[HN Gopher] Northvolt assembles first lithium-ion battery cell a...
___________________________________________________________________
Northvolt assembles first lithium-ion battery cell at Swedish
gigafactory
Author : HieronymusBosch
Score : 192 points
Date : 2021-12-30 09:12 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (northvolt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (northvolt.com)
| poisonborz wrote:
| Gigafactory becomes the retina display of manufacturing.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| > We want more women to find a career at Northvolt. That's why we
| ask permission to track your visit at northvolt.com (read more
| here).
|
| Commendable, if true. Was hoping to read an explanation in the
| link but it just showed the privacy policy.
|
| Disappointing.
| Orphis wrote:
| At the same time, a friend who interviewed there got told "You
| need to work hard and probably on evenings and weekends too".
| Not a big selling point in Sweden where work / life balance is
| important (especially to those having or wanting a family).
| VadimPR wrote:
| Isn't one of the execs ex-Musk employee? Sad to see this
| culture creeping into EU.
| zibzab wrote:
| Oh, he is very much imitating Musk.
|
| Inhumane working conditions, getting tons of money from the
| government, toxic work environment, ignoring OSHA, you name
| it.
|
| Was just recently investigated for sneaking in unregistered
| immigrant workers into their facility. Obviously they were
| working extremely long hours + weekends for peanuts while
| sidestepping all safety rules.
| maxdo wrote:
| has nothing to do with Tesla. Long hours yes, but a paid
| one, so it's a decision made by workers. Nothing wrong
| with that.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > Long hours yes, but a paid one, so it's a decision made
| by workers. Nothing wrong with that.
|
| Not in the EU generally, and especially not in
| Scandinavia.
|
| At least in Norway working overtime is only allowed up to
| a legally specified limit, even if you volunteer for it.
| The limit is 400 hours per 52 weeks and that will require
| permission from the Labour Inspection Authority
| (Arbeidstilsynet).
|
| See https://www.arbeidstilsynet.no/en/working-
| conditions/working...
| drakonka wrote:
| That's not how it works. We have employee protections
| that are intended to prevent exploitation. If those are
| failing, there is definitely something wrong with that.
| luckylion wrote:
| Good catch. That's great framing for a cookie consent. And
| you're also not rejecting Cookies, you're refusing them.
| drakonka wrote:
| Yeah, that was weird. What do their cookie policies have to do
| with helping women find a career at Northvolt? A quick search
| for related keywords on their privacy policy page reveals
| nothing on the topic.
|
| That aside, I'm really excited about Northvolt and what they're
| doing, it sounds like really interesting work.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Google Analytics gives you demographic data like gender. I
| guess that could be leveraged to target job ads but the fact
| they didn't even bother putting up an explanation tells me
| it's just guilt tripping you into accepting cookies.
| drakonka wrote:
| I didn't _think_ GA provided a mechanism for a site owner
| to target a user in real time based on their gender though.
| I just assumed everyone got the same popup regardless of
| gender.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > I guess that could be leveraged to target job ads
|
| That sounds like a great way to be mentioned in the news
| next to the words "discrimination lawsuit"
| matsemann wrote:
| Not if it's done to actually make sure listings are
| viewed by a representative group of people in the
| industry. Don't always assume the worst.
|
| If anything, most companies have huge biases in the way
| they conduct recruiting. Take home tasks excludes those
| taking care of a child alone in larger degree than other
| groups for instance, posting listings only on HN would
| skew the people applying heavily. Etc etc.
|
| Making sure you've reached all groups is actually
| laudable.
| anticristi wrote:
| Feels like classic confirmshaming. I wonder if we should raise
| a flag with IMY.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Oh that's a dark pattern I wasn't aware of. Thank you!
| sscarduzio wrote:
| Instead of batteries why can't we reverse the turbines in hydro
| power plants?
| fastball wrote:
| Pumped hydro is in fact an energy storage method. It just
| requires having a dam, which is obviously not a workable
| solution in many (most?) places.
| wongarsu wrote:
| In some places it's a lake/reservoir uphill of a river
| instead of a dam.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Intreresting fact: Sweden is dotted with mines. Many of these
| are defunct and abandoned. There are plans now to convert
| several abandoned mines to pumped hydro.
|
| That is, water is pumped from lower to higher levels in the
| mines, instead of up a hill to a reservoir.
|
| Great use of existing infra that would be way to expensive to
| dig for that purpose.
| yobbo wrote:
| If you already have a dam and turbines it's obviously better to
| just run them in generating mode.
|
| But pumping stations also exist where it makes sense.
| perlgeek wrote:
| This exists, and is called "pumped hydro" energy storage.
|
| But it needs favorable geography and/or huge use of space.
|
| There isn't a single technology for all our energy storage
| needs, pumped hydro, batteries and lots of others all have
| their niche and efficient use cases.
| kragen wrote:
| Harder to put a hydroelectric dam in your Tesla Roadster.
| fifilura wrote:
| In case of no wind, all Tesla owners should connect their car
| to the grid with a long cable and reverse in a circle.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It's already the case, check https://app.electricitymap.org/
| and look at the hydro storage on the left. Usually it stores
| energy during the night (a least in France last night).
| globular-toast wrote:
| What is a lower-case-g gigafactory? Just a factory that makes
| lithium-ion batteries?
| cblconfederate wrote:
| i 'd assume it makes gigas
| roenxi wrote:
| > Marking a new chapter in European industrial history, the cell
| is the first to have been fully designed, developed and assembled
| at a gigafactory by a homegrown European battery company.
|
| This seems like a ... is this true? This boast made me feel sad.
| Is this really how far behind European manufacturing is?
| ranguna wrote:
| I don't know, but I don't find it hard to believe that it was
| the first to be built at a _gigafactory_, Europe has other
| means of manufactoring other than gigafactories.
| INTPenis wrote:
| There are many qualifiers in that sentence, homegrown european
| company means no outside investers, gigafactory means it's not
| a small factory, fully designed, developed and assembled.
|
| But yeah we've been far too reliant on the global trade network
| until now. Maybe a ghost of colonialism.
| koenneker wrote:
| The Term gigafactory is doing the heavy lifting in this
| sentence. There are a lot of smaller scale operations that do
| design, development and assembly in Europe like Varta
| Microbattery[1]. They provide a lot of the batteries used in
| the modern wireless earbuds like the airpods pro[2] and also
| some of the Samsung galaxy buds[3].
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VARTA
|
| [2]https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Pro+Teardown/127551
| look at step 8
|
| [3]mentioned in the same article and step as the Airpods above
| [deleted]
| progfix wrote:
| Is any slightely larger than average factory building now a
| Gigafactory?
| avtolik wrote:
| No. It has to be about 1000 times bigger than a Megafactory.
| tromp wrote:
| I can see how they'd use Gigafactory for a factory that's
| only one order of magnitude larger than a Megafactory. On the
| other hand, I don't see anyone talking about a Kilofactory...
| topspin wrote:
| Perhaps we'll need Terafactories soon.
| roessland wrote:
| Assuming that "Giga Nevada" actually is a Gigafactory, an
| ordinary Factory would then be 2.86400 mm^2.
| kragen wrote:
| Maybe it's measured by volume rather than floor area?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| For battery factories specifically, the term is used for
| factories producing more than 1GWH per year. That was unusual
| before EVs became a thing. This particular factory is supposed
| to scale to about 60GWH capacity. That sounds like a lot but
| it's only a million 60KWH batteries that would go into e.g. a
| decent EV. With most ICE car production disappearing over the
| next two decades, we'll need a lot more factories.
|
| Tesla has actually started talking about Tera factories a few
| years ago. That's roughly what they'd need to produce 20M such
| vehicles. And of course they have more need for batteries with
| their grid storage and truck business. So, it's easy to see how
| they'd end up with multiple tera factories if they keep on
| growing like they have been.
| nivenkos wrote:
| Sad that the extremely high taxes (and price rises) on
| electricity in Sweden mean diesel cars are still cheaper in some
| parts of the country.
|
| We should push for all vehicles in cities to be electric at
| least. The Tesla 3, Honda E, etc. are perfect for that.
