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For a country, is being self-sufficient in electricity production necessarily a goal to strive for? It would make sense if you’re on bad terms with your neighb
by runeks 4y ago
For a country, is being self-sufficient in electricity production necessarily a goal to strive for?
It would make sense if you’re on bad terms with your neighboring countries. But if not, I think it makes a lot more sense to import power from abroad when it’s cheap there and expensive at home, and vice versa.
For example, Denmark has a lot of wind turbines so electricity is cheap here when there’s a lot of wind. Our neighboring country Norway has mountains, and therefore hydroelectric power plants. In periods where there is little wind in Denmark, and Norway is producing cheap power using hydroelectricity, it makes perfect sense for Denmark not to be self-sufficient, and instead import from Norway. And the same for Norway when Danish wind turbines are producing cheap power while their hydroelectric plants are running at low output.
- input_sh 4y agoFinland is on bad terms with its neighboring country. Specifically, the one to the east, mentioned two times in the article.
- simion314 4y agoBut your plan assumes that the 2 neighbors production is complementary, what is is a bad winter, the demand raises in both countries, wind turbines need to be stopped for some reason and not country B needs to beg from country A, so A needs now to decide if they sacrifice their citizens to help the ones in country B. You would need more then 2 countries to reduce the risks and you need some power plant that can work at a low capacity during the year but can fast go to full capacity to handle this cases, now this plants will not be profitable when running at idle/low capacity so you need some non-free-market program to keep them running.
- ftth_finland 4y agoWind turbines don’t have to be stopped, they will stop all on their own when there is calm and cold weather. It can go on for days, even weeks. As to stand-by generation, no need to grasp for non-free-market solutions. You just bid on stand-by generation capacity on the open market, problem solved.
- simion314 4y ago>As to stand-by generation, no need to grasp for non-free-market solutions. You just bid on stand-by generation capacity on the open market, problem solved. This could bite you in the ass if you don't negotiate a long term contract with giant penalties if you don't get the energy when demanded, but it will cost you a lot but yeah you can do it with free markets.
- vesinisa 4y agoAll of the continental Nordic countries, (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway) are already in a single unified transmission grid and electricity market (Nordpool). The other half of the article was about building a new link between Sweden and Finland. The self-sufficiency here is therefore purely mathematical. And yes, Finland definitely has one massive hostile neighbor who started this war and caused this energy crisis.
- doikor 4y agoAs a Finn I don't want to have my "do I freeze to death this winter" to be in the hands of any other foreign country be it friendly or not. Obviously it has not been in such a state for a long time but hopefully we can get there at some point.