Sweden adopts new fossil-free target, making way for nuclear
power-technology.com
power-technology.com
And then there's this: https://www.power-technology.com/news/orsted-offshore-sweden... Danish company Ørsted wants to build offshore wind farms that could power half of sweden. Ørsted is a fascinating company, it is basically the only former oil and gas company that successfully transitioned towards clean energy.
Between Vattenfall having announced that they might build a type of nuclear plant that has never been built before, and Ørsted wanting to build massive offshore wind farms, I know which one I think is more plausible.
The real problem is that they can produce it for cheap and sell it with a huge profit to other countries. Since it is an open market, this artificially drives up the domestic prices.
So a much cheaper solution would be to cut the cable to Germany and France and leave the open market
They could, however, tax/nationalize private producers and return windfall profits to swedish ratepayers.
This is also one of the reasons the controversial electricity bill refund was not so controversial IMO. It was our electricity to start with and the money came from profits for selling it abroad. A more stable solution should be developed of course.
It is not a long term solution to high regional energy prices (the fees were accrued over multiple years), and it absolutely was not a windfall profits tax.
Edit: iirc the elstöd program administrative costs were predicted to cost more than the amount refunded. It was hasty election politics, and not likely to be anything permanent.
> (ignoring the fact that t takes longer to build than the available time to transition)
My understanding is that nuclear is necessary, unless you believe in very optimistic development timelines for better batteries. Yes, batteries have come a long way, but they are still a long way off from being able to support base load -- is that not correct? It might be faster to build out nuclear, than to develop the necessary improvements in battery tech...
Or am I completely off here?
I've seen several analysis' such as [1] that tend point towards renewables being cheaper than nuclear power, even when taking transmission and storage into account. Better transmission cables to require less storage, plus overprovisioning and using the surplus power to create e-fuels and similar is a pretty viable alternative.
So the short answer is - is nuclear necessary? - no. Is building out new nuclear cheaper than building out new renewables + storage? Also probably no - but that might change if small scale modular reactors really take off.
However is keeping nuclear plants around a good idea? Absolutely.
[0] https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ad5a93ce-3a7f-461d-... [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-and-wind-keep-getting-chea...
I would take reports that account for stuff never done before with a pinch of salt.
eg. [1] ( $$ == AUD Australian )
French firm Neoen will build a mega battery in Collie after winning a two-year contract to smooth out energy supply and demand in Western Australia’s south-west grid, which is under strain from soaring midday peak supply from rooftop solar and ageing coal-fired power stations.
The battery, to be constructed from 224 Tesla “Megapacks”, can store 219 megawatts of energy for four hours during the day and discharge it back to the grid during high demand in the evening when solar generation falls.
UGL, a subsidiary of Spanish-owned CIMIC, has started construction on one of four grid-scale batteries in the south-west of WA. No cost was provided for the battery.
Synergy is commissioning a battery in Kwinana that can store 100 megawatts for two hours that was originally meant to be operating by the end of 2022.
In the May budget, the WA government allocated $2.3 billion for two further batteries.
Synergy will build another battery at Kwinana that can store or discharge 200 megawatts for four hours that is expected to start operating by late 2024.
South Australia is also investing in new battery parks [2] (on the back of the success of one of the earliest "city scale" battery parks globally)
[1] https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/tesla-...
[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-23/vanadium-flow-battery...
Here you're saying it's already happening. And yet your quote is: "will build, to be constructed, has started construction, will build another battery..."
Let me break it down for you:
1) It's already happening - South Australia had the first city scale battery park in the world (2017) [1][2]
The original installation in 2017 was the largest lithium-ion battery in the world at 129 MWh and 100 MW.
It was expanded in 2020 to 194 MWh at 150 MW.
Despite the expansion, it lost that title in August 2020 to the Gateway Energy Storage in California, USA.
The larger Victorian (another Australian state) Big Battery began operations in December 2021.
Worthy of note: We've weathered a battery park fire which took out two battery packs [3]
The links above are specifically about the latest builds as they represent second generation experiences and pricing .. better locked in than the first gen ("never been done before") cases.
All up Australia has almost six years of real world city scale battery park usage - a good source of reference material for any others thinking of going a similar route.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve
[2] https://hornsdalepowerreserve.com.au/
[3] https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/09/28/australias-...
It's not a breakdown. It's links and info you should've started with.
But thank you for this info.
Well, dock my pay then.
In common Australian English if I state that we have done something in the past you can either take that at face value or call me a liar.
