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Finland's average electricity price slips into negative territory
- bell-cot 3y agoIdea: Convert a cargo ship into an Aluminum Smelter. Regularly relocate it to ports where the price of electricity is minimal or negative. Profit.
- jl6 3y agoOr site big batteries at every unthrottleable power plant.
- aenis 3y agoCheck the prices. At the current prices, they won't pay for themselves. I did the math on a 100kWH and a 10kWh battery assuming 60 days of negative energy prices (5 hours per each such day) and even assuming you can charge them fully within that window, you won't recover their cost in the 10 years they are guaranteed to work. Not even 1/3rd of their price. With abundant energy during sunny and windy days in Northern Europe, investing in panels or batteries is questionable at this point. Chances are, your neighbours are already subsidizing your energy consumption.
- captrb 3y agoUsing excess electricity to generate hydrogen would be ideal,right?
- flir 3y agoA vote for underwater compressed air energy storage here. Simpler and less dangerous all round than hydrogen.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoUnderwater? I’ve heard of underground compressed air storage, but not underwater.
- flir 3y agoBig balloon tethered to sea floor. Pump air in when you've got spare energy, hydrostatic pressure forces air back out when needed. The neat bit is that the air pressure doesn't tail off as the bag empties. Site near offshore windfarms and you don't need much more infrastructure.
- seanmcdirmid 3y agoOh, that sounds really workable! And you can store more energy in a smaller space due to the water pressure I guess.
- mhandley 3y agoThe main issue as I understand it is that you lose a lot of energy to heat if you just pump air straight in. To be efficient you need to chill the compressed air down to water temperature and store the heat before you pump the air underwater. Then add the heat back to the air when you release it from the balloon. This is all doable, but with all those heat pumps it's not quite as simple/cheap as it might seem.
- mywittyname 3y agoI suspect it helps with temperature regulation for the tanks.
- ActionHank 3y agoYou will need to pay for a whole lot of fuel.
- somedude895 3y agoAnd probably not get to the place in time.
- aenis 3y agoIn the NL, energy prices are settled a day earlier - at 3pm, if memory serves. That floating smelter needs to be quick.
- FourHand451 3y agoTo sail the ship around? I'd think the smelting operation would cover those costs.
- sesuximo 3y agoJust be careful not to dump the waste chemicals…
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fulafel 3y agoTransmission prices are a big chunk of the total per MWH cost even in times of normal prices. This is also why prices go negative in the first place, it costs money to use it. I wonder what reasonable alternatives there are to fixed transmission prices. Though probably in times of high production, transmission would be more likely to be a bottleneck and priced even higher...
- atemerev 3y agoWe have Bitcoin for that.
- aenis 3y agoIt's happening in the Netherlands over the last two weeks as well. Many days where there are a few hours during which energy is either free or you get paid to consume it. (Taxation still makes it hard to turn profit - each consumed kWh is taxed at 0.15c regardless). Basically, if there is sun and wind, energy is very cheap.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 3y agoToo bad there's no infrastructure in place for producing synthetic fuel with the surplus electricity. It might not be efficient, but if we're producing surplus electricity anyway, then even inefficient storage/usage won't be a waste.
- black_puppydog 3y agoCompared to any (currently practical) storage, just laying more wires to places that don't currently have too much wind/sun is much more efficient. Turns out, cables are relatively cheap, compared to batteries.
- mywittyname 3y agoHonestly, wasting the energy is cheap compared to batteries. It's okay to waste excess capacity so long as it is wind/solar/nuclear.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoHow cheap are international cables compared to electrolysis for hydrogen production paired with lorries for transport?
- whizzter 3y agoThe conversion ratio is quite bad, however if you MUST burn something (like in Steelmaking mentioned in the sibling comment) then it starts to make more sense but iirc it's still calculated to be slightly more expensive steel compared to coal currently (but if we continue building out variably producing power like wind, solar while augumenting the regular production the general idea is that the intermittent spikes could be used for affordable production).
- edf13 3y agoCrypto mining?
- anttisalmela 3y agoLast year, 2000 MW of wind power was built, at the end of the year total power was 5200 MW. Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor was brought online, 1600MW. Solar power nearly doubled, from 358 MW to 606 MW. So far this year 500MW of wind power and 100MW of solar has been added to the grid. Queries for grid connections pass already 100GW. Over twenty electrolysis plants are in planning.
