Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by paultnylund | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

paultnylund

Last I heard, they actually have so much excess power that they're selling it to the UK.

View on HN

Norway exports excess power most of the year. 71% over the last three years according to this page:

https://www.statnett.no/for-aktorer-i-kraftbransjen/tall-og-...

First, it’s great they have so much green power generation. I didn’t realize that.

In addition to generation there is local distribution. Power lines, transformers, etc. Is there any information on that part of it? I wonder if they needed to upgrade their grid.

Yep, we've just added a new 1.4GW interconnect between Norway and the UK. I believe it's the longest undersee interconnect in the world. Hopefully more will follow, I think more interconnects over greater distances are really important to help smooth out both demand and supply issues with renewables.

Production could outstrip local distribution precisely because the excess is exported. It doesn't tell whether distribution can handle increased load.

Do you know how they are generating electricity?

Lots of water in them fjords:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1025497/distribution-of-...

93 percent hydro, 4 percent wind, 2.5 percent thermal.

They aren't necessarily generating it -- sometimes they're just storing it. When we produce too much electricity from wind turbines here in Denmark, Norway buys this at a negative price (to offload the Danish grid), stores it (using pumped hydroelectric energy storage), and sells it back into the market when prices are positive again.

Electrically that is probably pretty inefficient. No doubt that it still makes sense economically.

I’m not aware of any pumped hydropower, but we can buy cheap and use less of the stored water when prices are low. The dams have capacity to store water on a seasonal timescale. However with shifting weather patterns and more renewables these margins may become strained. This winter we may have to import not only to handle peak loads, but also because some dams may run dry.

Mostly hydroelectric. 98% renewable energy sources.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Norway

Lots of cheap hydro.

Yes, and the electricity trade may contribute to higher prices for local consumers.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com