Last summer in Sweden we had a "heat" period of 2-3 weeks and this forced us to emergency start one of our nuclear reactors that were idled down before final termination scheduled for end of year 2020 it also forced us to start up our old oil burner plant to prevent massive black outs since our "renewables" where not delivering.
This should perhaps have raised some questions how smart it was to terminate our nuclear reactors without any functioning alternative in place, that is if common sense and not just virtue signaling and "buying" those easy votes were the objective. Some questions on this obvious thing were raised but naw.. we pressed on and now two of the reactors in the plant are permanently closed since last day of 2020. 1/8th of Swedens power supply gone without any viable replacement.
It took about one week into 2021 before the first result of this decision started to show, we had a bit colder weather -10 -> -15 degrees Celsius nothing special for a Swedish winter. Consumer electricity prices hit the highest levels seen in 5 years. We are now in a position where we have lower base load capacity and that will strain our hydro plants even more to cover the gap in the system where our nuclear used to be. This will lead to hydro reservoirs draining during periods of high electricity demand and low rain, basically winter and occasional summer heat period. Witch will lead to substantially higher consumer electricity prices for two reasons.
Hydro reservoirs are draining so this needs to be mitigated somewhat with higher price
Operators of hydro plants no longer have competition from nuclear so they can set prices much higher as a default as we have no other options since renewables are not delivering when needed.
Closing down our nuclear in the name of environment will obviously lead to higher consumer electricity prices and on top of that we will burn more oil. This outcome is hardly a surprise to all of our politicians but we still did it and we will press on down the same patch and close down the few reactors we have left. If you ask a politician what we should do about this problem i can bet you the answer will be "we have to invest in more renewables" more of the same thing that got us in this position and mess.
If summer of 2021 becomes a hot one we are going to use that oil burner plant like we haven't in a long long time.
These virtue signaling policies don't seem to be limited to Sweden it rather seems to be a global pandemic. Looking at Germany, consumer electricity prices have exploded since their Energywende or what they call it project and as i understand their gas consumption and dependency has followed the same path witch seems logical since you have a higher % of wind and solar in your production profile and need to fill all those gaps you have created with something else and in this case gas.
Hi,
Merry Christmas all, i do hope all of you are alright. I was curious to hear how you are all holding up in the storm and those extreme negative temperatures and perhaps also if someone can shed some light on what issues this might bring for operators short and long term out of the ordinary. How cold is it in Texas now?
In Sweden we are now running what used to be our backup plant (oil burner) as a regular asset, we have fired up another oil burner in the south of sweden due to some scheduled maintance of nuclear (yeah i know.. brilliant to put it for winter season..) and we have bought capacity for new spare capacity or what will likely be "spare" capacity in a possible near future. Oh yeah the new spare capacity is primarily Coal but can fall back on burning Oil.. so we got that going for us.
Take care and stay warm!
Hello MB.
I hope that you and your countrymen are doing well.
How will the Nord Stream situation affect your energy prospects going forward considering energy flows south from Sweden? Have the economics of your standby oil burning generation improved enough to mitigate rising retail power costs in any appreciable amount?
There's so much more to ask but you get the picture. Many here realize in concept what the average citizen in Europe faces this winter. Hopefully, these few months between hot and cold extremes have been some sort of a blessing.
Take care.