| progre wrote:
| > Sad that the extremely high taxes (and price rises) on
| electricity in Sweden mean diesel cars are still cheaper in
| some parts of the country
|
| Average power consumption for an EV is 0.2 kWh/km. The current
| (very high) price of 1.5 SEK/kWh gives a price of about 3 SEK
| per 10 Km for an EV.
|
| Diesel price in Sweden right now is about 18 SEK/Liter (also a
| record high). A good diesel car needs maybe 0.7 liters per 10
| Km => 12.6 SEK per 10 Km for a diesel car.
|
| So an EV is still more than 4 times cheaper when comparing the
| cost to power the car.
| yobbo wrote:
| > The current (very high) price of 1.5 SEK/kWh
|
| The average December price was around 2 SEK/kWh in southern
| Sweden, which after net fees/tax/vat is around 3 SEK/kWh for
| home charging. Assuming a charging efficiency of 85%, and
| Tesla given range numbers are accurate, that should give
| around 6 SEK/10Km. But actual range should decrease in winter
| weather.
|
| > A good diesel car needs maybe 0.7 liters per 10 Km
|
| An efficient diesel is around 0.5l/10Km depending on driving
| style. So it's close to parity with electric at the moment.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| The unit price per kWh is quite low in Sweden though, the base
| price (network fees etc) is the big part.
|
| In September, I used 75 kWh, and paid 4.5kr/kWh[1] (exchange
| rate to EUR is about 10:1, so this comes out to 0,45EUR), in
| November, with higher unit prices, I paid 3,4kr/kWh for 236
| kWh[2] (about 0,34EUR) since the base price distributes over
| more usage. Per-unit price is about 1kr/kWh, so an efficient EV
| at 30kWh/100 km comes out to 30kr/100km, while an efficient ICE
| at 5l/100km comes out to 80kr/100km (at the current price of
| about 17kr/l).
|
| It's not like gas is cheap here and taxed low.
|
| [1]: 119kr for the usage, 222 kr for the network [2]: 335kr for
| the usage, 222 kr for the network
| progre wrote:
| I tried the same calculation, nice to see that we are in the
| same ballpark at least
| rekoil wrote:
| Don't forget Polestar 2, those are selling like hot-cakes as
| well.
| hajhatten wrote:
| Well deserved as well. They are really nice cars!
| wmli wrote:
| Only 4.5k registered in Sweden atm. So no not really?
|
| https://www.car.info/en-
| se/polestar/stats?from=2020-01&to=20...
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Even amongst EVs only the brand only makes 9th place.
|
| https://www.car.info/en-
| se/stats/?from=2020-01&to=2021-12&vd...
| matsemann wrote:
| Most cars sold in Norway are now electric.
|
| Not the solution to anything, though. The end goal should be to
| rid cities of cars, and make it easier for people to walk, ride
| a bike or take public transport. Better for the grid,
| environment, noise, health, communities etc.
| underscore_ku wrote:
| good news!
| baybal2 wrote:
| I am looking for a contractor who can do turnkey pouch, and/or
| prismatic cell factories for a client in South Asia.
| maxdo wrote:
| What is so special about this Factory? Isn't that there are 30
| similar projects building around the world? US alone has around
| 15 gigafactories planned/building by 2026?
|
| a few by tesla and the rest:
|
| Manufacturer Location Expected Opening
|
| Ford Northeast of Memphis, TN 2025
|
| Ford & SK Innovation Central KY 2025
|
| Ford & SK Innovation Central KY 2026
|
| General Motors & LG Chem Lordstown, OH 2022
|
| General Motors & LG Energy Solution Spring Hill, TN 2023
|
| General Motors & LG Energy Solution To be determined (TBD) TBD
|
| General Motors & LG Energy Solution TBD TBD
|
| SK Innovation Northeast of Atlanta, GA 2022
|
| SK Innovation Northeast of Atlanta, GA 2023
|
| Stellantis & LG Energy Solution TBD 2024
|
| Stellantis & Samsung SDI TBD 2025
|
| Toyota Southeast of Greensboro, NC 2025
|
| Volkswagen Chattanooga, TN TBD
| fbn79 wrote:
| Its really sad that such achievements in Europe always comes from
| public investments and not private only funds
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/pt/ip_20_...
| sschueller wrote:
| Elon's giga factory benefited from enormous tax breaks which in
| effect is the same thing.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Government budgets in the US are enormous because a lot of it
| is used to benefit domestic businesses. Like car
| manufacturers in Detroit, who were bailed out a couple of
| times instead of allowing them to go bankrupt. Despite all
| the help they have gotten over the years, they still seem to
| be struggling.
|
| So, yes, European countries also support their businesses in
| a similar way. Same with China and Russia. That's just how
| that stuff works. We're talking trillions here. Getting your
| hands on some of that is just part of running a business.
|
| In Tesla's defense, they have actually been arguing for less
| subsidies. Right now their biggest issue is that politicians
| seem to be insisting on subsidizing mainly Tesla competitors
| (e.g. the before mentioned Detroit based manufacturers) while
| making a lot of effort to ever name Tesla in their speeches.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I was always under the impression that large factories in the
| US get huge tax rebates for a couple of years or other
| concessions as a way to encourage the plant to be built there
| and not in the next state?
|
| The EU giving out loans to finance projects that fit their
| strategic goals doesn't seem any worse than that
| elric wrote:
| Would you care to elaborate on why this is sad?
| fbn79 wrote:
| I think this article it's a good summary of what I think.
| https://babinec.com/2020/10/the-problem-with-public-money-
| go...
| maxdo wrote:
| World need Terrafactories ! 20 of these, and we complete the
| transition to EV. This factory is a drop in the ocean
| tmikaeld wrote:
| There's an estimate 10 000MW additional requirement of power for
| Swedish Industry (3000MW surplus in the north):
|
| - The Swedish fossil-free steel (& Direct-Reduced Iron)
| manufacture (9000 MW)
|
| - Amazon/google/microsoft datacenters (2000 MW)
|
| - Conversion to electric cars (1000 MW, currently 128MW)..
|
| - This gigafactory (?MW 50GW Capacity)
|
| The Swedish government plan on solving these needs with Wind
| turbines (Currently 7000MW capacity), which this weekend was at
| 1.4% capacity due to no winds.
|
| How is that going to work, do they plan on shutting down
| production when there's no wind?
|
| EDIT: If you're going to downvote, please explain why, these
| numbers are not made-up, they are public:
|
| Live stats: https://www.svk.se/om-kraftsystemet/kontrollrummet/
|
| Capacity: https://svenskvindenergi.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/02/Stat...
|
| Steel: https://dagenslogistik.se/h2-green-steal-satsar-pa-
| vatgaspro...
|
| Gigafactory: https://northvolt.com/articles/first-cell/
|
| Average data-center consumption 100-200MW. Amazon 3x, Facebook
| 3x, Google 1x, Cloudflare 1x and Microsoft 1x, estimate total
| 2000MW.
| silvestrov wrote:
| Sweden and Norway has _a lot_ of hydro power.
|
| When wind mills in Denmark are running then Norway stops their
| hydro and imports cheap electricity from the Danish wind mills.
| They save up the water.
|
| When the Danish wind mills stands still then Norway sells
| expensive electricity from hydro.
|
| Denmark is a very good place for wind mills so the combination
| is a win-win. It's crazy to look independently at each country
| because that is not how the electricity market works in
| Northern Europe. The countries are very interconnected.
|
| It just so happends that the wind often blows during the day in
| Denmark and stand stills during night. So this back and forth
| happends almost every day.
|
| When you ignore hydro power in NO/SE it shows that you don't
| know anything about the electricity market in Northern Europe.
| [deleted]
| rekoil wrote:
| It is true that we have a lot of hydro power, however it is
| pretty much fully utilised as it stands (they're talking
| about hundreds of additional MW when they talk about
| expansion, which will not do much in the grand scheme of
| things), and with all of this additional load, as well as
| fast ongoing electrification of our vehicles, it seems
| unlikely that additional wind farms will be able to pick up
| the slack.
|
| Obviously I'm hoping I'm wrong here, because the alternative
| is nuclear which is apparently still a no-no word in most
| political circuits over here, and thus is unlikely to happen.
| Even if nuclear were to happen, ramping it upp will take much
| longer than the pace of this additional industry and
| electrification...
|
| I'm worried we're going to end up in a crisis where we have
| to build up capacity quickly, and the only reliable and fast
| way of doing so is through fossil fuels.
| whizzter wrote:
| I'm actually cautiously optimistic for once, the MP
| ("Greens") rage-quit out of the administration opened up
| for S to skip the MP imposed blockade of the long-term
| storage decision. If that finally gets done it at least
| removes some uncertainty if any company wants to start
| making plans for a new plant (Yes, it's almost
| idealistically hopeful but the blockade did impose a lot of
| uncertainty).
| tmikaeld wrote:
| According to "Energikommissionen"s research, Swedish hydro
| could be greatly built out with minimal effects on the
| environment.
|
| [0] (2015 article) https://www.nyteknik.se/opinion/dags-
| att-bygga-ut-vattenkraf...
| rekoil wrote:
| I found that article as well, it cites no numbers, and
| according to Vattenfall the plan is for an additional
| 600MW by 2023... Hardly enough given everything discussed
| here.
|
| https://group.vattenfall.com/se/nyheter-och-
| press/nyheter/20...
