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by japanuspus
2021 days ago
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Also worth pointing out is that one of the key reasons for keeping all those "green" biomass power stations running is that they supply heating for most urban areas via "communal heating". This heat is tax-free since the heat is a "waste product", keeping the single biggest energy use sector at an artificially low price (energy use for heating is bigger than transport and consumer electricity). It would be political suicide to start taxing the energy for heating, leading to all kinds of weirdness such as: - Denmark _paying_ to export electricity when the power stations need to run to produce heat (because if the power plants used the electricity to provide heating, the heat would not be a waste product)! - Big data centers cannot sell waste heat for heating, because they would need to run heat engines to raise the temperature to usable levels, again rendering the heat "not a waste product". (TBH, The last one is so clearly stupid that a workaround in the rules is in the books) |
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Still, Denmark often sold electricity for pennies on the dollar – or literally for free – to Norway, who in turn used the energy to pump more water into their hydroelectric dams. This energy was then sold back to us, at (higher) market rates, whenever the wind died down and Denmarks needed to import electricity, due to its inability to produce enough electricity to cover its own demand.
Often, when Scandinavia is getting a lot of wind, you can even see electricity prices going below zero. In some of those cases, you can sometimes see a group of wind turbines, where some are spinning at great speeds and other are completely still. This is in order for the producers not wanting to pay to get rid of their electricity.
While it is a shame that the storage problem isn't solved yet (except in the case of our shrewd Norwegian neighbours), I don't really fancy waiting for that to happen, when other options are (or rather should be) on the table.