Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

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Comparing nuclear with solar/wind has always been a false comparison. In order to make a fair comparison one would need to combine storage with solar/wind, and in latitudes for Finland this would mostly mean wind with storage capacity in terms of months.

The alternative is fossil fuels in combination with wind/solar, the most cost effective grid that currently exist. During optimal weather conditions renewables are the cheapest energy on the planet, and during non-optimal weather conditions fossil fuels is usually the cheapest energy that can meet demand.

Living in Sweden, I am slightly hopeful that the nuclear plant in Finland might reduce the need to run the oil power plant located in southern parts of Sweden. The oil power plant is the single highest contributor for carbon emissions in the south of Sweden, despite the fact that Sweden mostly operate on hydro and nuclear. 70 tons of oil per hour goes up in smoke in a time where the oil need to stay in the ground. More solar/wind will not have much of an effect on this oil power plant since it only operates during non-optimal weather conditions. Currently we are several weeks in with a weather of low wind conditions, with energy prices skyrocketing as a result. The Finish project had some good luck in term of timing by turning on the nuclear power plant right in the middle of exceptional high energy prices.

The thing is, solar/wind are getting cheap enough that it is becoming viable to just construct a massive overcapacity. Paying twice as much for your electricity to cover the OPEX of half your capacity idling 80% of the time is _still_ cheaper than going nuclear.

And, as you mentioned, having fossil in reserve for edge cases is definitely a viable option.

Fossil fuels are not a viable option. It is simply the seemingly cheapest option, sacrificing the environment for short term economic gain.

Overcapacity has its issues. It does not remove the dependency on fossil fuel, and you still need to have independently the same capacity in fossil fuel plants. A big part of the fossil fuel cost in term of economics is have them standby and operational, which today is paid primarily through subsidies. Having a bunch of wind turbines running at 20% efficiency while at the same time paying a fossil fueled power plant be ready to step is not cheap. Is it _still_ cheaper than nuclear? Hard to say. All the comparisons I have seen are done on the theoretical cost per watt produced, not what the grid costs to operate on a year to year basis in order to provide the service of a stable grid.

Looking at the day prices per local zone around Sweden and Finland, the prices goes down the closer you get to hydro and nuclear and goes up the closer you get to wind and fossil fuels, with as high as 10x. Economically that makes the case for wind + fossil fuels a bit harder to buy, through I am not blind to the fact that its previous generations that enabled it. Living next to wind+fossil fuel is right now very expensive, with industries moving north as a direct result.

For solar you would have to build something like 100x or more overcapacity to get enough power for winter in Finland. Solar is effectively useless in Finland as it produces effectively nothing when we need it most (winter).

Wind can work but also partially has the same problem but to the same extent. Usually the colder it gets the less windy it gets. Basically in Finland during the winter it gets cold when there is no wind bringing warm air from the Atlantic (gulf stream) usually as a result of a high pressure zone parking itself over the country.

Wind turbines in cold climates also require deicing. If you don't deice them, the performance drops dramatically. Deicing takes power too though, a few percent of the total turbine output depending on how often it's needed and how much downtime the turbine has.

Fortunately, HVDC transmission lines have been improving rapidly in cost and efficiency, making power delivered from far south a practical prospect.

It does mean you depend on processes you have little say in. Somebody else specifies and builds much of the transmission line, and all of the generating capacity.

Well at the moment this is not true. Sweden can't even saturate the existing transmissions lines between Finland and Sweden as the national grid in Sweden is not in good enough shape and will most likely take over a decade to be properly fixed. (Basically the lines between northern and southern Sweden are not good enough).

https://www.fingridlehti.fi/en/ja-kantaverkkokeskuksesta-soi... (this article is from summer about moving it the other way but the same happened now during the winter but other direction)

This is one of the reasons why the electricity prices hiked up as high as they did here. Basically Norway and Sweden do have some electricity available for cheaper then running reserve gas plants in Finland but they can't get that electricity from the south all the way up north.

And being that reliant on another nation is not good for the national safety of a country. Imagine if a significant portion (like lets say 30%) of the electricity used in US came from solar farms in Mexico (or even further south being transmitted through multiple countries). This would make US economy and national defense really vulnerable (both require massive amounts of energy to really function)

In other words, as I said in the very post you replied to,

> "It does mean you depend on processes you have little say in. Somebody else specifies and builds much of the transmission line, and all of the generating capacity."

The oil power plant you describe runs because it makes economic sense to generate electricity from oil and send it to Germany. There is no shortage of electricity (neither energy nor effect) in Sweden. The high prices are caused by gas shortages in continental Europe.

It has been a false comparison with nuclear too. Nuclear storage, processing remediation, etc. are either not mentioned at all or plainly wrong as they differ extremely from country to country and over time periods which are hardly calculable.

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