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Yes, because I couldn't find the Energikommissionen
| official publications any more, same goes for net
| stability documents being removed from government sites
| (from 2013).
| londons_explore wrote:
| Hydro in general has two metrics that matter. How many MWh
| can you generate per year (pretty much, how much water
| falls in a year), and how much MW can you generate at any
| given moment (ie. How fast can the water come out of the
| lake at top speed).
|
| As the price of electricity varies more and more hour to
| hour, it becomes worth installing new generators to
| generate more MW, so you can do all the generation in a
| short time window to get the best price.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| The bottle neck right now is distribution, and building power
| lines is costly and takes a lot of time because you have to
| cross peoples properties, plus all the usual NIMBYism.
| Loic wrote:
| Denmark is pretty bad with respect to renewables. They have
| increased their oil consumption in the past years, they have
| increased the so called "other renewables" which is in fact,
| burning wastes because they recycle nothing. They are running
| at 70% on non renewables.
|
| So, Denmark is definitely not the Nordic country you want to
| use as reference[0]. Sweden is a completely different
| story[1].
|
| [0]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-
| by-sou...
|
| [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-
| by-sou...
| erk__ wrote:
| I am really unsure where they are getting those numbers
| from, I guess it may be fuel usage in cars that causes the
| oil usage, because it is certainly not electricity
| production where only about 1% is oil [0]
|
| [0]: https://en.energinet.dk/Green-Transition/Renewable-
| energy-in...
| bogeholm wrote:
| While Denmark definitely has a long way to go in terms of
| energy consumption, it is demonstrably false the we
| "recycle nothing".
|
| At my local garbage/recycling facility where you can
| offload gardening waste, tires, washing machines, cardboard
| etc. there are 20+ categories into which you must sort your
| trash - one of those is incinerated.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Burning waste for electricity makes
| financial/carbon/environmental sense until you have
| eliminated all fossil fuels from your grid.
|
| Denmark has had a reduction in carbon intensity per GDP
| similar to the EU average, which has brought them close to
| France and Sweden, who've been low for a while but haven't
| improved as much over recent times as say Germany.
|
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PP.GD?end=
| 2...
| Retric wrote:
| Buried waste sequesters carbon, burned waste doesn't.
| From a global warming standpoint replacing a low
| efficiency wasting burning power plant with a much higher
| efficiency natural gas power plant is a net gain for the
| environment. Not just is it less CO2 in the atmosphere
| it's also less lead, arsenic, etc.
| bogeholm wrote:
| Burying waste may sequester carbon, but also potentially
| creates a host of other environmental issues down the
| road when stuff starts leaking into the groundwater.
|
| Proper incineration + smoke scrubbing is, as far as I
| know, the best way to eliminate organic (as in chemistry)
| waste in an environmentally friendly way, eg. PVC.
| Retric wrote:
| "Potentially creates" is a solvable problem. Further the
| ash from burning municipal waste is very toxic and still
| needs to be stored somewhere. The volume is significantly
| reduced, but waste disposal benefits from the square:cube
| law reducing the volume doesn't save that much effort.
| bogeholm wrote:
| As long as smoke temperature quenching, smoke scrubbing
| etc is done correctly, I can only see that the ash is
| less toxic in total than the waste, as eg. chlorocarbons
| are handled by incineration.
|
| Still toxic, but less in total. Unless I am missing
| something?
| Retric wrote:
| It really depends on what was burned. I suspect in
| general municipal waste probably gets less toxic in total
| but more difficult to handle. That said toxicity in
| general is less of an issue than what escapes into the
| environment, and here I think traditional waste disposal
| has real advantages.
| Retric wrote:
| PS: As an example wet wood ash normally has a PH of 9 to
| 11 which can cause mild chemical burns while I burned
| wood is harmless on it's own.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Does interconnect serve 100% required capacity? IIRC in a lot
| of places they are like 10-20% tops.
| cm2187 wrote:
| France threatened to cut the power to Jersey a few weeks ago,
| Ukraine faced its own threats from Russia, so I will still
| look at something as strategic as electricity production
| along borders. Cross border electricity grids are all good
| until there is a conflict or a major shortage (remember what
| happened to EU cooperation on PPE in early 2020 when EU
| countries were seizing PPE crossing their borders).
| oblio wrote:
| The odds of Nordic countries fighting each other are
| astronomically low.
|
| Russia was always profiting off Ukraine, while France and
| the UK have generally been at odds (yes, all those micro-
| states count as British as far as the French are
| concerned).
|
| The situations you're presenting are not comparable.
|
| And regarding PPE, yes, everyone was doing it initially but
| the rest of the crisis was handled together. If anything, I
| think the EU received extra powers to be able to handle
| similar crises in the future.
| unnah wrote:
| Just a couple of weeks ago, the energy market disruptions
| lead Swedish and Norwegian grid operators to put
| restrictions on cross-border energy transfers, in
| violation of their co-operation agreements: https://www.b
| loomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-06/europe-s-...
| rightbyte wrote:
| > The odds of Nordic countries fighting each other are
| astronomically low.
|
| War? Sure. Political fights are not that unlikely though.
|
| Also, Norway is not part of the EU, so they can sell (or
| not sell) electricity how they please.
| silvestrov wrote:
| Denmark and Norway have been a single country/union for
| more years(290) than United States of America has existed
| (245).
|
| We share so much culture and language that Denmark going to
| war with Norway would be like New York going to war with
| Boston.
| maxdo wrote:
| LOL, yeah, oh well, Ukraine and Russia always been
| together. But one old gremlin named Putin with a use of
| propaganda in 7 years made 70% of a country according to
| polls to be OK to kill their used to be beloved
| neighbors.
|
| So don't underestimate the power of propaganda and crazy
| ideas politics can embrace.
| belorn wrote:
| The Swedish hydro is currently under a lot of pressure. It is
| overused and need to be reduced in order to prevent
| extinctions of multiple species. The existing plants are old
| and need be repaired, and a majority of them has failed the
| regulative requirement for environmental preservation. Some
| are arguing that the law need to be changed, possible
| including EU law, or they won't be economical viable to get
| them into compliance.
|
| As one comment on the news said, it is not viable to dig out
| new rivers. Someone in Norway could comment if they can
| expand their capacity, but I suspect the answer is the same
| there. Hydro is good but its a finite resource, and we now
| know the effect it has on fish and other animals that need
| the water to be traversalable.
|
| Talking about the energy grid of Sweden, how many know that
| the single biggest contributor to carbon emissions in south
| of Sweden is an oil power plant? A country full of hydro and
| still, that is what tops the charts each year.
| cinntaile wrote:
| > Talking about the energy grid of Sweden, how many know
| that the single biggest contributor to carbon emissions in
| south of Sweden is an oil power plant? A country full of
| hydro and still, that is what tops the charts each year.
|
| It's an oil plant, of course it's going to be a big
| contributor if it's running. Peaker plants are almost
| always fossil based, especially in regions that do not have
| hydro like the south of Sweden. Add to that the fact that
| the electricity demands outside of Sweden make the oil
| plant profitable from time to time. I think they run it
| more often ever since 2 of Ringhals reactors closed last
| year though, but even when they weren't closed I'd expect
| it to be the biggest contributor. Do you know if that was
| the case?
