Sweden tells Germany: Reform your electricity market for power cable approval
Sweden tells Germany: Reform your electricity market for power cable approval
Sweden has gestured its willingness to approve the Hansa PowerBridge project, a 700-megawatt power cable connecting southern Sweden to Germany.
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This is also the government that cancelled 17 planned wind parks for no reason and then has the audacity to lecture other countries about energy security. I am pro nuclear power but Ebba Bush is so psychotically pro nuclear that it borders on kink territory.
More wind capacity wouldn't solve these issues. They arise specifically when it is cold, dark and windless across Europe, due to a lack of dispatchable electricity production in Germany. Germany instead imports electricity from its neighbors, and Sweden (due to EU regulations) has to export. This in turn drives prices through the roof for Swedish consumers, despite a de facto electricity surplus.
The thing with wind power is that it doesn't blow all the time but it always blows somewhere so a large spread of small wind farms gets more stable as it grows. Also, nuclear power is also unreliable because they regularly gets shut down for maintenance or safety reasons.
Also, nuclear power is also unreliable because they regularly gets shut down for maintenance or safety reasons.
This sounds like one of those bizarrely bad anti-nuclear talking points.
Everything needs maintenance. That's how literally everything works. But nuclear is by leagues and bounds more stable, predictable, and reliable compared to every other power source. Cold, hot, light, dark, windy, calm, rain, snow, desert, it doesn't matter. Nuclear just works.
Last year Sweden had some really high power prices and part of the problem was that multiple reactors where shut down for extended periods of time.
Its not an attack on nuclear, it's a defense of wind. No system is perfect and you can't say that wind is unreliable and then ignore that we had reactors be shut down for multiple months.
Which in turn would require enormous amounts of excess generation capacity and transmission lines.
Beyond a certain point it's simply more efficient to install dispatchable electricity generation.
Oh and as for your last statement it is simply incorrect. Nuclear power plants are the single most reliable electricity producer. https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close
Well, surplus renewable energy - which more wind capacity would bring - probably doesn't hurt the economics of storage solutions, which ultimately would solve these issues.
Well, to be frank, Sweden is Europes second largest, or largest depending on the state of things in France, electricity exporter in Europe. Sweden do not necessarily need more large scale electricity production. Specially not given the drive towards micro production that is now ongoing.
The only reason to build large scale is to accommodate AI or some other extremely energy dependant technology. They can happily build and run their own electricity network and not include the ordinary consumers, nor the taxpayers.
This time, it seems, they found the golden nugget despite being blind.
Building energy production to export even more electricity is surely very profitable and also good for the environment.
I remember the winter 1 or 2 years ago when we exported a fuck ton electricity and apparently our clean electricity displaced enough foreign dirty electricity to reduce the carbon footprint by as much as Sweden annually carbon footprint from cars.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/ekonomi/svensk-elexport-minskar-utslappen-motsvarande-hela-biltrafiken
No denying that there are positives, but geopolitically we can't have Berlin on it's knees just because Kremlin had a Chinese cargo ship drag it's anchor half way across the Baltic sea. That's a no go for an independent Europe.
Yeah, but we should still build more renewable energy production and obviously more resilient and redundant energy infrastructure.
Agreed!
That's very true. The rational thing is to invest in nuclear on the European continent. The Swedish pricing issue can be solved through politics.
Their stance is 'this is everybody's fault but us'
Yes, that sucks. And they for sure are religious when it comes to nuclear. There are more cautious and strategic ways than throwing hundreds of billions on private contractors on a dysfunctional market. The government should own and run all nuclear production.