Comment by gpm
13 hours ago
Yeah but:
1. Sweden is just about the worst case, there's very few countries/people that far north.
2. There's this genius invention called "wires". HVDC has transmission losses on the order of 3.5% per 1,000km. You don't have to colocate the solar.
> Sweden is just about the worst case, there's very few countries/people that far north.
Sweden is worse but it's still a significant issue in e.g. New York or Paris or Auckland.
> There's genius invention called "wires". HVDC has transmission losses on the order of 3.5% per 1,000km. You don't have to colocate the solar.
It's more than 1000km from the places that get cold to a part of the world where it isn't winter.
Suppose we ignore that it's winter in the US Northeast and Southeast at the same time and run HVDC 2000+ km to Florida because it gets an extra hour of sunlight. Long distance transmission can't be used to counter seasonal output and regional weather at the same time because one requires the generation to be spread everywhere and the other requires it to be concentrated closer to the equator. If we concentrate the solar in Florida to mitigate winter in New England then we're screwed when Florida is overcast.
> it's still a significant issue in e.g. New York or Paris or Auckland.
No it isn't.
Wires still might be worth it, but these are all close enough to the equator that you can just over provision locally without issue if you prefer.
> It's more than 1000km from the places that get cold
Solar panels work better in the cold. The issue is with how far from the equator Sweden is, not how cold it is.
> No it isn't.
In the US Northeast solar generates around four times as much in July as December. This is sufficiently bad when what you need is more power in the winter. Paris is a little worse. Sweden is significantly worse.
> Wires still might be worth it, but these are all close enough to the equator that you can just over provision locally without issue if you prefer.
If I need 25% more output in the month when solar has 75% less output, how much do I have to over-provision?
> Solar panels work better in the cold.
Places that need more electricity in the winter because they're cold are cold in the winter because they're further away from the equator.
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Wires and HVDC transmissions are nice, but they have a fairly large downside. They are major infrastructure projects that cost a lot of money and they don't produce any energy. Adding that cost to the solar panels makes them significantly more expensive, and solar/wind farms owners are not exactly willing to bear that cost.
You don't need to colocate the solar, but you need to make sure you can get that power when you actually need it.
During crisis nations are going to restrict exporting electricity and prioritizing their own residents. Electricity that is generated in Germany is not going to warm up Nordic countries if Germany doesn't let it.
Wires are also susceptible to sabotage, especially undersea ones (which are the current major connection points to Europe).
The issue is more the other way at the moment. Norwegian prices can get high as they are exposed to German demand over the interconnector.
Sure, that is the current situation but if the Nordic countries started relying on solar from central Europe (especially Finland since it doesn't have the hydro capacity Norway & Sweden have) things could get ugly during crisis.
The GP essentially framed overprovisioned solar as solution to anyone who might rely on nuclear without taking in account realities in many countries.