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Yes, it would be nice if that forced us to increase fission power generation, but it's more likely just another large obstacle for fusion power. Practical Engineering did a great video on the building of ITER reactor. One eye-opener was the discussion about field coil manufacturing at 6:20. These components are so large they can't be build offsite. If a fusion plant needs specialized manufacturing facilities onsite it really doen't sound like something every city would have. Or even smaller countries. Fusion power is such a huge and long endeavour that I feel we are better of concentrating on building solar and wind power, energy storage and reducing energy consumption. After we have solved the climate crisis we can then take another look at fusion and see if we can make energy cheaper.
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Dec 25, 2023 15:43
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 19:38 |
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We need two simple rules. Increasing CO2 is forbidden and your power plant needs to provide stable power at all times. The industry can then decide if they want to build renewables with large scale storage, nuclear, or coal plant with proven sequestration system.
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Dec 26, 2023 15:47
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The electricity price fluctuations aren't because of our reliance on wind power. It's because we have been reliant on imports from Russian nuclear power plants and those are not available anymore. This isn't our first hellishly cold winter and the estimates for Friday were that we don't even quite reach a new record in consumption. In previous times we didn't have wind power either and Olkiluoto 3 wasn't operational, but Sosnovy Bor was churning all the electricity we wanted. I don't like your idea of using some other source than wind power, because it would make everyone's electricity bill higher on average. Even your fixed price contract would be noticeably more expensive since the power company couldn't rely on the regular availability of cheap wind power. After all, Finland doesn't really have cheap options unless we decide to replace all the wind power and imports with coal power, and even that would probably be a bit more expensive. Our other options would nuclear power, natural gas or peat power plants. Nuclear would obviously be the best option, but we would have had to build couple new plants every decade to retain the knowledge, we would have had to make that decision 50 years ago and stick to it. No point crying over the missed opportunity. Natural gas wouldn't help either, too expensive option without the Russian imports. Peat is considered about as bad as coal, and it would also have severe ecological impact in Finland if we did it at required scale. There's a website that Finns who are thinking about spot electricity should check out, [url]https://liukuri.fi/laskuri[url]. You can download your historical consumption data from Fingrid and upload it to the site and it will calculate how bit the cost difference would have been against a fixed price contract. The biggest question Friday's prices have raised me is, what kind of power plant is selling electricity at 235 cents per kWh? Is there a company running around buying all the AA batteries they can find from grocery stores and wiring them to the grid?! If a power plant's production costs are over 2€/kWh they simply can't exist, they would be able to sell electricity maybe once a decade. I can't think of a plant technology that would suffer such a catastrophic rise in costs because of cold weather. And it would seem overtly risky to offer your electricity for such a price with the assumption that no one can underbid them. I had the opposite question during the Kinect Energy debacle. The way I understood electricity market it didn't seem possible for a single company to drive the price that low, even if their bid had minus one million per kWh. Kinect Energy's offer on that day was for a bit under 6GW and Finland's demand was around 12GW. So the price should have been set by the remaining 6GW offered by other companies that didn't make erronous bids. But then I read and article that explained this issue. I learned that's Finland's old nuclear plants and some other plants that can't adjust their production always do "unlimited" bids. They offer to sell their production no matter how low the price will fall. So Kinect Energy and these unlimited was enough to cover all the demand and we got weird day of electricity.
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Jan 5, 2024 03:17
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Phanatic posted:Is it importing energy from places that are burning coal or natural gas or wood pellets? Almost all of the import is from Sweden, or Norway through Sweden. Currently about 10% of imports are from Estonia which probably includes shale oil production. Usually Finland exports to Estonia. https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market/power-system/
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Jan 5, 2024 03:24
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The price spike in Finland isn't only caused by the expected lack of wind power. There are also three power plants unexpectedly offline due to malfunctions and we are missing 1GW of production from them. One of them is Finland's largest and most modern coal power plant in Meri-Pori, another is either bio fuel or natural gas plant in Vuosaari. Third plant is in Ääneskoski, but I haven't been able to figure out what type it is. Hydro plant? This reminds me of the situation in Texas where many people blamed wind power, but as much or even bigger blame went for all the fossil fuel plants that malfunctioned due to the cold weather.
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Jan 5, 2024 13:28
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His Divine Shadow posted:From a strategic perspective IMO it would be better if each country tried to be as independent as it feasbly can in the area of power generation, rather than relying on neighbors. Yes, that would probably be useful if we plan to go to war with Sweden. But why do you want to raise your electricity bill so much? Thanks to the energy market and wind and hydro power from Sweden and Norway we have enjoyed exceptionally cheap electricity for couple decades already. Any other power source would have been more expensive. If the peak prices concern you so much, then put the savings you get from cheap summer electricity to piggybank and use them to cover January costs. If you want expensive electricity just use fixed contract but don't mess things for the rest of us. One option to contain peak costs would be if state of Fingrid bought power plants near decommission and used them to offer electricity for 50c/kWh or so. The practical problem of course is how to keep the plants in working condition if they are unused most of the year.
