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Comment by jabl | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile, that same new energy strategy announced by the government also effectively halts wind power construction until an "inpartial", "objective", "thorough", etc. study investigating why wind power causes people to become sick is done. Also, bats. Yes. One of the parties in the current government is a "conservative populist" party where party representatives have been claiming that wind power causes bats to explode. Yes, really.

EDIT: Slightly less inflammatory..

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Wind power isn't doing very well here in Finland though. It is 100% propped up by subsidies. The government will pay them 85,30 €/MWh for the electricity generated by wind power even though the market price is somewhere around 30 €/MWh so they basically get more from subsidies then from the electricity they actually sell. The current projection is that with the current subsidies wind power will have cost the tax payer around 3 billion euros by 2030.

Though the True Finns have a very wrong approach to this (trying to ban building wind power because it causes "harm" to people and other unscientific bullshit) instead of just dismantling the harmful subsidies (or at least lowering them to something sensible). Or the most sensible approach of taxing the things we don't want (polluting energy. coal etc.) and let the free markets sort the rest out.

The (spot)-market price on Nordpool is mostly related to variable costs, and doesn't really cover construction and other fixed costs.

That energy generators need a higer price than spot-price doesn't really warrant calling it "subsidies".

In Denmark land-wind is the cheapest (LCOE) energy.

Ok but why are we building nuclear power with 100% private money and subsidise wind? It literally makes no sense. The system should work the other way. Tax what we don't want and let the free markets work the rest out. Now we are grossly propping up a form of electricity that doesn't work very well here in Finland.

If we can do multi billion euro nuclear power projects with private money in other energy production ways why can't the wind?

As a side note the guaranteed price ends after 12 years. Do you know what happened when the first wind company that got to that 12 years did? It went bankrupt the same day. There is literally no way they can compete with the other wind power companies that get the subsidy. Basically we are going to get a nice "start wind power company" -> "take subsidies for 12 years" -> "go bankrupt" -> "start a new one" loop.

Finland doesn't guarantee prices for nuclear for some period? That sounds unlikely. The Hinkley Point plant in the UK was recently guaranteed a very high "strike price" to get it built

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...

And those "subsidies" are free market! In Denmark power generators submit competing bids on the lowest required guaranteed price when building new wind power.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horns_Rev#Horns_Rev_3_offshore...

No we don't. The heavy industrial corporations and some of the larger energy corps got together and formed a company called TVO. TVO got a few billion euros of loan and started to build nuclear plants (the current one under construction is Olkiluoto Unit 3). Only subsidy I know of is for the insurance in case of a nuclear accident. Though TVO already owns Olkiluoto 1 and 2. As I understand the third reactor on the same site doesn't have any effect on the insurance.

The nuclear plants in Finland are built for a real need (cheaper electricity) without any viable alternatives if we want to limit reliance to other countries (ask the east block countries how fun it is to rely on Russian gas for your electricity/heating during the winter). In some countries you would probably use coal or gas but as Finland doesn't have any of those (literally 0 natural gas, oil or coal reserves) we have had to rely on nuclear (for which we have fuels to burn in the bedrock). We have already built dams pretty much everywhere we can so hydro cannot be expanded in any meaningful way. Solar and wind just don't work as baseline power for heavy industry in Finland (at least not yet. The battery technology just isn't there). Solar is useless during the winter and wind has too much variance.

Also due to the delays in construction of the new reactor (thanks Areva and Siemens) we have been very close to actually running out of power (with the connections to Sweden and Russia maxed out) and have had to resort to reserve gas power plants with MWh prices in the hundreds of euros as most plans for the grid have included the new reactor being done in time.

In Finland the subsidies for wind power is just flat selling price into the grid. You can take subsidy on building too but then you cannot get the one for selling electricity (which is much better with the current prices)

Well, I looked up "Mankala model", so for TVO and Olkiluoto the investors and the consumers are largely the same - which means that the investors/consumers will just directly over-pay for the electricity, by having a larger total cost (mostly the capital costs) than what they could have paid by buying the electricity on Nordpool. Or conversely, they will never recoup their investment if they just sell the energy on Nordpool.

Them overpaying doesn't always happen (They don't use the Mankala model for the fun of it. It adds risk due to the capital investment but has been worth it over the long term up to date at least). As I understand both Olkiluoto 1 and 2 have been cheaper then buying from Nordpool to the owners (one of the reasons they wanted the third one). They of course also sell any energy they don't use into Nordpool. These are mostly private companies. They wouldn't do it if there is no profit in it. Why take risks of billions of euros if they stand to gain nothing?

In Finland 40% of energy produced is done under the Mankala model. Out of wind energy the percentage is 57% (so over the average).

Also one of the reason why the price in Finnish Nordpool has been so high lately is the delays in Olkiluoto 3. The actual estimated cost of production (so cost of running) is 3€/MWh. With the price in Nordpool around 30 to 50 €/MWh they stand to make 25 to 45 €/MWh of profit. If they can offload a good chunk of the capital costs of building the reactors to the people buying from Nordpool and get their own power needs at a very big discount (basically the 3€/MWh + (whatever their share of the capital costs is - money made out of selling into the grid) it is profitable to the owners even if the plant itself didn't make money directly.

Well, the Mankala model is not a problem.

And most likely Olkiluoto 3 had a reasonable business case before the cost overruns. So the question is more or less: is the real price of nuclear the price that was hoped for Olkiluoto 3 or the actual price that will be paid? (maybe mostly by Areva and not TVO). The "strike price" of Hinkley makes me think that it is probably the latter.

And while the trends look favorable for solar and wind, they seem less favorable for Nuclear - cf.

Historical summary of EIA's LCOE projections (2010–2016) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

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