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Tomorrow, from 11:00 until midnight (and it probably continues on Thursday, but prices for Thursday are not yet set), we are being paid for consuming electric power. Not much, though - around a quarter of a cent per kWh.
The total cost is not below zero: The power cable company charges for bringing the power to our homes; it is the power itself that has a price tag below zero.
This is the up and down sides of green power. Right now, Europe has got more solar power and wind than we need (and high mountain hydropower basins filled to the rim). When it is cloudy and no wind and the hydropower basins empty, a kWh may cost a dollar/Euro.
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Well, yes. But in Norway, the adoption of electric vehicles has been influenced by various factors, including government subsidies and the country's electricity prices. It's worth noting that Norway experienced record-high electricity prices in 2022, as highlighted in this article on SSB (Which is the Norwegian government's statistics bureau)
Rekordhøy strømpris i 2022 – dempet av strømstøtte[^]. Poor implementation of these subsidies gives some people money for using electric power, but this is not the general case nationwide.
To get a better understanding of the current electricity prices in Norway, you can refer to the Nord Pool website. They provide market data, including day-ahead area prices, which can offer insights into the fluctuating prices of electricity in different regions where the actual sales price on the market is given hour by hour: Market data | Nord Pool[^]
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The negative electricity prices I was referring to was those from the Nord Pool website, not at all affected by the state subsidies but the raw spot market prices. Spot market prices will be negative most of tomorrow as well.
I live in the central part of Norway, the 'Trøndelag' region. We have hardly received any electricity subsidies at all - almost all of that was routed to the the southern part of Norway. Subsidies are taken from our tax money, so it really is just a way to route your electricity bill through the state finances, hoping that is cheaper paying it through taxes than paying it directly. Well, it raises the taxes even for central and north Norway people, who receive next to no subsidies, so that we central/northerners will pay part of the power bill of the southerners.
When we complain about 'Record high electricity prices', it is like a well-known phrase-of-mouth, 'World famous in Norway'. We claim to have extremely costly electricity that will bring our industry to collapse unless the state puts in heavy subsidies, any time that there is a single region outside Norway with lower prices, ignoring that in lots of other European countries, the prices are maybe 2-3 times those 'record high' Norwegian prices.
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Ah, I see. The providers will pay you to use electricity. How does that happen?
At any rate, if you have a fixed price deal with your electricity provider you could have been paid to use electricity for quite some time:
Fastpriskunder tjener penger på å bruke strøm – NRK Rogaland – Lokale nyheter, TV og radio[^]. Another fun fact is that the government owns the largest power provider in Norway, so it can be viewed as just giving back a minor share of the profit and not as a tax. Even substracted for the deflated price, the power company made a huge profit.
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Kenneth Haugland wrote: f you have a fixed price deal with your electricity provider you could have been paid to use electricity for quite some time
This is a crazy effect of the crazy way the subsidizing is implemented: You receive a refund that does not scale with the amount you pay for the power, but what you would have paid if you were on a spot price contract. With a fixed price contract, you were not at all affected by the rising power prices last fall, yet you received compensation for it. It is the craziest subsidizing scheme I have ever seen anywhere!
The majority of Norwegian domestic customers are on spot price contracts, and for many years, that has turned out to be the cheapest alternative. Last fall was the first time period ever when the extra price you pay for having a "predictable" power bill returns in a lower total cost. That is for the winter we have been through - and with a fixed price, you have no benefit of wind and sun bringing the price down below zero.
The power line company reads the power consumed by you every hour. This amount is multiplied by the Nord Pool spot price and summed up, so when the Nord Pool price is negative, the total sum is reduced. Your power provider usually adds a tiny, kWh-fee on top of the spot price.
On top of that sum comes the bill from the power line company, composed of a fixed cost per kWh, and a monthly fee set by your peak hourly consumption (the maximum of 3 hours on separate days).
So to actually reach a zero or negative power bill in total would require lots of days with very negative spot prices, so much that it covers up for both the power company's surcharge and the power line bill. That won't ever happen. There is only one below-zero factor in the calculation. It is the same factor that was at NOK 7-8/kWh (70-90 cents/kWh) last winter, and it does make a difference!
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Is it call green power because it makes others, who are paying a small fortune for power, green with envy? 
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Don't they have huge battery banks that could use some recharging for when the sun doesn't shine?
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I would hope not.
I doubt battery banks are an effective solution to storing intermittent green power generation for large scale electric utilities. There are other methods that I would like to think are going to be better at doing that when the TOC is computed.
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But batteries are high fashion nowadays. They are politically correct.