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Jan 6, 2024 15:13
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So the question about how big of a catastrophe was Friday for industry, and the answer seems to be it was a non-issue. Industry has bought electricity at fixed price. Related question is how huge profits did power companies amass during the price catastrophe, and the answer also seems to be largely not. A majority of the production has been sold way in advanced for fixed prices. On Saturday Helsingin Sanomat published an article (finnish) on the matter. As an example they used Fortum, Finland's largest(?) energy company. For the October-December 2023 period they had sold 75% of their electricity production for 5c/kWh. Of the 2024 production 65% had already been sold in last October for 4.7c/kWh. Fortum also had reported that they received an average of 6.5c/kWh for the electricity sold between January and September. The article estimated that maybe 2GW of the production is sold at market price. Hydro power is most easily adjusted and so it's also the most valuable. HS also published an article (finnish) discussing whether matters should be taken to curtail such excessive price spikes. In the past 20 years almost all of coal and natural gas generation has disappeared from the market due to EU carbon trading. The 1300MW transmission line to Russia was also turned off year and a half ago which had reduced adjustability. Government agenda includes idea about capacity mechanism, buying spare generation to balance peaks. The article interviews energy markets professor Honkapuro. In his opinion this kind of mechanism could be integrated in the energy markets even if it's tricky, but it would be an expensive fix a problem that doesn't exist. "If there has been enough electricity through the whole cricis and prices are low on average why would the spare capacity be needed." If the spare capacity is built we will have to pay for it in every hour. According to Honkapuro from system perspective it's preferable if the adjustment happens at consumption end. The price volatility also makes it profitable to build energy storage systems. "The principles of energy market worked as they should. When prices rise the consumption drops and balance is restored." This adjustment was in effect on Friday. For almost the whole week electricity consumption had been close to 1GW higher than estimated. On Thursday they evened out and on Friday consumption was 1GW below estimates. Graph attached, black is consumption, red estimate. I witnessed this myself. I'm vacationing on my sister's place, a modern house equipped with heat pump and spot electricity. On Friday thermostats were turned down, floor heating off, fire place lit and any other non-drastic way to curtail in effect. As a result the consumption was about half what it had been on Monday. Friday still cost about weeks worth of electricity, but they still saved about 40€. The article concludes with an explanation for the price volatily in Finland. We are located between two regions of price extremes. When Finland has plenty of domestic production prices are dictated by cheap Northern Sweden. When production is lacking we get prices from very expensive Baltic countries.
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Jan 6, 2024 23:53
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Matt Ferrell did an interesting video of the concept of two-sided solar panels installed vertically in east-west orientation, bifacial vertical solar panels. I hadn't thought that kind of installation could be viable. Apparently they produce more electricity than one might expect and their production peaks in the morning and evening, so they could help a bit to alleviate the duck curve. A company making the investment for a large installation might not be willing to settle for reduced total, but if the price increase during evening was big enough, maybe. Have we been doing Solar wrong all along? - Undecided with Matt Ferrell GABA ghoul posted:There are vast numbers of other insane claims like them eradicating bird populations, their shadows disturbing wildlife, etc. Admittedly, the wind turbine's effect on wildlife does seem to be one of the bigger cons with them, animals really do seem to avoid them and this reduces their habitat. Natural Resources Institute Finland released a systemic review on the issue few months ago, taking account 84 studies in 22 countries. How far are birds, bats, and terrestrial mammals displaced from onshore wind power development? A study by Groningen University found that even earth worms are reduced by 40% near turbines, possibly because they are sensitive to the increased vibratios. quote:Wind power is a rapidly growing source of energy worldwide. It is crucial for climate change mitigation, but it also accelerates the degradation of biodiversity through habitat loss and the displacement of wildlife. To understand the extent of displacement and reasons for observations where no displacement is reported, we conducted a systematic review of birds, bats, and terrestrial mammals. Eighty-four peer-reviewed studies of onshore wind power yielded 160 distinct displacement distances, termed cases. For birds, bats, and mammals, 63 %, 72 %, and 67 % of cases respectively reported displacement. Cranes (3/3 cases), owls (2/2), and semi-domestic reindeer (6/6) showed consistent displacement on average up to 5 km. Gallinaceus birds showed displacement on average up to 5 km, but in 7/18 cases reported to show “no displacement”. Bats were displaced on average up to 1 km in 21/29 cases. Waterfowl (6/7 cases), raptors (24/30), passerines (16/32) and waders (8/19) were displaced on average up to 500 m. Observations of no displacement were suggested to result from methodological deficiencies, species-specific characteristics, and habitat conditions favorable for certain species after wind power development. Displacement-induced population decline could be mitigated by situating wind power in low-quality habitats, minimizing the small-scale habitat loss and collisions, and creating high-quality habitats to compensate for habitat loss. This review provides information on distance thresholds that can be employed in the design of future wind energy projects. However, most studies assessed the effects of turbine towers of <100 m high, while considerably larger turbines are being built today.
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Feb 11, 2024 13:33
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Phanatic posted:It bugs the hell out of me that for the big countries the indicator is centered on the bar, for smaller countries it's at the bottom of the bar, and I can't tell WTF with Estonia and Luxembourg and Malta. The bar for Estonia is actually barely visible between Italy and Poland. I think Cyprus, Luxembourg and Malta are just so thin they are not visible.
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Feb 23, 2024 01:23
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 19:38 |
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Leakage is a problem with the losses, but apparently hydrogen leakage may also have adverse effects in the environment. I think we need to figure out how big of a problem this really is before expanding hydrogen economy. Risk of the hydrogen economy for atmospheric methane
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Mar 22, 2024 04:34
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