Comment by endofline@lemmy.ca on Yesterday the price of electricity in Finland was negative 1.5 cents / kWh

It’s still not earning you money to spend electricity because you still have to pay the transfer fee which is around 6 cents / kWh but it’s pretty damn cheap nevertheless, mostly because of the excess in wind energy.

Last winter because of a mistake it dropped down to negative 50 cents / kWh for few hours, averaging negative 20 cents for the entire day. People were literally earning money by spending electricity. Some were running electric heaters outside in the middle of the winter.

If I had to guess, it’s a temporary influx of “renewable” energy ( read solar nuclear energy as pretty much everything on earth including coal / water and so on ). You can’t copy this into other countries. Both Scandinavian and alpine countries have abundance of water and wind energy

You can’t copy this into other countries.

I’m currently paying $.20/kWh on a Texas grid that is heavily based on natural gas, despite being ripe for a solar/wind boom.

If you could cut my bill in half, particularly during the summer when my AC usage explodes, that would be much appreciated.

Yes, solar energy is tempting but the “advertised prices” and “cost savings” are mostly overstretched. Right now a lot of “renewable energy” sources are subsidized in Europe for only political reasons. Subsidies for solar installations are now gone but still you don’t have to have costs of utilization. You will have them in 15 - 25 years for sure and then you will be able to make a proper assessment. Regarding Texas, I think solar energy could be profitable but for sure in Alaska it won’t be. Still you need to do correct calculations and check what’s the outcome of that installation would be. EU “green energy” savings analysis is just misleading. Germany, the main political proponent of the green deal is the best case for this. Energy prices are only going up and up after ditching atom energy. Russian “green” gas won’t save them

Right now a lot of “renewable energy” sources are subsidized in Europe for only political reasons.

I can assure you the same is true for fossil fuels in Texas right now, so I don’t see how this is a strike on renewable energy

I heard only shale gas but good to know about oil. As far as I know, USA is not one of the main oil exporters, mostly middle east countries, especially of Arab peninsula. Venezuela, Iran, too but they are under sanctions. American oil / gas, please, correct me if I am wrong serves mostly as strategic reserves so it may be that USA that it’s better for Texas to use solar energy. However, most of calculations don’t track the whole lifecycle of solar panels and their environment conditions - I mean whole energy produced for the solar panels lifespan (15 - 25 years) minus the costs of production and utilization. The analysis needs to be done per each case not mandated for all because it doesn’t make sense with the total costs adjusted like in Poland. I know many owners of solar panels in Poland and it’s not that ‘rosy’ with the solar energy savings

The US is the world’s largest oil producer. The US, however, does not export the most crude oil, but instead exports large quantities of refined products (gasoline, diesel, etc.).

The US was the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in 2023.

To be honest, I’m struggling to keep track of the points you are making because you brought in several tangential topics all at once without much context (shale gas vs. oil, oil exports, LCOE, Poland all in a thread about solar energy in Finland compared to fossil fuel energy in Texas). I’ll just point out that the US is #4 in oil exports, by either barrels or export value (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_exports) and the number one oil producer (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production), so I think it is pretty obvious that the investments into fossil fuel infrastructure in the US are well and above what is necessary for a “strategic reserve” use case

It brought it up because I know that most these analysis are just misleading at best. Once again, I know exact numbers for Poland and these are very, very poor. It’s beyond my surprise that somebody says that in Finland where they have polar days and nights and almost in arctic circle (the strongest sun radiation is on equator), its energy effectiveness balance could be positive. Nobody has provided numbers so far

Here: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/12/07/finlands-gold-rush-navigating-the-solar-landscape/

While Finland has made commendable progress in solar development, the government has recently decided to halt subsidies for solar projects. Backing will instead be allocated to hydrogen projects.

We shall see only then how the solar panels market develops without subsidies. It can’t be done without energy storage which will be beyond expensive (which is the most cases for now) and power networks / providers don’t want to buy the energy back. That’s the current state in Poland - I know, my father has solar panels

This also happened in Spain a few months ago, though. Which have drastically different climate and landscape to Scandinavian countries.

Maybe, but Spain has an huge sea shoreline. Sea breeze could be here an advantage for Spain

I would assume that most countries would have natural advantages to achieve this with renewable energy sources one way or the other.

As this has been achieved by very different countries around the world.

You can absolutely copy this. Just build solar where there’s no wind.

No, you can’t. You can’t get the same of solar energy in Nordic countries as in Sahara desert. It’s simple, you can’t. Totally different ratio of solar energy per square meter by ranges making it in north Scandinavia virtually unusable

You see, “Other countries” includes the rest of the world. You build whatever fits the country, be it wind or solar or hydro. I don’t understand what you’re saying.

If you don’t know what energy output per meter is, total output and total cost of solar panel ownership, how it varies across geography in relation to equator, the fact there is no cheap way to store it (or you have to use it somehow in that very moment), it means it’s pointless to talk any further. Simple physics. It doesn’t matter though whether if it is solar, wind or water

You’re making zero sense. What is your argument I don’t even get it.

This post is about Finland. If fucking Finland has too much energy, then Sahara has too much energy for sure

You missed the point entirely. Finland has little to none solar energy. They have only wind and water energy. Same with most Nordic, Baltic and northern Poland. There is not enough solar energy provided by sun to make it affordable ( whole life cycle including utilization costs )

There is not enough solar energy provided by sun to make it affordable

Typical per capita electricity consumption in developed economies is 6–12 megawatt-hours (MWh) per person [4]. This may double to around 20 MWh per capita [5] to accommodate electrification of most energy functions.
The power and area of solar panels required to supply 20 MWh of electricity per capita per annum are 14 kilowatts (kW) and 70 m2, respectively, assuming an average capacity factor of 16% [7] and an array solar conversion efficiency of 20%.
For ten billion people, this amounts to 140 TW and 0.7 million km2, respectively. This can be compared with the global land surface area of 150 million km2 and the area devoted to agriculture of 50 million km2 [8].
The simple calculation above shows that the world has sufficient land area to provide energy from solar PV for ten billion affluent people.

https://www.mdpi.com/2673-9941/3/3/23

TL; DR; full solar electrification with current technology for 10 billion affluent people is possible if we dedicated less than 2% of the real estate currently in use by global agriculture to electricity production

I live in Finland. Can confirm we have solar energy. It’s extremely useful considering that in the summer we have near 24 hours of sunlight.

And in winter reverse. How much do you get from solar during the summer season ( north region or close to polar circle) ?

It’s simply supply exceeding demand. Finland has so much wind turbines that when it’s summer time (no need for heating) and windy then the price drops to zero but then again in the winter time when it’s cold and calm the opposite is true and we can see insane spikes in the price.

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Yesterday the price of electricity in Finland was negative 1.5 cents / kWh(lemm.ee)

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