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Comment by quijoteuniv | Hacker News Reader

But this promote better flow to Norway that has the hydropower, ultimately making more profit to the Energy Companies there. Sell expensive hydro energy when there is no wind, buy cheap wind energy at night when no pnes need it and pump water to the reservoirs. It would be good to see how this cable was lobbied and some estimates in the gain in profit the multinational energy companies are making. Or did everyone think this was made for bringing energy to UK homes and lower the carbon footprint.

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The point of the cable is to balance out the energy flows across Europe and to make renewable energy less variable. If there is excess supply in the UK, they can make money by selling it to the continent and if there is too little energy they can buy it from the continent. It works the same the other way around.

Norway has a lot of hydro, but AFAIK no pumped hydro. I don't know why that is? It sounds like a reasonable idea, to even out the European prices. Perhaps it is not as easy as an armchair consultant would believe? Sweden seems to be in a similar situation.

Norway does have a modest amount of pumped hydro: about 1.2 GW.

But inter-connectors are a great alternative to pumped hydro. When the UK and Denmark have an excess of wind energy, it can be sent to Norway. Norway can then conserve water in their storage lakes, and sell it back to the UK and Denmark on days when they need it.

This shit has ruined the Norwegian electricity market and wrecked havoc on the prices. Norway has an insane amount of hydro which is cheap but the market price has gotten very expensive because of European idiocy and this common market the Europeans are working for.

F the entire thing.

Your country has made a trillion euro from oil and gas because of the international market.

Norway benefits greatly by being able to export its excess energy to its neighbours.

Given that much of the hydro power is state-owned in Norway, this generates profits that ultimately benefit the Norwegian people and economy.

Norway got rich exporting its excess oil and gas in the past century. Now they are starting to do the same with clean energy.

Where do you think they’d be today if they’d decided to keep all the oil & gas for themselves and not export any of it?!

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