[jltsiren]

In a country like Sweden, wind + hydro is all you really need. You use wind when it's available and hydro when it's not, and you produce synthetic fuels using excess power. Base load and storage are bigger issues in densely populated countries with less favorable geography.

[highwaylights]

I’m surprised this is the calculus even though it makes sense as you’ve stated it.

Sweden could do well to plan on building out wind power that’s surplus to their needs (as could many other places), solely because it can be exported if you’re long term over-capacity for what you need.

Storage is the big hurdle, but there’s a lot of novel options here. Concrete batteries are a fairly simple example of creative ways to store energy and I’m sure there’s better options than just planning on more rare Earth metals.

larger scale hydrogen extraction maybe? (I don’t know much about this just throwing it out there).

[troupo]

> Concrete batteries

Not available at any scale beyond marketing materials

> larger scale hydrogen extraction maybe

To what end?

[fifilura]

Hydrogen is planned to be used in large scale in Sweden to remove coal dependency in the heavy steel industry. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrit (sorry Swedish article only, I am somewhat surprised)

I have also heard statements that transporting Hydrogen through pipelines is more scaleable (because of less land required) and causes less energy loss than electric cables. Much needed in a long country with energy balancing problems like Sweden.