| belorn wrote:
| What I have read is that the plant operated only for a
| total of a few days each year before the nuclear reactors
| was closed down. Karlshamnsverket was built in in 1970,
| and the south of Sweden had a nuclear plant in Barsebacks
| until 2005. It was the combined effect of both Ringhals
| and Barsebacks that created the market situation where
| Karlshamnsverket operates regularly all over the year
| when ever demand goes up.
|
| Given the amount of hydro Sweden have, it is a bit of a
| black mark on the country that an oil plant actually get
| to run as much as it does. Its worth noting that Norway
| doesn't seem to use a lot of oil based peaker plants. I
| wonder if the oil that get burned in Sweden actually
| comes from Norway.
| cinntaile wrote:
| Between 2016-2020 it had an average running time of 67
| hours. For this year it's somewhere between 500-700hours
| I think, so closing Barseback had no real influence on
| this.
|
| Norway doesn't have nuclear either, they can easily
| regulate using pretty much only hydro. Most of the time
| this works for Sweden too, but when it doesn't it's nice
| to have an alternative. Even if it's spewing a ton of
| carbon into the air. The oil for Karlshamnsverket mostly
| comes from Russia.
| belorn wrote:
| Do you know why they are buying it from Russia instead of
| Norway? Funding Russia, especially individuals there with
| ties to the fossil fuel industry, seems like a poor
| decision when at the same time there is a bunch of trade
| sanctions against Russia.
|
| At any rate, I don't think its a very "nice" to subsidize
| the fossil fuel industry in order to have the alternative
| to burn oil. There are 8760 hours during a year, so for
| most part of that we simply are giving away tax money in
| order to keep the plant ready in the case of high demand.
| That is a very high price pay for the pleasure of spewing
| carbon into the air. If we instead reserved a higher
| portion of the capacity from hydro, and invested in more
| peak production by modernizing the generators (and at the
| same time invested in more environmental friendly
| design!), hydro and nuclear could manage what Norway is
| doing. A energy grid free of fossil fuels. That would be
| nice to have and something I would prefer over an oil
| plant.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I don't know to be honest, the oil from Russia that's
| refined has a lot of sulphur so maybe it's just because
| it's cheaper?
|
| Spewing carbon into the air is still a smaller price to
| pay than not having electricity when you need it in my
| opinion. While hydro tends to be quite reliable and
| predictable I wouldn't want to bet everything on it, just
| like wind and solar you are still dependent on the
| weather albeit to a much lesser extent. At least a part
| of your reserve power needs to be independent of the
| weather. On a global scale it's just a drop in the ocean.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Energy potential in the atmosphere, in this case meaning
| the oceans and the air, will always depend on the
| weather, by definition. The alternative is mining uranium
| and carbon.
| cinntaile wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. I said wind, solar and
| hydro are weather dependent?
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| "just like wind and solar you are still dependent on the
| weather albeit to a much lesser extent."
| clomond wrote:
| An attempt at a serious answer now that it looks like you fixed
| the units in your post.
|
| One key part is recognizing that "energy TRANSITION" accounts
| inherently that we are not talking about the design of the
| final end state 50-100 years from now, as doing so is not
| useful to the conversation as there are too many unknowns that
| far ahead. Better to recognize that you do not need 1:1 mapping
| of energy storage to power usage requirements in this "toy"
| example as fulfilled by li-ion production.
|
| In practice:
|
| - Solar and wind generation compliment each other structurally
| (sunnier when less windy, windier at night, seasonally too)
| meaning that in practice you only need a fraction of power
| capacity per amount of solar and wind generation. The best
| summary I've come across for this is some of Tony
| Seba's/RethinkX's work on "super power"[1]
|
| - it is always sunny or windy _somewhere_. More renewables
| increase the incentive for deeper and longer distance grid
| interconnections, meaning continental differences in generation
| can be "smoothed out"
|
| - li-ion energy storage is great for same day
| fluctuations(storage measured in hours), less so for longer.
| Other energy storage tech platforms have different economic
| properties leading to more sensible deployments (the other end
| of the spectrum is making hydrogen gas via electrolyzer to then
| convert back via fuel cell - best for storage measured in
| months)
|
| - You also need to factor in the nuclear and hydroelectric
| sources existing 50 years from now, as well as the natural gas
| to bridge the variability until then.
|
| Could go on but there is lots out there discussing the
| involvement and feasibility of having a very renewables heavy
| grid.
|
| The key thing is that we need to build as much of all
| renewables, in as many places as possible ASAP. Penetration of
| both solar and wind as we can already see can operate well on
| grids with virtually 0 energy storage. Worst case you can
| always curtail production. Curtailed production represents
| someone's energy storage opportunity.
|
| [1] summary/intro - but read source material https://pv-
| magazine-usa.com/2021/01/16/solar-wind-storage-su...
| tmikaeld wrote:
| It's not that easy, if you consider the environmental issues
| with digging down large power cables, creating power
| converters for every single unit, maintenance and replacing
| after 20 years, employment and network balancing - compared
| to a single nuclear facility that lasts up to 80 year, it's
| an order of magnitude easier to maintain, convert and
| install.
|
| There's been studies and books written on the subject [0],
| sources at the end.
|
| [0] https://www.analys.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/lcaer-
| om-ka...
| g8oz wrote:
| Cable and network management are not a moonshot. Utilities
| and power producers will adapt, don't underestimate the
| power of an industry's learning rate.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| > - li-ion energy storage is great for same day
| fluctuations(storage measured in hours), less so for longer.
| Other energy storage tech platforms have different economic
| properties leading to more sensible deployments (the other
| end of the spectrum is making hydrogen gas via electrolyzer
| to then convert back via fuel cell - best for storage
| measured in months)
|
| For the steel making part of this, the idea is to replace
| coal with hydrogen gas in the iron to steel process, so
| making hydrogen gas of the electricity is the actual wanted
| output and not just a way to store energy.
| callesgg wrote:
| What are you even talking about?
| emptyfile wrote:
| Electrical power supply.
| bjoli wrote:
| All the green projects (steel, batteries etc ...) are
| estimated to need over 40TWH/yr if they come to fruition.
| That is a shitload of energy that meeds to be produced, and
| there is really no good answer to how to do it reliably.
|
| Most people that write like the parent does usually reply
| "nuclear". I am not comvinced, but somfar there seem to be
| few good answers.
| Seanambers wrote:
| On demand power generation is going to be key in any attempt to
| transition to a (more) renewable energy mix. What Storage
| options exists today that can produce substantial amounts of
| power other than pumped hydro?
|
| The utter disregard for what works is insane.
|
| In Norway which basically is the land of hydro prices has
| spiked 3-5X because Germany and UK decided to fuck up their
| power generation and decommission a bunch of nuclear and fossil
| plants making them reliant on wind and russian gas.
| 7952 wrote:
| The UK is not reliant on Russian gas. Most imports come from
| Norway. And we have an active program to build new nuclear
| power stations to replace those at end of life.
|
| Also, the UK currently has 20GW of battery storage in the
| pipeline. It starts quickly and is even being designed for
| frequency response providing full load within 1 second. That
| is very useful in dealing with nuclear or grid failures.
| fifilura wrote:
| > other than pumped hydro
|
| What your reason to exclude pumped hydro in this logical
| reasoning?
|
| And also regular hydro power as a storage already complements
| wind power since you can choose to not use it when there is
| wind. You don't need to pump the water.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| I'm especially annoyed by the data centers. The politicians got
| taken for a ride, trading precious gigawatts of electrical
| infrastructure for a few dozens of jobs and a photo-op with a
| tier 3 VP from MANGA.
| konschubert wrote:
| Sweden is a great place to produce hydro and wind. They
| should do more of that and then charge a good price for it.
|
| No need to be annoyed.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Hydro capacity is at max right now. The generation is less
| of a problem than transmission, a lot of new infrastructure
| needs to be built because data centers are hogging a lot of
| it.
|
| Oh, and the data center owners got a tax rebate on the
| electricity:
|
| > Sweden's 2017 tax reform made a 97% tax cut on any
| electricity used by datacentres, which had the potential to
| reduce an individual datacentre's total electricity bill by
| up to 40%. The country's ministry of enterprise and
| innovation estimates that the datacentre industry saved
| EUR44m in energy consumption costs in 2018 because of the
| tax reduction.