If I then proceed to link to the current installation activity you can assume I'm talking about current activity as distinct from past activity.
If you're confused about past activity you could look to the links which refer to past battery park instalation.
You're most welcome and I'd be obliged if you'd look in a mirror and reflect on your attitude here.
In common internet English, the probability of any given statement being a half-truth at best asymptotically approaches zero.
> If you're confused about past activity you could look to the links which refer to past battery park instalation.
Which you didn't provide until I pointed out that all your links are about future projects
> I'd be obliged if you'd look in a mirror and reflect on your attitude here.
People giving out this advice are the people who would benefit from this advice the most
Sweden could do well to plan on building out wind power that’s surplus to their needs (as could many other places), solely because it can be exported if you’re long term over-capacity for what you need.
Storage is the big hurdle, but there’s a lot of novel options here. Concrete batteries are a fairly simple example of creative ways to store energy and I’m sure there’s better options than just planning on more rare Earth metals.
larger scale hydrogen extraction maybe? (I don’t know much about this just throwing it out there).
Not available at any scale beyond marketing materials
> larger scale hydrogen extraction maybe
To what end?
I have also heard statements that transporting Hydrogen through pipelines is more scaleable (because of less land required) and causes less energy loss than electric cables. Much needed in a long country with energy balancing problems like Sweden.
> i.e. dunkelflauts in winter which neither batteries or nuclear particularly help with.
doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Wikipedia defines a dunkelflaute as "a period of time in which little or no energy can be generated with wind and solar power". Isn't that precisely where you have to fall back to nuclear, battery, or fossil fuels?
Also:
> Batteries have already solved baseload for most of the planet
this runs contrary to a lot of what I've read about the topic (which doesn't mean I lot, I know -- I'm not an expert). Do you have a source I could have a look at?
It doesn't even make environmental sense compared with fossil based methane (though greener methane sources are available).
See https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8 for a real time simulation of how Australia would cope with 5 hours of battery storage (he has some in depth articles that go through his methodology too).
> See https://twitter.com/DavidOsmond8 for a real time simulation of how Australia would cope with 5 hours of battery storage
Forgive me for being sceptical, but you did state that batteries have solved base load for most of the planet. Australia is probably the least convincing example anyone could pick, due to its extremely low population density, long coastline, and high amount of sun hours. I'd be much more interested in seeing this calculation for places like China, India, Nigeria, Brazil, Russia.
Australia has a head start on solar mostly due to low costs of capital letting people invest long term. Same reason Northern Europe deploys more solar than you'd think is globally sensible.
This statement can be charitably described as "you're misinformed".
> dunkelflauts in winter which neither batteries or nuclear particularly help with.
Same charitable interpretation of your statement on nuclear
well, and for technical ones. Since this a tech-heavy board, I expect it to be common knowledge here that you can't operate a grid on wind and solar alone, as you can't control the weather-based output (which, in the case of solar, also has a tendency to maximize when it's -not- most needed). A grid needs a controllable baseline source to have any stability. That can be gas or any other fired plant, it could sometimes be hydro, but it can also be nuclear.
Burning things up is a climate nightmare (though still where about 90% of world power comes from), and also very much more expensive in Europe now than it used to be. Hydro can't be built just anywhere you like, and if the river is also a waterway, also can't be controlled based on energy need (as it is controlled based on traffic demands). So until we get a fusion plant, nuclear is just a predictable decision tree outcome.
As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, Sweden is consistently (except literally a few days a year) a net energy exporter, in a national sense they don't really need more production. The issue is regional production, which fell off a cliff due to russian gas supplies to Germany being shut off and them deciding to continue with planned decommissioning of domestic nuclear generation during that period.
We're reaching a point where anything we should do will take longer than the time we have to do it. That is a weak claim, given that the same is true for any solution we try to implement, and that late is much better than never.
It will "power half of Sweden" in the ideal conditions of 100% wind always blowing.
- 0.23% of installed wind capacity is available
- luckily it's a sunny day, so 23% of Denmark's electricity is provided by solar (at 57% installed capacity)
- Right now Denmark imports 30% of its energy from Germany, and another 16% from the Netherlands
So yeah. Pretty windy.
- wind: 25% of installed capacity
- solar: 2.37% of installed capacity
- almost 50% of all electricity imported from Sweden and Norway
It would be like renovating a 50yo veteran car. Maybe fun for someone but not worth the effort. That was also one of the main reasons it was closed down. It was simply reaching its end of life and required a major overhaul that neither government or owners were willing to invest.