- iandanforth 3y agoAny large battery installations you're aware of?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoNo large batteries (100MW+), but they are maxing out exporting power to Estonia constantly after that recent nuclear generator came online (which is leading to Estonia having a very clean carbon profile at the moment). Both countries recently signed a MOU to build an additional 1GW underwater HVDC interconnector ("EstLink3"), but it won't be done for a decade. "Too much clean energy" is a good problem to have! Probably means Finland can pull forward retiring the 2.6GW of coal generation capacity they have (which has been running somewhat consistently at <100MW with the latest nuclear generation addition). https://www.energy-storage.news/worlds-first-large-scale-sand-battery-goes-online-in-finland/ https://www.energy-storage.news/worlds-first-large-scale-san... https://elering.ee/en/elering-and-fingrid-launch-joint-activities-construction-estlink-3 https://elering.ee/en/elering-and-fingrid-launch-joint-activ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estlink https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estlink https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FI https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FI https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/EE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/EE (EDIT: my note: smaller batteries mentioned in other comments for grid support are helpful for phasing out thermal generation traditionally providing grid support services, like maintaining frequency or voltage, but aren't big enough for material energy arbitrage)
- Hamuko 3y agoThere's a 30 MWh one in Lappeenranta and there's a 36 MWh being built in Lempäälä. https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000009377977.html https://www.hs.fi/talous/art-2000009377977.html
- Gwypaas 3y agoThis shows why taking 15-20 years from decision to operational status, like nuclear power in the west does, is hugely risky. The world has moved past the need. Add on another 20-40 years to turn a profit and the prospects are laughable. > The output of Finland's newest nuclear power facility, Olkiluoto 3, has been significantly cut back because electricity has become too cheap, according to the plant's owner, Teollisuuden Voima (TVO). https://yle.fi/a/74-20032375 https://yle.fi/a/74-20032375
- troupo 3y ago> taking 15-20 years from decision to operational status, like nuclear power does, is hugely risky. It takes China 6 years to build a reactor, and they build them in parallel. > The world has moved past the need. Except when, you know, it's a quiet night
- Gwypaas 3y ago> It takes China 6 years to build a reactor, and they build them in parallel. China have a foot in the nuclear industry, but they are betting on renewables. Also, do you want to have a Chinese reactor in your backyard? Try the nimbyism for that! > Except when, you know, it's a quiet night The research is quite clear that designing a renewable energy system to handle nights is economical: > Much of the resistance towards 100% RE systems in the literature seems to come from the a-priori assumption that an energy system based on solar and wind is impossible since these energy sources are variable. Critics of 100% RE systems like to contrast solar and wind with ’firm’ energy sources like nuclear and fossil fuels (often combined with CCS) that bring their own storage. This is the key point made in some already mentioned reactions, such as those by Clack et al. [225], Trainer [226], Heard et al. [227] Jenkins et al. [228], and Caldeira et al. [275], [276]. However, while it is true that keeping a system with variable sources stable is more complex, a range of strategies can be employed that are often ignored or underutilized in critical studies: oversizing solar and wind capacities; strengthening interconnections [68], [82], [132], [143], [277], [278]; demand response [279], [172], e.g. smart electric vehicles charging using delayed charging or delivering energy back to the electricity grid via vehicle-to-grid [181], [280]– [282]; storage [40]– [43], [46], [83], [140], [142], such as stationary batteries; sector coupling [16], [39], [90]– [92], [97], [132], [216], e.g. optimizing the interaction between electricity, heat, transport, and industry; power-to-X [39], [106], [134], [176], e.g. producing hydrogen at moments when there is abundant energy; et cetera. Using all these strategies effectively to mitigate variability is where much of the cutting-edge development of 100% RE scenarios takes place. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9837910
- atemerev 3y agoToo cheap to meter, finally! Go nuclear.
- floitsch 3y agoThe current (and past) electricity prices in most of Europe can be found on nordpool. Three days ago, in Denmark, prices went as low as -41.37Eur/MWh (where 100Eur/MWh is a common price otherwise). https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-Prices/DK/Hourly/?dd=DK1&view=table https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/en/Market-data1/Dayahead/Area-... At the moment electricity is cheapest (and therefore greenest) in the afternoon. Probably because of solar (partially from Germany). https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE It's also great to see how much green energy Spain got recently.
- pelorat 3y agoNone of this is passed over to consumers, the difference is pocked by the providers. It doesn't matter if the price slips into negative, my provider charges me €0,394/KWh regardless (Eneco in the Netherlands).
- tialaramex 3y agoNowhere in Europe allow consumers to take the entire risk/ reward because it's unconscionable. If the actual price of electricity on the market soars to $10000 per MWh, and you need to run your dialysis machine, European politicians (unlike apparently Texans) don't think it's OK that you're now bankrupt. However, you can in several places choose to have a limited exposure, e.g. in the UK Octopus Energy will let you risk paying say £350/MWh at peak times, but also pay say -£50/MWh when it decides to blow a gale at 3am on an autumn night when most people are asleep. Both reward and (more significantly) risk are capped.
- Gwypaas 3y agoOf course you can. I have about a hundred options for hourly pricing here in Sweden. One company a few friends are using is Tibber. https://tibber.com/ https://tibber.com/
- tialaramex 3y ago
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]