|
| https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252466488/Tax-changes-
| le...
| bbarnett wrote:
| EU wants local datacentres, so EU data is local.
| Infrastructure remains (fibre, buildings) even if corps
| leave in a few years.
|
| It is hard to insist data be local, then make it less
| competitive to build local. This deal you cite, may
| address that.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| > EU wants local datacentres, so EU data is local.
|
| Not 100% up to speed but didn't SCHREMS II basically say
| that a local data center isn't enough?
| rekoil wrote:
| Yes, however it's pretty certainly going to be a part of
| the final answer to that question. Thus we're still going
| to want local datacentres, but maybe we will require that
| they are run by EU headquartered companies that don't
| report to foreign conglomerates.
|
| I can't 100% know this of course but it seems fairly
| obvious to me.
| gbrindisi wrote:
| where can I find those numbers?
| fulafel wrote:
| Your claimed power levels are nonsensical. A big nuclear plant
| produces 1 GW.
|
| (edit: it was edited since, was talking about tens of TW
| before)
| bjoli wrote:
| He/she means TWH. Hybrit (green steel) is estimated to use
| about as much energy as all the hydro power in lulealven
| (15TWH).
| cormacrelf wrote:
| I don't think so. TWh (Terawatt-hours) are not units of
| power, but a convenient conversion from Joules (J), which
| measure work, aka energy. When you say "steel uses so-and-
| so TWH" you are omitting over how long a period it does
| that; if it's an annual figure or something, then that
| makes sense, but you can't omit that. If my house consumes
| 1MWh (Megawatt-hour) of energy in one year, then it's a
| normal house. If it draws the same amount in an hour, then
| my house is not a house but a mid-sized city. You shouldn't
| expect people to guess what time period you are talking
| about. You should see the error in describing "all the
| hydro power" in TWh, because it simply is not a measurement
| of power.
|
| Usually when you're talking about electricity generation,
| you are trying to weigh up demand and supply. These
| quantities are each most naturally represented as rates of
| energy use, because those rates fluctuate intra-day. We
| mostly care about the highest point of the graph of demand
| in a region over a 24-hour period, because you can't build
| a wind farm in an hour to meet extra demand. Using Watts
| avoids ever having to talk about the period in question.
| One Watt is one Joule of energy per second. The OP
| clarified in an edit that they mean Watts.
|
| When you're talking about batteries, yes, you do need
| absolute quantities. Currently they're only good for
| smoothing out small peaks and troughs in supply, so the
| absolute amount of energy is proportional to how long it
| can cover for a wind farm when the wind farm slows down.
| Note that when the article talks about production capacity
| being "60GWh per year", they don't mean watts; the
| batteries are presumably shipped without much energy in
| them. They mean "produce enough batteries that the amount
| of capacity in total is 60GWh". It says nothing about the
| energy it will take to build them, which you would measure
| in Watts so that you can plug it into the instantaneous
| supply-demand calculation. 60GWh only tells you how much
| total supply smoothing capacity it will be able to provide
| to customers.
|
| When you are talking about carbon emissions, you aren't as
| interested in peak demand, and you might instead think
| about absolute quantities in a year, and proportions of
| that that have been generated by renewable sources.
| bjoli wrote:
| I omitted "per year". In the energy debate i sweden, the
| "per year" art has often been sloppily implicit. I will
| make sure to keep it in.
|
| The numbers given by the parent are consistent with the
| twh/yr number seen in swedish media
| cormacrelf wrote:
| TWh/year is definitely convenient if the central purpose
| of the discussion is to figure out the CO2e that will be
| emitted to produce it, or how to reduce the total energy
| use. This is good, in contrast to the coal/oil lobby's
| laser-like focus on peak demand, because their argument
| has long centered on the unpredictability of renewables.
| If you can do what the "smart grid" folks are trying to
| do, and spread out energy demand over the day, then the
| peak is not as big of a problem. Maybe Sweden's peaks are
| just naturally not so dramatic.
|
| In Australia everyone worries about peak demand because
| the central interaction most people have with the grid
| (aside from their electricity bill) is a blackout during
| a heatwave due to heavy air conditioner use. This is
| incredibly dumb, because the argument completely fails to
| hold up against solar, for which a heatwave is a
| blessing.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| It's blackouts that Sweden is dangerously close to,
| because the majority of power is consumed in the south
| but it's produced in the north.
|
| There's not only a production issue, but also a transport
| issue.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Yeah. Everyone's got the same problems; practically
| nobody has invested enough in transmission. (I'm hoping
| someone sees this and corrects me, I'd love to see a good
| example.) Good luck up there.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| We have a similar issue in Norway. There's currently a
| huge difference in prices between north and south of
| Norway due to limited transport capability. It's been
| over 10x at times this winter[1], though on average
| "just" 3-4x.
|
| In addition the water reserves for our hydro, which is
| like over 90% of our power generation, is quite low...
|
| [1]: https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/Market-
| data1/Dayahead/Area-Pri... (December 21, Oslo vs Tromso)
| fulafel wrote:
| What is preventing fixes to transmission, isn't it
| straightforward engineering with predictable construction
| times that can be planned well in advance?
| tmikaeld wrote:
| It is very much fixable, but the Swedish ruling party
| don't want to do the recommended upgrades, even though
| they themselves commissioned the investigations into the
| infrastructure..
| kragen wrote:
| This is all correct, and I really appreciate you taking
| the time to say it. Except that a megawatt is more like a
| small town than a mid-sized city. A mid-sized city is
| closer to a gigawatt.
| cormacrelf wrote:
| Thanks. And you're right, I think I was spitballing for
| one minute.
| Phenomenit wrote:
| Isn't the point of building the manufacturing plant in the
| north to utilize abundant hydropower?
| alkonaut wrote:
| That's one factor yes, perhaps the most important. Power must
| be cheap and reliable.
|
| Other factors include having access to cooling water (a
| river), access to a port, railway, and obviously cheap land.
| thathndude wrote:
| I'm all for wind. But concerns like running at 1% capacity due
| to no wind for a month bring me back to nuclear time and time
| again.
|
| Like Elon says, we have this amazing thermonuclear reactor (the
| sun) that we can harness, among other resources. But we also
| have the ability to make thermonuclear reactors safely on the
| planet and harness 100x+ more of the energy from the reaction.
| Seems like a no brainer.
|
| Just to provide a couple cites that OP didn't:
|
| A data center can use 100+ MW easily.
| https://energyinnovation.org/2020/03/17/how-much-energy-do-d...
| Nuclear Plants generate 500 MW- 1TW.
| ben-schaaf wrote:
| > But we also have the ability to make thermonuclear reactors
| safely on the plane
|
| We most certainly do not have the ability to make fusion
| reactors, at least not yet. Nuclear reactors on the other
| hand...
| Ygg2 wrote:
| I'd take a hundred Chernobyls over the end of modern
| society.
| darthrupert wrote:
| Exactly. Since we've used a lot of the oil dinosaurs
| graciously gave us, there's not gonna be another chance
| at modern civilization if we fuck this up. At least for
| us humans.
| eloff wrote:
| Oil doesn't actually come from dinosaurs, but you're
| right about the difficulty of bootstrapping civilization
| without easily accessible fossil fuels. We'd best not
| forget our current capabilities.
| jgilias wrote:
| I've heard that we've basically dug up all the easily
| accessible ores needed to jump-start a civilization, and
| all that's left now is something you need high-tech to
| access.
|
| So, there may not be another chance at an advanced
| civilization on this planet at all.
|
| There's geological timescales of course. But then, I
| don't think that helps given that we've dug everything up
| to the surface to oxidize.
| rekoil wrote:
| I really wish hydro/wind/solar were enough to power our
| modern society, and I hope it gets there eventually, but
| the reality is that it isn't enough to meet our current
| (and expanding) demands.
|
| The short term answer nobody seems to want to acknowledge
| is nuclear, and frankly I'm getting pretty damn tired of
| society not seeing it.
|
| We need to start building out nuclear NOW so that we (and
| future generations) have time to figure out renewables
| and improved nuclear.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| To twist the knife further some maniacs are now looking
| at hydro power and decrying it as too dangerous for
| wildlife. It popped in my YouTube recommend.