Not sure what Barsebäck or Ringhals are, but one valuable asset of former production sites of any type is their connexion to the grid. Considering many European countries have years of waiting for new production to be connected to the grid, that's not a small benefit.
Ringhals still has a couple of reactors running, so to can easily be expanded. But Finland had that too but still it took 15 years to build a new reactor.
"Restarting Barseback will solve our energy crisis" is as practical as saying "to solve UKs problems, let's bring back Churchill from the dead"
So instead of building 6 new nuclear plants, they will use the existing ones for another 40 years.
Sweden built their first SMR in the 60s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant
Sweden intended to build 50+ of these, primarily intended for heating. Sadly, the anti-nuclear mania struck hard in Sweden during the 70s and our awesome nuclear industry never recovered.
In the past few years electricity prices skyrocketed, there was an electricity shortage, and the government scrambled to mete out compensations for electricity (too little too late)
Elbrist was always bullshit, it was just private Swedish electricity producers whinging that they couldn't hit max profits during historically high energy prices in western europe.
What you should instead ask yourself is why did the prices skyrocket despite having enough electricity?
Which are completely insignificant compared direct damage (even if we completely ignore climate change…) from burning coal.
Sweden does not burn coal. They shut down their last coal plant three years ago.
Russia owned 40% of the total uranium conversion infrastructure in the world in 2020, and 46% of the total uranium enrichment capacity.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/23/russia-dominates-global-nucl...
Australia has about 2 million tonnes, measured, concentrated in three fairly dense sites with a good chance of more elsewhere.
Kazakhstan has twice the ore (at much better grades) than Russia .. one of the reasons Russia is keen to hang onto the 'stan satellite states.
[Red Book] https://www.oecd-nea.org/jcms/pl_28569/uranium-resources-pro...
ADDENDUM: The May 2022 report indirectly (via a CNN link) mentioned above is
Reducing Russian Involvement in Western Nuclear Power Markets
https://www.energypolicy.columbia.edu/publications/reducing-...
and mentions Russian "dominance" falling from 2018 to 2020 while outling approaches to continue this fall.
It seems hardly surprising that one of the two major Cold War super powers has almost but not quite half of the global processing capacity. It seems a trivial exercise to guess who might also have nearly half the global uranium processing capacity.
I am not saying it is good or bad, neither trying to start a NIMBY discussion.
But I think Sweden has too strong laws and environmentalist movement (and too little corruption) for a permission to start a uranium mine to happen within a foreseeable future.
Like Copper mining in Kamloops and Sudbury? Or sloppy WWII era uranium processing in the vicinity of Hanford USA?
I suspect (I don't know for sure) that Sweden is unlikely to have the grades for a viable uranium mine.
Were that so it's certainly possible to mine uranium in a manner that doesn't contaminate the mine surrounds .. and possible to process raw yellow cake to usable fuel rods at a site built to modern containment standards.
There's no need for Sweden (were it possible) to have dirty mines such as the Congo Cold War mines.
[1] https://federalmetals.ca/how-does-copper-mining-affect-the-e...
This is all populist reactionary messaging by the current government, tapping in to American right wing talking points against windpower - all of which are irrelevant in Sweden as there is no domestic fossil fuel industry to protect. It's just cargo-cult right wing nonsense to whip up their base, they're even railing against drag shows now in Sweden for some reason...
Good luck!
My aim is to be resource and energy aware, abreast of options and best practices.
I'm absolutely not personally for a nuclear power plant here ( W.Australia ) nor anywhere else .. but were it done, best it done well.
Eg: Sweden has the option (should the people all agree) to quickly move to a new nuclear plant by, say, engaging South Korean designs and engineers (they throw them up fast) and contracting yellow cake supply from Canada | Australia.
But these are matters of cost, politics, trust in external suppliers, etc.
Or they could just revamp their industrial base and try to catch China when it comes to solar panel manufacturing, or to brush away countless environmental protection measures and open up a uranium mine close to places like Aspen, Colorado or to some other places in Idaho recently invaded by California refugees, but I don't see any of those two things happening anytime soon.
And I mean, they don't need to catch up, just have enough of their own production to keep prices low.
I think competing with China on commercial terms will never be successful. The CCP is making sure the whole country is acting as one unit and for long term dominance. They can afford to sell solar panels for $0 until all competitors are dead.
I believe last year the EU agreed on a huge fund to improve advanced semiconductor manufacturing capacity within the bloc, but not sure if that would apply to solar.