[smartbit]

Both users and companies could be incentivized to lower their consumption of electricity by increasing the price astronomical during periods of scarcity. A minimum of 1 Ampere per household without surcharge and beyond that enough to pay off the infrastructure. Taking a sauna or charging your car during peak times would costs, let’s say, €500. Assuming that in the north of Sweden there is ample Hydro energy, in the north the surcharge would be lower than in the south.

I strongly believe people and organizations would accommodate, just like during winter times in the north of Sweden one wears a different coat than in the south. But with the current system one isn’t incentivized to adapt power consumption to cost and hence more & more costs are made to build power lines from the north to feed the south of Sweden. And the same for standby fossil fuel plants.

Also prepaid electricity bills with automatic cutoff when exceeding, remaining 1 Ampere. Similar to the days when homes/tents would be heated by burning wood, during summertime one needs to collect enough firewood for the whole winter. Different times but in concept nothing new.

[belorn]

Market prices in the electricity grid do not work to incentivized lower consumption, and the latest few energy crisis in EU has demonstrated that clearly. You can't expect workers to go to work based on when the weather is optimal, and to stay at home (unpaid) when it is not. Rent do not go down according to weather, nor do food prices. Workers do not like to go to work at 3am in the night if that happens to be the time when the wind is blowing. Bakeries can't just choose to produce bread when its good weather and not delivery anything during other periods. Contracts in production chains are not written to consider weather patterns.

A bakery for example will produce bread at a loss if they have a contract and the value of the contract is higher than a temporary increase in electricity. If you allow market prices to rise unlimited, the price will increase to the point where breaking a contract is cheaper than not producing. Some companies in the last crisis did invoke force majeure when prices got too high, which as a society is a very poor way to incentivize behavior.

The result is that voters will elect a government that solves the problem, rather than change behavior. We have also seen that in eu for the last few elections. The Swedish elections in particular has been dominated around the topic of energy.

Hydro energy would help to keep the market stable in Sweden if the value of the natural resource would also stay in Sweden. Right now that resource is being primarily sold off by private actors through exports to countries like Germany and Denmark, thus doing little to keep the market stable for Swedish consumers. The government could nationalize that resource, deeming it as a natural resource owned by the Swedish citizens and thus any revenue gained from selling electricity would automatically go to Swedish citizens to pay their energy bills.

[smartbit]

I respectfully disagree. The main argument that is completely ignored and not reacted to “humans can adapt, they behave different in different circumstances, eg. wear thicker coats in northern Sweden than in the southern areas”. Our huge brains allow for creative solutions to changing circumstances, also bakers and other workers can adapt. If they don’t for political reasons, then societies die or diminish.

> Market prices in the electricity grid do not work to incentivized lower consumption, and the latest few energy crisis in EU has demonstrated that clearly.

The prices haven’t changed much, less than factor 2. Far too little to see any change in consumption indeed. If bread is too expensive to produce during some periods switch to Knäckebröd or Müsli products that, now I think of it, are Swedish probably for the reason that they can be stored for prolonged periods and replace bread when that is unavailable in harsh wintertimes.

> right now Hydro energy is being primarily sold off by private actors

It happens all over the world, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons is an alternative that historically has been successful.

[belorn]

Humans can definitively adapt. Historical when there has been a bad harvest, invading a nearby country which has it better has always been an available option. An alternative solution that humans been up to to handle change is to produce a social rules (like a price roof) so that other people carry the load when the weather provide a bad turn. There is no question that humans can adapt, only a question if that adaption is good for society with some definition of good.

If we imagine a society where production become based on the availability of energy through optimal weather, we would have to ask what the cost of that adaptation is and if alternative solutions, say nuclear energy, would be cheaper. The best adaption can simply be to use the correct tool for the job, a tool which may be more optimal in some climates but less so in others. If there is something humans excel at it is to adapt to nature and produce local solutions to local weather conditions.