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It is exported.. primarily to Norway and Sweden, neither of which have any significant amount of carbon emitting generation capacity at all.  Net ecological  gain: Zero. Net economic cost to Denmark of using nordic hydro to loadbalance our wind capacity? Quite large. Danish wind electricity imports are mostly used to conserve waterhead behind dams in Norway and Sweden - this reserve of power is then exported back to us when wind is low at a much higher price. Which means two things - that the actual percentage of wind in the danish power mix is in fact rather higher than export statistics indicate, and that the price of this electricity, including storage outside our borders, is much higher than we admit.

Note that this does not have any bearing on the question of our emissions- those numbers are not affected by these shenanigans at all, because they are a simple result of the megatonnes of coal we burn.
(and let us not discuss Barsebeck. That was an offence against sanity)
French power exports, which are typically a heck of a lot larger, go to countries that do use coal. Net ecological gain: Large.

by Thomas on Sun Jan 30th, 2011 at 01:28:16 AM EST
You are sort of assuming here that there is hydro capacity to spare in those countries. That may or may not be the case, and if it is not then you need to consider what else would be built to replace the wind imports.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jan 30th, 2011 at 12:15:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
What imports?
The thing to realise is that Denmark uses Nordpool as a virtual pumped hydro scheme - far and away the largest such in the world - large enough to store many days, possibly even weeks of danish wind output. Sweden and Norway have an enormous amount of hydro power, which is highly dispatchable upon demand -what happens is that high winds in Denmark depresses the nordpool spot price, at which point the hydroelectric dams turn down their turbines as far as is compatible with the health of the rivers they sit on, and water accumulates behind the dams. Sooner or later, the wind speed in Denmark drops (or rises beyond the tolerances of the windmills) price goes back up, and the dams run down the reserve of water they accumulated, selling the power back to Denmark which, due to low winds, is suddenly short of power, and make a tidy profit.
This is a vastly superior solution to what people outside Nordpool do to back up their wind (Ie: Gas) but it is not a good use of this resource - The storage capacity of the scandinavian hydro complex could load balance a nuclear fleet powering a rather nice chunk of northern europe instead of 18 % of danish power supply. At 100% penetration nukes need about a third of their output shifted 12 hours or less.* Wind turbines often need 100% of their output shifted days into the future, so a given amount of storage covers a lot more nuclear capacity than it does wind.

*Or alternatively, a way to dump excess nighttime production. In extremis, resistors will do.

by Thomas on Sun Jan 30th, 2011 at 03:43:31 PM EST
[ Parent ]
This, incidentially, is probably why renault has several billion euros invested in electric automotion RnD - Napkin math indicates that the electricity demand from a total switchover to electric veichles,
- assuming nighttime only charging -
would produce a demandcurve for electricity that is very nearly flat, which would make EDF do the dance of joy nonstop for the next decade.

Granted, this is a fairly challenging assumption, but most (french) people drive a heck of a lot less per day than the range on the cars renault is offering, so as long as the economic incentives are there, most people should refrain from topping up charge while at work or similar sillyness.

by Thomas on Sun Jan 30th, 2011 at 03:59:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Those figures are for wind development within a single area. In an EU-wide wind buildup with proper grid integration, you will have several uncorrelated wind zones, reducing the volatility.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Jan 30th, 2011 at 04:02:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Like storage, continentspanning supergrids have applications beyond windpower, some of which are far more economical, and will therefore take precedence.

Gird europe with a network of HVDC lines capable of doing transmission on the scale you envision, and what you have actually done is unbind powergeneration from location, which means that new generation capacity will be built where the production cost is lowest. This could potentially be quite bad if it turns into a game of regulatory arbitarge with the result that we end up getting our power from coalburners in whatever jurisdiction still lets them pollute as much as they like. It could also be quite positive if it results in the utilization of remote hydro /geothermal, and the buildout of nuclear for the export market in places with sane regulatory regimes and existing expertise.

What will not happen is the exclusive use of such a grid for wind. Now, in fact, some wind will be transmitted on such a grid, simply because such a radical delinking of locality and power consumption would get a lot of windfarms constructed at places with optimal prevaling wind speeds (The economics of wind are all about location!) but it would be very unlikely that the penetration of wind into this supergrid would be very much higher than in the present national grids.

by Thomas on Mon Jan 31st, 2011 at 06:56:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]
We have not yet seen where the long-term wind penetration in national grids ends up, so it seems somewhat premature speculate on whether the penetration in a properly integrated European grid is going to end up above or below the average national grid penetration. An integrated grid with demand-side load-balancing makes it possible for wind penetration to go clear up to 100 %, or near enough as makes no matter.

Of course basing your entire grid on wind is unlikely to be efficient, for the same reason that basing your entire grid on any other single mode of generation is unlikely to be efficient. But since a kWh of wind electricity is still cheaper - including load balancing costs - than a kWh of nuclear electricity under present industrial conditions (the fossil fuels are not even within shouting distance when you internalise their externalities), it is unlikely that nuclear power will crowd out wind to any extent that obviates the economic value of an industrial policy for wind energy.

Which is really all that matters at this point in time.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Feb 1st, 2011 at 10:44:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]
To the extent that nordpool does net imports from Denmark, this is a a bad thing: the carbon intensity of danish electricity production being approximately infinitely higher than that of Sweden. Which is missing 1200 megawatts of clean energy generation due to political pressure from the Danish government. I am not bitter about this at all.  
by Thomas on Sun Jan 30th, 2011 at 03:50:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

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