaper to build a completely new facility afterwards.
      - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
        Many such smelters already act as grid connected batteries. Since they store heat, they can vary their electrical loads and get paid for doing so. Pretty much anything that heats, cools or pumps water can do this, but the big users are the easy place to start. There's even startups trying to melt aluminum purely to use it as a storage medium: https://www.alcircle.com/news/azelio-recycled-aluminium-to-store-solar-energy-batteries-unwanted-57070 https://www.alcircle.com/news/azelio-recycled-aluminium-to-s...
        lstodd 5y ago
        Eh. I'm talking about primary smelters, the ones that take bauxite as input. You just can't. It'll ruin the chemical composition, the electolysers, you'll have to throw out (somehow, very expensive in itself) a lot of fluoride in various nasty forms, electrolyzer lining, electrodes, etc. This would cause weeks of delays and $ tens of millions lost. It just can't be done. And it's never done unless a hydroelectric dam fails or something of that magnitude. alcircle.com is just barely less insane. but just barely. Even NaK eutectic makes more sense.
        tmikaeld 5y ago
        I've seen similar by Salt-X, they use molten salt. Glad science is being done on this, but it seems hard, the salt causes korrosion issues, so it doesn't last long.
- erk__ 5y ago
  Do you have any sources on the claim that it have been close to causing loss of frequency? In Denmark that relies quite a bit more on wind they are saying that it should happen for no more than 5 minutes this year (and that may higher than what actual happens, as they have averaged less than 1 minute per year the last 10 years). Furthermore the ENTSOE Mid-term Adequacy Forecast 2020 [0] forecasts Scandinavia to have between 0 and 0.1 hour loss of load expectation. [0]: https://www.entsoe.eu/outlooks/midterm/ https://www.entsoe.eu/outlooks/midterm/
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
doikor 5y ago
There is a lot of industrial processes that take hours or days to ramp down or up and sudden loss of electricity breaks equipment/infrastructure. Yes they have local batteries/generators for backup but those should not be used during "normal" operations.
- samwillis 5y ago
  Quite true, and those industries would need to either adapt to a new energy pricing model or innovate on technology to be able to scale more rapidly. Just because there is a status quo doesn’t mean that change cannot and should not happen.
  - doikor 5y ago
    Here in Finland they innovated a long time ago by building/owning more electricity production capability than they use and selling to themselves "at cost" instead of market rate when it makes sense. This also ties into the nuclear reactors (and the new OL3 reactors) where the parts of the industry that use lots of electricity (paper/cardboard/cellulose here in Finland) are the biggest single owners. Basically they want to be damn sure they can get the electricity they need when they need it at a price they can still make a profit from whatever they use it for.
  - kabes 5y ago
    Which probably means just running more generators.
  - WanderPanda 5y ago
    Which probably also means they will not be competitive with foreign companies
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    And price accordingly. It's only logical that the price of energy input is reflected in product price.
    - 5y ago
rocqua 5y ago
I don't think many production lines are going to be start stop. If your production line is only running 70% of the time, and all of your running costs actually scale with that (which they almost certainly wouldn't), then you are still looking at 30% less return on capital investment. And most high energy consumption industry has massive capital requirements. Instead I think the adaptation will be in energy storage (both at consumer and producer) and simple energy overprovisioning. I have hopes for storage. Especially low efficiency but incredibly cheap and scalable storage. If we can store 30% of wind surplus in summer and use it in winter, that would be amazing. It would also help ensure energy security.

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.
  - lstodd 5y ago
    It's like, surely you can "scale down" an electric smelter. Only that would mean almost rebuilding the furnaces afterwards. And it's sort of "simple" for the iron smelters. Try to shut down an aluminium smelter at an hour's notice. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be cheaper to build a completely new facility afterwards.
    - ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Many such smelters already act as grid connected batteries. Since they store heat, they can vary their electrical loads and get paid for doing so. Pretty much anything that heats, cools or pumps water can do this, but the big users are the easy place to start. There's even startups trying to melt aluminum purely to use it as a storage medium: https://www.alcircle.com/news/azelio-recycled-aluminium-to-store-solar-energy-batteries-unwanted-57070 https://www.alcircle.com/news/azelio-recycled-aluminium-to-s...
      - lstodd 5y ago
        Eh. I'm talking about primary smelters, the ones that take bauxite as input. You just can't. It'll ruin the chemical composition, the electolysers, you'll have to throw out (somehow, very expensive in itself) a lot of fluoride in various nasty forms, electrolyzer lining, electrodes, etc. This would cause weeks of delays and $ tens of millions lost. It just can't be done. And it's never done unless a hydroelectric dam fails or something of that magnitude. alcircle.com is just barely less insane. but just barely. Even NaK eutectic makes more sense.
      - tmikaeld 5y ago
        I've seen similar by Salt-X, they use molten salt. Glad science is being done on this, but it seems hard, the salt causes korrosion issues, so it doesn't last long.
erk__ 5y ago
Do you have any sources on the claim that it have been close to causing loss of frequency? In Denmark that relies quite a bit more on wind they are saying that it should happen for no more than 5 minutes this year (and that may higher than what actual happens, as they have averaged less than 1 minute per year the last 10 years). Furthermore the ENTSOE Mid-term Adequacy Forecast 2020 [0] forecasts Scandinavia to have between 0 and 0.1 hour loss of load expectation. [0]: https://www.entsoe.eu/outlooks/midterm/ https://www.entsoe.eu/outlooks/midterm/
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

doikor 5y ago

There is a lot of industrial processes that take hours or days to ramp down or up and sudden loss of electricity breaks equipment/infrastructure. Yes they have local batteries/generators for backup but those should not be used during "normal" operations.

samwillis 5y ago
Quite true, and those industries would need to either adapt to a new energy pricing model or innovate on technology to be able to scale more rapidly. Just because there is a status quo doesn’t mean that change cannot and should not happen.
- doikor 5y ago
  Here in Finland they innovated a long time ago by building/owning more electricity production capability than they use and selling to themselves "at cost" instead of market rate when it makes sense. This also ties into the nuclear reactors (and the new OL3 reactors) where the parts of the industry that use lots of electricity (paper/cardboard/cellulose here in Finland) are the biggest single owners. Basically they want to be damn sure they can get the electricity they need when they need it at a price they can still make a profit from whatever they use it for.
- kabes 5y ago
  Which probably means just running more generators.
- WanderPanda 5y ago
  Which probably also means they will not be competitive with foreign companies
- jacquesm 5y ago
  And price accordingly. It's only logical that the price of energy input is reflected in product price.
  - 5y ago

rocqua 5y ago

I don't think many production lines are going to be start stop. If your production line is only running 70% of the time, and all of your running costs actually scale with that (which they almost certainly wouldn't), then you are still looking at 30% less return on capital investment. And most high energy consumption industry has massive capital requirements. Instead I think the adaptation will be in energy storage (both at consumer and producer) and simple energy overprovisioning. I have hopes for storage. Especially low efficiency but incredibly cheap and scalable storage. If we can store 30% of wind surplus in summer and use it in winter, that would be amazing. It would also help ensure energy security.