Just like solar panels to provide electricity for home heating, disregarding that solar heat pipes collect at least 4 times as much energy as heat (which is what you are after!) and are far less sensitive to orientation, occasional shading etc.
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jschell wrote: I doubt battery banks are an effective solution to storing intermittent green power generation for large scale electric utilities.
Isn't that pretty much what Tesla's batteries are said to be doing for Australia's power grid?
Mind you, I'm paraphrasing some headline I've read and never bothered reading the actual article.
[Edit]
Here, the first article that came back when googling for it... Do with that information what you will.
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dandy72 wrote: Isn't that pretty much what Tesla's batteries are said to be doing for Australia's power grid?
Well comment in the article would not suggest a real solution to me.
"But how can a strictly backup power source that supplies power for just an hour make such a huge difference?"
Wind/solar must be able to deal with outages much longer than that.
Just a brief look at the rest suggests that it isn't even trying but is rather just to provide smoothing for surges.
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dandy72 wrote: Don't they have huge battery banks that could use some recharging for when the sun doesn't shine?
They would have to be SUPER huge, at an enormous cost (and consumption of raw materials).
There are a few thermoelectric (read: very slow adjustment of power output) power plants that use battery banks for handling fluctuations in power demands - faster than what the plant itself can handle. The capacity must be sufficient to handle the fluctuations, not the base consumption, typically over one day, from a single power plant.
Do some back-of-envelope how many battery cells you would need to conserve any significant amount of electric power! For a small example: The most popular Li-Ion cell today is the 18650 (it is used by a large share of electric cars). The better variants can store 10 Wh. A cell weighs 50 g. Say that your Canadian rivers are overflowing in summer, so you let your 150 GW of installed power run at full speed, saving half of it by charging batteries for the winter season. 75 GW effect produces 75 billion Wh per hour. You would need to supply 7.5 billion 18650 cells, at weight of 375 tons, per hour to handle this amount. That is 180 billion cells at 9 000 tons a day, 5.4 trillion cells at 270,000 tons a month. This is for saving half of Canada's installed capacity from spring/summer for use the coming winter.
Batteries are suitable for small scale use, up to (at most) road vehicles. In power production, they may possibly be suitable for handling fluctuations. For the latter: The number of charge cycles will be high, most likely a minimum of one cycle a day. If you want to use it with tidal power, you have four cycles a day. It seems like if you restrict Li-Ion cells to the middle 60% capacity, never discharge below 20% and never charge above 80%, they can survive more cycles than the early estimates indicated, yet in a tidal power station taking them though 1500 cycles a year, you should budget a significant sum of money for cell replacements.
Tidal power is a kind and well behaved energy source - 100% predictable, both in time and volume. For wind, you never know how many cycles your batteries will have to take in a year. You can't tell when they will be sucked completely empty, nor when they will overflow. While Californians may think that solar energy is predictable, it certainly is not here in Norway. And in any case we would require seasonal energy storage. Although I am living south of the Polar Circle, the sun is so low (both in altitude and hours) for 4 months a year that the radiation has no value as an energy source. Almost half of Norway's area is north of the Polar Circle: The towns and villages along the northern coast of Norway have a polar night of around 60 days.
Batteries are not the solution for huge (call it "town sized") long term storage of electric power.
If you've got a thousand meter tall mountain in your backyard, you may of course learn from those talking enthusiastically about pumping water uphill to be used as hydropower downhill at a later stage. So let us dig up another envelope  To save 1 kWh of electricity, you would have to pump 400 liters of water up on that 1000 m peak. You have to build a basin at the peak, and a basin at the foot of the mountain to collect the water, to have something to pump up for the next cycle. At winter time, my house consumes not 1 but 50 kWh on a typical winter day, so it would take 20,000 liters (or let us call it 20 cubic meters) of water, per winter day. Every house down the street, and all the neighboring streets, would require 20 cubic meters per winter day.
Not everyone has a 1000 m mountain in their backyard. If the nearest hill is 100 m above the plains, it would require a basin capacity, up in the hills as well as down on the plains, of 200 cubic meters per day, or 6000 cubic meters a month, 24,000 cubic meters to serve a single home for a 4-month winter season. Lots of pumped-water-storage never made that simple calculation!
A final proposal for energy storage: Cut a cylindrical shell of rock, five meters across, one meter thick walls. Fasten permanent magnets tangentially on the surface, all the way around. In a shell around the cylinder, mount electromagnetic coils to pull on those permanent magnets, to spin up the stone cylinder. Note that at the exact moment when the magnet is passing under the coil, you have to reverse the polarity of the coil to push the magnet (and stone cylinder) further along. When you want the power back, you let those spinning magnet induce a current in the the coils; this will gradually brake down the spinning cylinder.
