Earlier quoted context omitted.
A political issue with this is that Northern Norway has been exempt from the 25% VAT as one of many measures to make living in Northern Norway more attractive. Until now the cost of power in both north and south has been pretty much the same, meaning people in power zone NO4 have paid about the same price for power, but not the VAT. But now that the price has gone up by such an enormous amount in the south, connectin…
This is a great post. This part: > and this part: > Ouch! Is this not enough to push for interconnect? Or will the electricity price increases prevent such a change? Alternatively, why hasn't more heavy industry been built in NO4 zone? Or is it not possible due to winter weather? I also heard that in Norway, a high percentage of electricty is generated from gravity (water dams). That would make aluminium production i…
Day ahead electricity prices for EU
561–570 of 596 posts
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#562Earlier quoted context omitted.
The water is never too hot to cool the reactors, it's too hot to release back into the river, for environmental reasons. Evaporative cooling solves that problem, but then you "lose" water, which is never great in a heat wave. A nuclear plant using sea water never stops due to heat waves, because it can dilute any amount of hot water.
The water can get too hot and/or short in supply to cool the nuclear plant. It's not magic, it's a machine with design limits that extreme weather events can push up against. It also can pollute rivers and kill fish before it gets to that level. Sea cooled reactors have issues with jellyfish. Having said that, the EU needs more gas in winter when it's cold, so doing the maintenance/refueling in the summer makes sense…
We have yet to see 80°c water in the rivers upstream. As I said earlier, the issue is never cooling the reactor, it's always about the state of the environment downstream.
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#563Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we can have it of course, it's a godsend. BUT we can't. I have a small lithium storage, I see how fast it get depleted and how quick performance degrade. In 8-9 years I expect it will be just rubbish. If I compute how it's produced, how much energy, pollution, it need to exists brand new in my home, and how so far we can't recycle... We have some effective storage, like pumped hydro, yes, but we have them where we…
> In 8-9 years I expect it will be just rubbish. Sounds about right. > If I compute how it's produced, how much energy, pollution, it need to exists brand new in my home, and how so far we can't recycle... Recycling is possible — even the absolute dumbest way I can imagine, which is grind the battery into dust and put that dust into the process used to separate rocks into their constituent elements , is still better…
About hydrogen... Well... How much it costs an hydrolysis plant with relevant compression system and storage PLUS the needed fuel-cell to use it once milked? Personally I've already spent for a new house, with relevant not-that-cheap systems, heat-pumps included, who might last 10 years as well (compressor), in the near future an EV who might last 10 years but 5 to 8 seems to be more realistic... Adding the price of a smaller house to add hydrogen start to be REALLY expensive. Long story short: if the Green New Deal demand such big investments I think just 2-3% of the total population in the western countries can afford it, witch does not make anything ecological just for mere scale. If we try bigger scale... So far I see nothing really big (beside old scams). Yes, some p.v. plants pops up continuously but they are small in classic PP scale terms and just grid-connected systems. Only a handful of projects do differently around the world and seems to be in a really early stage of experimentation...
I have nothing against pay to be a pre-alpha tester BUT there is a limit for that honestly...
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#564Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds cool. Hope you live in a sunny place.
The same thing which transfers electricity from a distant nuclear reactor to your home can also transfer it from a distant solar panel. This means that two different houses each with PV can support each other when one is sunny and the other cloudy. In principle that would scale to the world; in practice that's the domain of politics rather than technology, and politics may push for one of many other solutions.
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#565Earlier quoted context omitted.
"You don't have a white/silver roof on your house? Fuck you." I am one of your fuckees. The house I bought was expensive enough as it was. I am not changing a brand new dark roof for a different one for an exorbitant price right now, because budget. A perfectly new roof going down (isn't that actually waste?) for saving, say, 10 of 30 days when the AC is really needed? (I am also not even sure if roof colors are regu…
Exactly, why should you replace your roof to save the planet?? Screw the planet.
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#566Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same thing which transfers electricity from a distant nuclear reactor to your home can also transfer it from a distant solar panel. This means that two different houses each with PV can support each other when one is sunny and the other cloudy. In principle that would scale to the world; in practice that's the domain of politics rather than technology, and politics may push for one of many other solutions.
Not really true. Power from distant nuclear reactor or any other big generator comes over high voltage lines with small loses. Power from your panels go straight in the low voltage network which has high loses and is used for very short distances. That means you cannot support other houses which have clouds over them.
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#567Earlier quoted context omitted.
> doubt even if such monster can be done in a snap and work flawlessly that we can even harvest enough power at ground level. While it would take a while to build a global power grid, we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV.
> we have the capacity to produce approximately ten thousand times our current global power usage from ground-level PV. I'm a bit skeptical, but in any case consider a thing: we need to count an initial construction BUT also a regular substitution of old modules, managing their disposal (witch actually is just shred and bury in most cases) and in doing so we need to count the life cycle: if we construct something slo…
1.740 × 10^17 W ≈ total power received by Earth from the Sun
1.91 × 10^13 ≈ average total power consumption of the human world in 2019
> If we are quick
I don't know about the growth of batteries other than "factories are being made as fast as they can be, and car companies are investing in mines now", the growth of PV is still approximately exponential. Also, if PV production switches from growth to fixed output at the end of this year, given how long the stuff lasts, it would end up in a steady state of about 8 TW nameplate capacity; given what the capacity factor is like, in practice that would be enough to make all electricity green but not enough to electrify everything else.
I'm not expecting the exponential to come to a sudden stop at the end of this year.
> most small succeed...
Do they, though? I think you're just not hearing about most of the small failures because they're boring.
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#568Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In 8-9 years I expect it will be just rubbish. Sounds about right. > If I compute how it's produced, how much energy, pollution, it need to exists brand new in my home, and how so far we can't recycle... Recycling is possible — even the absolute dumbest way I can imagine, which is grind the battery into dust and put that dust into the process used to separate rocks into their constituent elements , is still better…
Yes, recycling is possible, but so far it's almost not done because it's still far more expensive than mining... Perhaps a day things will be different, but seen the actual progress I'm not such optimistic... About hydrogen... Well... How much it costs an hydrolysis plant with relevant compression system and storage PLUS the needed fuel-cell to use it once milked? Personally I've already spent for a new house, with r…
In particular:
> Yes, some p.v. plants pops up continuously but they are small in classic PP scale terms and just grid-connected systems.
What's "PP scale"?
And are you aware the combined nameplate capacity of all global PV is now close to one terawatt?
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#569Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m just exhausted from arguing with the electrically illiterate. HVDC makes transmission from state to state trivial at almost no loss. We should have a national HVDC grid so that a breeze in Texas might power a toaster in Connecticut. Instead we have another $XX Billion for Ukraine. Another $13B here for a new carrier we’ll never need etc etc. So much waste everywhere while fundamental problems go unsolved.
Literally the whole West's defense spending for the last 70 years has been to counter Russia. Supporting Ukraine is the single most cost-effective thing any Western government can do right now...
Re: Day ahead electricity prices for EU
#570Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really true. Power from distant nuclear reactor or any other big generator comes over high voltage lines with small loses. Power from your panels go straight in the low voltage network which has high loses and is used for very short distances. That means you cannot support other houses which have clouds over them.
Transformers are quite capable of working in either direction.
On the other hand the nuclear power station turbine generates power with a voltage of 20 KV feeding it to a high voltage transformer, which steps up the voltage to 200KV and is connected directly to the transmission lines.