|
| Like motherfucker (to the video maker). You think the
| salmon are going to exist if the acidity of ocean rises?
|
| It's akin to burning in a house, fireman arrives with a
| hose and then I ask him, is the water iron free or not. I
| think I should have bigger concerns rn.
|
| At this point, I am wondering if some of these videos are
| sponsored by oil associates.
| rocqua wrote:
| I doubt these are sponsored. But some people would
| advocate less energy usage in general. Essentially saying
| we are poisoning and destroying the planet with energy
| usage.
|
| I doubt people who advocate this see an acceptable way
| forward to reach what they want. I personally think there
| isn't such a way forward. But I can see arguing for a
| desired endstate without knowing exactly how to get
| there.
| thathndude wrote:
| Yeah. That's all I'm trying to say. You said it far
| better than me.
| fifilura wrote:
| How is nuclear a short term answer?
|
| It takes 20 years to build a nuclear plant (https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant).
|
| I think the idea is that if we instead build alternatives
| we will not want those plants in 20 years.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| By keeping currently running nuclear plants running.
|
| Instead of replacing them withmore CO2 emitters.
| thathndude wrote:
| Such as Germany and other countries taking all nuclear
| off line.
|
| And for what reason? Historically, the concern has been
| what to do with the waste. But now, because we are
| investing in nuclear, we are finding that we can actually
| re-process the waste.
|
| And, at the worst, once rocket launch has become trivial,
| we can always send the waste off into the void (or sun).
| rocqua wrote:
| Its easier to shoot stuff out of the solar system than to
| shoot it into the sun.
| reportingsjr wrote:
| > Historically, the concern has been what to do with the
| waste. But now, because we are investing in nuclear, we
| are finding that we can actually re-process the waste.
|
| Reprocessing of nuclear waste is by no means a "new"
| finding. It's been known since nuclear power reactors
| have been a thing, but it is politically untenable. No
| country with nuclear capabilities is comfortable with
| other countries reprocessing spent fuel, as it is a
| portion of the process used to create material for
| nuclear weapons.
|
| As much as I want to love nuclear as an amazing source of
| energy, the cost and issues that arise with nuclear waste
| are massive and frequently discounted by people
| encouraging additional nuclear power reactors.
| rekoil wrote:
| I'm not dismissing the issues with the waste. Co2 however
| is a much larger issue in the short term.
| thathndude wrote:
| Respectfully disagree. We can and have made economically
| impractical thermonuclear reactors. But they fail largely
| because we've sheepishly avoided advancing the technology
| for 70+ years.
|
| I'm just beating the nuclear drum in general. We need to be
| investing like crazy here.
|
| We can make fusion reactors here on earth. Efficiency
| remains the issue. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/us-
| fusion-reaction-generates...
| alex_duf wrote:
| wind alone can't.
|
| But wind, solar, inter-continental connections, hydro,
| storage, and tidal probably can.
|
| Now whether we put nuclear in there or not becomes a matter
| of cost rather than necessity.
| Hypocritelefty wrote:
| pacificmint wrote:
| I think you are confusing thermonuclear with fission.
| Thermonuclear means fusion. The first case you mention, the
| sun, is indeed thermonuclear.
|
| However reactors are on earth not thermonuclear, they are
| regular fission. Fusion may be on the near or far horizon,
| depending on who you ask, but we certainly don't have that
| ability yet.
| thathndude wrote:
| My statement was less confused and more optimistic. We most
| definitely have the ability to make thermonuclear reactors
| on earth. The issue is making them work effectively for
| power generation.
|
| See, for example, https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/us-
| fusion-reaction-generates...
|
| I firmly believe we would have this cracked by now if we
| hadn't foolishly wimped out on nuclear when there were some
| growing pains. Instead of investing we have countries
| running from nuclear. That's a huge blunder in my opinion.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| You may be being downvoted because you have provided no
| citations or justifications for your claims, and because anti-
| electric shilling is, unfortunately, very common on the
| internet. The oil industry has really amazing PR.
|
| Is "TW" supposed to be a terawatt? Because that is an
| enormously large amount of power. Annual human _global_ power
| consumption is only 20TW.
|
| (Edit: Since I replied to this, you changed your units, and
| provided sources which I haven't yet checked.)
|
| Obviously, wind and solar cannot provide constant power, as
| fossil fuels can, but by building them in carefully selected
| locations, and combining them grid energy storage (which can
| be, but does not have to be, batteries[1]), un-evenness in
| supply can be smoothed out.
|
| [1]: Pumped storage hydroelectricity is another example.
| yobbo wrote:
| > Annual human global power consumption is only 20TW.
|
| Whatever the original post, "annual consumption" could only
| be measured in TWh, which is several orders of magnitude
| larger than installed capacity (usually given in MW). Popular
| media usually mix these so one has to just guess based on
| context.
|
| (And annual consumption is usually misleading in this context
| due to seasonality of both hydro/wind production, and the
| higher power demand during winter.)
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Yeah, I changed the units to be clearer.
| maxnoe wrote:
| Clearer?
|
| You shrank them by 3 orders of magnitude aka a factor of
| 1000.
|
| That's not "clearer", that's a huge adjustment.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| I'm sorry, the units where wrong, it's been corrected.
|
| It should, of course be 1GW = 1000 MW, to be clearer I
| changed it to MW.
| stavros wrote:
| Where was the terawatt? I only see tens of gigawatts in
| the new numbers.
| maxnoe wrote:
| No, they are not the same. You exchanged 10 TW with
| 10,000 MW.
|
| 10,000 MW = 10 GW = 0.01 TW.
| samwillis wrote:
| > How is that going to work, do they plan on shutting down
| production when there's no wind?
|
| This isn't completely mad. We are entering a new era of power
| where it's price is going to fluctuate throughout the day/week
| (more than before) and industry will scale up and down
| depending on price/availability.
|
| Automated production lines are "easy" to start/stop.
|
| I think we will also see compute pricing in the cloud react
| dynamically to cost of power. It makes more sense to run
| compute intensive (none real-time) tasks during peak power
| availability.
| [deleted]
| tmikaeld wrote:
| That's if you can assume that peak usage can be supplied, if
| it can't, there will be a loss of frequency (<50hz). When
| that happens, entire regions have to be forcefully shutdown,
| meaning there's no electricity to use even if you wanted to.
|
| Sweden have been dangerously close to this already, I expect
| it to happen now when the real winter starts.
| samwillis wrote:
| My point is that prices will be dynamically raised as 100%
| usage is approached. That way larger energy users in
| industry are pushed to scale down operations temporarily.
|
| Already governments/suppliers have agreements with large
| users to scale down during peek usage to ensure no loss of
| frequency, my suggestion is this is expanded to the whole
| of industry and made dynamic based on pricing.
|
| I suspect that some consumer protection would need to be
| introduced so domestic customers don't see quite the same
| level of price fluctuation.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| My point was that, if you stop and start frequently, the
| balance of the network will be extremely hard to maintain
| so you'll get blackouts that can span wide areas or even
| the whole net.
|
| Even if that wasn't the case, I'm not sure that Swedish
| industries CAN scale down even if they wanted to, because
| the cost to start up again would be greater than shutting
| down.
| lstodd wrote:
| It's like, surely you can "scale down" an electric
| smelter. Only that would mean almost rebuilding the
| furnaces afterwards.
|
| And it's sort of "simple" for the iron smelters.
|
| Try to shut down an aluminium smelter at an hour's
| notice. I'm not sure if it wouldn't be cheaper to build a
| completely new facility afterwards.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Many such smelters already act as grid connected
| batteries. Since they store heat, they can vary their
| electrical loads and get paid for doing so.
|
| Pretty much anything that heats, cools or pumps water can
| do this, but the big users are the easy place to start.
|
| There's even startups trying to melt aluminum purely to
| use it as a storage medium:
| https://www.alcircle.com/news/azelio-recycled-aluminium-
| to-s...
| tmikaeld wrote:
| I've seen similar by Salt-X, they use molten salt.
|
| Glad science is being done on this, but it seems hard,
| the salt causes korrosion issues, so it doesn't last
| long.
