Topper wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 10:21 am
Cornuck wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 9:31 am
Topper wrote: ↑Wed Jul 31, 2024 9:07 am
Rate of charging?
Amount of energy put into the road and the amount of energy transferred to vehicle. How much is the net loss in the system? Efficiency?
And always the elephant in the room, energy source?
Norway is mostly Hydro (88%) and Wind (10%)
So 10% is not a consistent power and if looking at the current Bonneville Power in the US/Canada, the other 88% is suspect.
Nuclear is the best current green energy generating option.
Do you prefer the Swedish mix? 43% hydro, 31% nuclear, 16% wind, 10% biofuels.
Hydro is the best for regulating. You can turn it up or down depending on the need. Thus if there is plenty of wind, you reduce hydro, if there is no wind, you increase hydro. Well, I guess to some extent you can do that with biofuels too, but nuclear is problematic to turn up or down. It should preferrably run at the same rate the whole time. Nuclear is also the most expensive source, so I have a hard time seeing how investing in more of it would be viable. But it makes sense using the capacity we already have for the time being, seeing that it is mostly sunk cost, and we won’t save a lot by shutting them down. Wind is the cheapest source of energy. Sure, not as reliable as the others, but combined with hydro you can use as much of the dirt cheap wind energy as possible, thus keeping the overall cost down.
Denmark is all flat, so they basically don’t have hydro. They are now at 58% wind, 20.5% biofuels, 9% solar, 8% coal, 2.5% gas and 2% other fossil fuels (presumably peat and oil). It’s interesting to see that they manage with such a large part of their electricity being wind based, but Denmark is pretty much all coast, and most of their wind parks are off shore, so it’s basically always windy. I find it problematic though that they still get one eighth of their electricity from fossils, but I’m impressed they already have 9% solar. Solar and geothermal should be the future. Those two are truly reliable and virtually endless resources.
Iceland is currently getting 70% of their electricity from hydropower and 30% from geothermal.
But hey, their whole island is basically volcanic, so it’s easy to tap into that heat.
Finnish electricity production is really splintered. 41% nuclear, 19% hydro (flatter than Norway and Sweden, but not as flat as Denmark), 18% wind, 13% biofuels, 2% coal, 1.5% peat, 1% oil and gas, 1% solar, 3.5% other sources. A large part of other is imports, as they’re not quite selfsufficient. Mostly from Sweden, as we have capacity to produce more than we use. Just like the Danes, the Finns have still not managed to phase out all fossil fuels, but at least it is now less than 5% of the total.