Wanna tell us more? Why has unifying the energy market been catastrophic for Sweden?

postepowanieadm 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I may tell from Polish perspective - loosely speaking: Germany and Austria used to share single bidding zone: electricity was produced by wind at the north and then consumed by factories at the south. The problem: no sufficient grid connection - Polish and Czech grids were used instead, what caused major problems - loop flows. It lasted from 2001 to 2018.

Unification needs to be real, including grids, not on paper only.

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brabel 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Sweden has plenty of cheap hydropower. But as prices are now tied to countries like Germany which made catastrophic decisions around energy, Swedes have to pay much more than if Sweden had an independent energy market.

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AndrewDucker 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Presumably because Sweden is selling some of that cheap power to Germany.

The solution to which is to generate even more power in Sweden (so you can sell it off cheap and have it cheap too) or that Germany produces power more cheaply so that it's not giving Sweden so much money for electricity. Both of these should happen if the market is set up well.

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causalscience 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

In that case it sounds like "unification was bad" is an unfair characterization. Unification was bad by proxy, due to the bad decisions of Germany. If Germany had made better decisions, unification would've been good as Sweden would've had lower prices on a larger market.

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techpression 8 hours ago | parent [-]

”Bad or good by proxy” is how all policy plays out though, your ideas mean nothing if reality says otherwise. And Germany going coal was well known by time of unification (one might think it was because of that, tinfoil hat on).

	▲	causalscience 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Personally, I try to not think of the world in binary terms. I don't find "unification bad" useful.

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Limeray 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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techpression 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Having to pay more because of Germany going fossil fuel like crazy. When there’s no wind and it’s dark they cause most of EU to suffer since the cost of their coal plants are so high. We also send a lot of green energy out of the country only to import coal powered from Denmark (not as major, mostly happens due to high consumptions) And we’re also getting a price spike fee, don’t dare to put on the dish washer when your neighbor is!

All this in a country where electricity was almost free (to be fair, our dismantling of nuclear doesn’t help here)