| erk__ wrote:
| Do you have any sources on the claim that it have been
| close to causing loss of frequency? In Denmark that relies
| quite a bit more on wind they are saying that it should
| happen for no more than 5 minutes this year (and that may
| higher than what actual happens, as they have averaged less
| than 1 minute per year the last 10 years).
|
| Furthermore the ENTSOE Mid-term Adequacy Forecast 2020 [0]
| forecasts Scandinavia to have between 0 and 0.1 hour loss
| of load expectation.
|
| [0]: https://www.entsoe.eu/outlooks/midterm/
| [deleted]
| rocqua wrote:
| I don't think many production lines are going to be start
| stop.
|
| If your production line is only running 70% of the time, and
| all of your running costs actually scale with that (which
| they almost certainly wouldn't), then you are still looking
| at 30% less return on capital investment. And most high
| energy consumption industry has massive capital requirements.
|
| Instead I think the adaptation will be in energy storage
| (both at consumer and producer) and simple energy
| overprovisioning. I have hopes for storage. Especially low
| efficiency but incredibly cheap and scalable storage.
|
| If we can store 30% of wind surplus in summer and use it in
| winter, that would be amazing. It would also help ensure
| energy security.
| doikor wrote:
| There is a lot of industrial processes that take hours or
| days to ramp down or up and sudden loss of electricity breaks
| equipment/infrastructure. Yes they have local
| batteries/generators for backup but those should not be used
| during "normal" operations.
| samwillis wrote:
| Quite true, and those industries would need to either adapt
| to a new energy pricing model or innovate on technology to
| be able to scale more rapidly.
|
| Just because there is a status quo doesn't mean that change
| cannot and should not happen.
| kabes wrote:
| Which probably means just running more generators.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| Which probably also means they will not be competitive
| with foreign companies
| jacquesm wrote:
| And price accordingly. It's only logical that the price
| of energy input is reflected in product price.
| samwillis wrote:
| Exactly, if you want your aluminium extrusion immediately
| during high electricity prices you pay a premium, or wait
| for lower prices. Industry will just have to adapt to the
| new normal.
| singhblom wrote:
| At least for the steel industry stuff quoted in OP the
| electricity consumption is mostly to produce hydrogen gas.
| The gas will then be stored in giant underground chambers
| and after that used in the steel production. This works
| extremely nicely with wind power since the electrolysis
| decouples the electricity consumption from the steel
| production. This means that the steel plants will act as
| stabilizers and modulators of the electricity prices in the
| whole region to a certain extent (together with the hydro
| plants and batteries presumably).
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Regarding feeding
|
| > The Swedish fossil-free steel (& Direct-Reduced Iron)
| manufacture (9000 MW)
|
| with wind power, then yes, it make total sense. What most of
| that energy consumption is used for is splicing water to
| hydrogen (which is then later on used in the steel process).
| Having a couple of weeks of hydrogen in a buffer may not be
| totally free or problem free, but it is quite straightforward
| and totally feasible. That means the electricity demand can
| become very elastic and sensitive to demand, which is a great
| feature for electric stability. If production would need to
| shut down due to lack of wind then there is a need to build a
| bigger buffer.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| The steel plant isn't built along the south coast though,
| where the wind turbines will be, it's built in the opposite
| end of Sweden (boden).
| yxhuvud wrote:
| The new wind park that is intended to provide the energy
| for this is not along the south coast but also in northern
| Sweden though. Also, last I heard neither the exact
| location for the windmills or the steel mill are set in
| stone yet.
| cinntaile wrote:
| The north of Sweden is exactly where most of the big wind
| turbine parks will be. You have plenty of open space and
| limited NIMBY. NIMBY is also the reason why you were under
| the impression that most turbines are going to end up in
| the south of Sweden, it leads to disproportional attention
| in the media.
| mikaeluman wrote:
| Yes we will of course need nuclear.
|
| But our ministers in charge claim it's an "old" technology.
|
| Makes me wonder if they ever go sailing...
| [deleted]
| Gwypaas wrote:
| Thankfully HYBRIT is a smart consumer with the explicit goal of
| taking advantage of cheap wind power. The hydrogen production
| is oversized to allow a buffer to be used.
|
| What sweden sorely needs is off-shore wind power which has
| higher capacity factors and do not completely correlate with
| on-shore wind. Currently there is only one miniscule park
| located in Oresund.
|
| Hopefully the military soon starts agreeing to some projects...
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You had time to look up all these links with big scary numbers,
| but couldn't take the time to find out how wind power works as
| part of an integrated low carbon grid? Your own link shows the
| hydro working to complement wind.
|
| Mentioning that wind isn't constant is about as insightful as
| the regular "sun doesn't shine at night" input whenever solar
| comes up. The giant billion dollar global industry that has
| been building out renewables at an increasing rate for decades
| has, somewhat unsurprisingly, already spotted those two facts.
| It baffles me that people keep bringing them up like they've
| won an argument by revealing the big secret that everyone is
| ignoring.
|
| btw your wind capacity figure is correct, for 2017, but it's
| doubled in the 5 years since, just like it doubled the 5 years
| before.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| How you complement something doesn't matter if the total
| capacity isn't there and if multiple countries are all
| consuming their energy, which is currently happening (this
| driving prices waaay up), you're looking at potential grid
| shutdowns due to networks not being able to maintain their
| frequency. Also, if you go below or too high in frequency,
| which can happen often in the summer with renewables (like in
| Germany, you got paid to use the electricity), you're unable
| to export it because, again, the frequency won't match the
| other countries grid.
|
| Germany shutting down 10GW of nuclear in 2022 is going the an
| interesting experiment in how bad it can go when you don't
| have enough planable electricity any more. [0] https://eike-
| klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-beinah...
|
| Not sure why the 2017 figure matters, if it's 1% of capacity
| it's still a fraction of total capacity if it's 2x or 5x
| more.
| lima wrote:
| See comment below about the linked article being part of a
| misinformation campaign:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29736480
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Thanks for pointing it out, I can't edit the comments any
| more.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Hm. Yeah. That may be the case, but IMO it doesn't really
| matter if the change is anthropogenous, or not. The thing
| is, there is much wishful thinking in all parties, on
| every side of the fences. And as it happens, not all of
| the points raised against the others are invalid. It's
| just that they are forbidden by groupthink, virtue
| signalling, and so on.
|
| So...in the spirit of considering all options, to get the
| real big picture, some of them maybe shouldn't be
| discarded so fast. OFC 'follow the money' should be
| applied, but still...
| tmikaeld wrote:
| > 'follow the money'
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/chinese-wind-farm-
| investment...
| lima wrote:
| It's certainly a topic with a lot of nuance, but in this
| particular case, there's no valid argument made and EIKE
| is known for deliberate misinformation. There is
| unanimous scientific consensus (a rare thing!) about
| climate change being real and anthropogenic. Anyone
| trying to argue this point in 2021 has no place in a
| factual debate.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| You know? I know the site by name, mostly by comments
| from some german sites I visit. Telepolis.de, mostly, but
| this controversy popped up elsewhere. I just spent about
| 30 minutes there, and skimmed the headlines, abstracts,
| and saw they published articles stating climate change is
| anthropogenic also. Though they stated explicitely that's
| not 'their' position.
|
| Furthermore, one big fart, or many smaller belches of
| volcanic activity can change/tilt/whatver all the
| interconnected systems in other ways. Then what?
|
| Anyone who argues this, has no place in a marketing-war
| of ersatz-beliefs.
|
| Personally I prefer riding around the Georgia Guidestones
| on Blucifer.
|
| _Yeehaaw!_
| lima wrote:
| I cited sources:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29736480
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| I opined.
| ginko wrote:
| At least the fossil-free steel is reduced with green hydrogen
| made through on-site electrolysis. That means a local hydrogen
| store can act as an energy buffer offsetting some of the
| fluctuations in the grid.
| lstodd wrote:
| That is interesting.
|
| As you must know, steel is an alloy of iron and carbon, the
| carbon in question coming from, you know, coal.
|
| So how exactly it can be "fossil-free"?
| Jolter wrote:
| Carbon that is absorbed into the alloy will stay there for
| a long time. Until the metal rusts away completely, which
| is ideally decades at least. But you're right that it's not
| stored indefinitely, it does go into the atmosphere
| eventually.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Fossil free steel is steel produced by not burning carbon
| in the process.
|
| It simply means it doesn't burn fossil fuels and emit
| (fossil) CO2.
|
| Carbon can still be used for the alloy itself. That's not
| an environmental problem.
| adrianN wrote:
| "fossil free steel" is a marketing term which means that
| (fossil) carbon is no longer used for reduction and process
| heat. This accounts for the vast majority of the carbon
| needed in steel production.
| maxnoe wrote:
| Your numbers and/or units are wrong.
|
| Sweden's power consumption in 2020 was 172.7 TWh [0].
|
| That's an average power supply of 19.7 GW (172.7e3 GWh / 365 /
| 24h).
|
| So either you show numbers for annual consumption but have the
| wrong unit (TW where it should be TWh) or your numbers are
| absurdly high.
|
| [0]https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-
| subje...
