[IshKebab]

Most countries aren't close to a level of electric car penetration where that would really be a problem. Even in Norway this is new car sales. The actual percentage of cars on the road that are fully electric is 32%.

Plus most people charge cars overnight when there's a surplus of power.

Oil and gas income I will give you though... I don't think most countries could afford this.

[seanmcdirmid]

Hydro doesn’t really care if it’s used day or night, they can just open or close the gates as needed. It would be more of a thing if they used nuclear or coal, which is hard to ramp up and down.

[ninalanyon]

The market cares. We sell electricity to Germany, Denmark, UK, and Sweden. This pushes the prices up at times of high demand in those countries.

[seanmcdirmid]

Yes, but Norway controls the sluice gates and has an idea of when demand is high or low. I guess you could argue that their generation capacity is limited and during peak they simply can't offer anymore, but other than that, Norway can totally ramp down production at night.

[ninalanyon]

The demand for electricity in Europe is so high that Norway could sell every watt-hour if the DC links and HV AC backbone had enough capacity. Essentially the only thing preventing Norwegian electricity prices rising to European levels is the lack of capacity in the backbone HV system not the ability to control the generators.