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points by Maxion 3 days ago | 0 comments

Yep, I live in Finland where we are quite far ahead of the curve when it comes to renewables and nuclear. This is one large problem. When it's winter and cold and dark, solar does not help. Wind only helps when its windy.

Batteries are coming, and will solve it, but it will still take time for them to be come cheap enough.

Only once we have ~7 days of storage (~100 GWh of storage) will we be able to get rid of the last fossil plants.

[–] olegp 1 day ago

Unrelated to the topic, but if you happen to live in Helsinki, you should join our HN meetup, if you haven't already: http://bit.ly/helsinkihn

[–] Maxion 1 day ago

Thanks oleg! I have, but have been lazy and not yet showed up :D

[–] pebbly_bread 2 days ago

>Batteries are coming, and will solve it, but it will still take time for them to be come cheap enough.

How long is the hope those batteries will last? There's surely no way Finland can run off battery power for even one month, much less a whole winter.

edit: perhaps I misunderstood and your comment on batteries was more related to the reliability of wind?

[–] weberer 2 days ago

Yeah, the batteries are for wind. There are some days when the wind barely blows at all. That's when electricity prices really spike.

Finland's power grid stats are open to the public. You can click the month view to see how the different power sources fluctuate.

https://www.fingrid.fi/en/electricity-market/power-system/

Also fun fact: a lot of solar panels in Finland are mounted vertically to walls rather than rooftops. That's because we're so far north that the sun just hangs around the horizon rather than going directly overhead. You end up catching more sunlight pointing directly south.

[–] dns_snek 2 days ago

Budgeting for over a month without power is unheard of. Extreme scenarios ("dunkelflaute") are measured on the order of hours, maybe days, and they get shorter and less frequent the larger the grid is.