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Units where unclear, it's been corrected. Numbers are correct
| though, see the sources.
| rob_c wrote:
| From pointing out that renewable isn't the whole story yet in
| the past on here good luck with not getting down voted.
|
| There needs to be a solid configurable baseline that is low
| carbon which is combined with some transient energy store such
| as these batteries (if they're designed to not just make giant
| fire mountains when they fail).
|
| Nuclear meets that very well as does diversifying into wave or
| hydro.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| Either they:
|
| have plenty of other power sources they can ramp up when there
| is no wind
|
| plan to use large scale storage
|
| some combination of the above
|
| or it will not work.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| The simplest explanation of why Sweden is not plagued by
| regular massive blackouts is that your facts, math, and
| assumptions are wrong/incomplete.
|
| Simply put, it's not a closed system.
|
| Sweden is connected to the rest of Europe. So, German, Danish,
| British, Norwegian, etc. grids can import and export power as
| needed. The entire continent of Europe produces wind (and other
| power) at a pretty steady and predictable pace. Power is big
| business since selling it in the market is pretty lucrative.
| And since wind is pretty affordable, a lot of the supply is
| wind based these days.
|
| Basically, Sweden can produce cheap power locally most of the
| time and import more expensive power when they need to. Having
| a surplus means they export more power than that they import
| over time. It's just market dynamics. Because the way weather
| works, if there is no wind locally, that just means there
| definitely is some wind elsewhere. That's why Europe gets away
| with having so much wind power. The amount of wind power it
| produces fluctuates but not nearly as dramatically as you seem
| to believe.
|
| It's a rapidly growing market because as you note there is
| plenty of demand for more power. Hence, the rapid roll out of
| the cheapest way to produce it world wide: wind.
| natmaka wrote:
| > The entire continent of Europe produces wind (and other
| power) at a pretty steady and predictable pace
|
| Indeed: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/180592/european-
| cooperation-...
| tomp wrote:
| No, the simplest explanation is that they're supplementing
| the (unpredictable) "green" power by oil/gas.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| Nordic countries have had a really advanced electricity
| trading market for a long time.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Pool
|
| There are custom ERP:s for example that are developed for
| power companies.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Yes, it is connected, which means that when multiple
| countries are at a loss, then other can help out - but when
| all countries area at a loss or when the frequency don't
| match, which is currently happening, prices sky-rocket,
| electricity cannot be transported and black-outs are bound to
| happen unless turning to regional shut-downs.
|
| Which, by the way, is what happened in Germany recently [0],
| they had to be saved by multiple countries, shut down of
| large industry (Costing a lot in damage) - all to prevent
| black-outs. How will that be handled when Germany shuts down
| 10GW of nuclear power 2022, if it's already not enough?
|
| If you have 0% wind and you add 0% more wind, you get 0%
| wind...
|
| [0] https://eike-klima-energie.eu/2021/09/05/deutschlands-
| beinah...
|
| Not sure how different facts would help, when issues are
| actually happening.
| lima wrote:
| You probably didn't realize, but EIKE is a right-wing
| climate change denier "think tank", falsely claiming that
| antrophogenic climate change does not exist[1]. Their
| claims are widely discredited and considered
| pseudoscience[2][3].
|
| The linked article is an alarmist piece about the alleged
| risks of renewables and does not quote any reliable
| sources. I couldn't find any independent claim that
| anything unusual or alarming happened on August 14. Load
| shedding is a normal procedure and almost certainly didn't
| cause "a lot of damage" - it's industrial customers buying
| electricity at a discount in exchange for disconnecting
| from the grid when needed. This is only done for industrial
| processes that can be safely interrupted (like aluminium
| processing plants).
|
| If anything, it shows that the mechanism works as intended.
| There wasn't any notable frequency deviation on Aug 14 in
| the European grid. All the graphs look normal - there was a
| ~15 GW deficit in Germany which was compensated[4], well
| within normal operating parameters.
|
| In spite of the increasing complexity of managing the power
| grid due to renewables (a real problem which requires
| significant investments to solve), the German power grid is
| more reliable than ever[5].
|
| [1]: https://eike-klima-energie.eu/die-
| mission/grundsatzpapier-kl...
|
| [2]: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europ%C3%A4isches_Instit
| ut_f%C...
|
| [3]: https://www.quarks.de/podcast/quarks-science-cops-der-
| fall-e...
|
| [4]: https://energy-
| charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=de&c=DE&...
|
| [5]: https://app.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energ
| iewirt...
| tmikaeld wrote:
| Thanks a lot for the clarification, I was unsure if the
| claims where as bad as they seemed.
|
| It IS a problem in Sweden though, since we transport
| large amounts electricity over an under-dimensioned grid
| from the far north to south.
| lima wrote:
| Agreed - Germany has a similar north-south issue and
| NIMBYs protesting against construction of new high-
| capacity power lines aren't helping.
|
| The alarmism is misplaced, though. There's less excess
| capacity these days than some are comfortable with and
| more investments are needed (and ongoing), but we're far
| from risking blackouts or being reckless. Grid planners
| are a conservative bunch.
| belorn wrote:
| Alarmism about blackouts is indeed bad. The grid planners
| have enough fossil fueled power plants on reserve (paid
| through subsidies), and the rising costs from such plans
| are indication that they are indeed planning ahead.
| Countries in the northern parts of EU have enough fossil
| fueled capacity to survive on 0% wind for long periods of
| time, even in winter, which is somewhat being
| demonstrated right now. When the wind is up and running
| again those plants will go back to operate on standby and
| getting paid to do so.
|
| For now it just a money and political issue. Continuing
| to buy and expand the fossil fuel capacity is not very
| popular or cheap, and continuing paying for reserve
| energy through subsidies isn't very popular. The
| political goal in EU is to reduce those subsidies,
| through the numbers in the yearly report tend to show the
| opposite. When faced with the choice of following the
| political goal and blackouts, grid planners choose a
| stable grid.
| konschubert wrote:
| Language is funny. A couple of years ago, "Gigafactory" was a
| silly word that Elon had made up.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| It still is. What does it even mean? As far as I can tell it's
| just a somewhat large factory producing electronic cars.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Cylindrical Li-ion factory with more than GWh/month or 10k
| cars/month worth of claimed capacity
| ragebol wrote:
| Well, there was a TV show on Discovery in at least the
| Netherlands, called Megafactories, is this really that much
| larger? Car plants are pretty large as they go already.
|
| So, after some DDGing, the biggest car plant is Volkswagens'
| in Wolfsburg, Germany [0] at 6.5 million square meters, while
| Giga nevada has 11.5 million square meters [1], so twice the
| size. So it's big, but to go from mega to giga, you'd really
| need a 1000x increase, rather than a mere 2x increase :-).
|
| The Northvolt facility does not qualify for the Giga-prefix
| IMHO.
|
| [0] https://motoroctane.com/news/213409-largest-car-
| factories-wo.... This page actually positions Giga Nevada at
| a lower rank, so probably outdated
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Nevada
| fastball wrote:
| Pretty sure the name comes from the idea of producing
| _Giga_ watt-hours of battery capacity in one factory (which
| it does), rather than from the footprint.
| ragebol wrote:
| Yeah, thought so too after I posted my comment and walked
| away. Oh well
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| I was under the impression that Giga referred to GigaWh of
| batteries per year produced
| maxdo wrote:
| terrafactories are coming, so don't be surprised, nothing silly
| it's just a capacity and scale of a factory.
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