Given a 5 m across, 1 m thick cylinder shell of density 2.5 stone, spinning it up 20 rps, would store slightly below 300 kWh per meter of cylinder length. I guess you would need a few extra magnets in the bearings to lift it up - the weight would be 31.5 tons per meter of cylinder length. Make sure to point it to the Northern Star, unless you want it to dance around like a spinning top.
Note that making a solid cylinder rather than a cylindrical shell would indeed increase its energy storing capacity by almost 12%, and its weight by 60%; the weight/capacity ratio goes up by around 40%. (If a capacity of 200 kWh per meter is sufficient for you: Shave down the walls to 0.5 m thickness, and the weight drops to 17.7 tons/m.)
This is just a crazy idea. In my eyes, it is no less realistic than using batteries or pumped water for storing huge amounts of energy that can be extracted as electricity.
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trønderen wrote: This is for saving half of Canada's installed capacity from spring/summer for use the coming winter
That just seems like the wrong problem to try to solve.
But clearly, you've given this a lot more thought than I ever have.
And I appreciate that - not trying to be sarcastic.
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I certainly didn't intend to claim the (re)invention of the flywheel! 
Like with batteries, I just wanted to illustrate a few back-of-envelope calculations to indicate the magnitudes. The Wikipedia article essentially points out the traditional uses, such as frequency control, brakes, power fluctuations (in production or consumption) - essentially, "smoothing" functions.
Medium/long term energy storage is only mentioned as a half theoretical possibility. One of the referenced sources is a 2016 story about a system with planned completion four years later. If you look up the web site of the company, they offer units that can store 32 kWh each. In their list of 10 installations, a single one exceeds 64 kWh capacity. The Fresno project referred to by Wikipedia is not mentioned at all - apparently, it was never realized.
When discussing flywheel energy storage with people, try to throw in a side remark or small question about how the gyro effects are handled. If the give you a blank stare in return, or try to brush off the question as something insignificant, then you know that they are not serious about energy storage.
You could possibly use a flywheel (or fly-cylinder) for medium-term (6 hours) storage of energy from a tidal power station. For long-term high capacity energy storage, such as needed in a wind power station to cope with a week of calm: Forget it.
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trønderen wrote: Tidal power is a kind and well behaved energy source
I believe geo-thermal as well.
Although there are probably long term problems with that solution.
Maybe we can just all shiver through the winter months until the sun comes back out?
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jschell wrote: I believe geo-thermal as well.
For the stability and predictability, you are no doubt correct.
If what you need is electricity, in most parts of the world you have to drill really deep down, to where the temperatures are above the boiling point of water. If the steam comes to surface level, most people want to move to a different location (Reykjavik is an exception ). You will do that excessive drilling investment only of you plan a power plant of significant size, based on steam turbines.
If what you need is medium temperature heat, e.g. for heating homes, you can often make due with a lot cheaper drilling. The surface installation is a triviality, compared to steam turbines for an electric power plant.
Consider energy wells for heat pumps to be the little brother of geo-thermal energy. You will still need electricity from another source to run the heat pump, but you can get 3-5 times as much heat from each kWh, compared to direct electric heating. And it is stable and reliable. As reliable as your electricity supply for your heat pump.
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trønderen wrote: If what you need is medium temperature heat, e.g. for heating homes, you can often make due with a lot cheaper drilling.
Of course micro scale geo thermal, accounting just for the local install, is not going to be as efficient as macro installs based on the the TCO in terms of environmental cost.
I haven't seen anything that seeks to clarify long term costs (environmental) of those.
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Thanks for the time you invested in this post.
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I got a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB NVMe to replace the smaller lesser performing 1TB NVMe that ships with my new laptop (arriving tomorrow)
The laptop comes with Win11 home, which is fine for my purposes, since I intend to dual boot and home is just for gaming at my sister's. Work is linux.
The laptop has a 2nd NVMe slot, so my plan is to populate it with the 1 TB drive that ships with the PC, pop the 2TB in the primary, and then format/repartition the secondary into 2 500GB partitions, one of which will be linux, and the other half will be for downloads and pictures and stuff. The primary drive is for win11 and any games I want to play.
Here's the issue: The Windows license. I essentially want to transfer my license and Windows 11 copy from my 1TB to my 2TB.
Here's how a little bird told me I could do it:
Log onto my microsoft account to associate my Windows license with my account.
Swap out the system drive, install win 11, choosing "I don't have a product key" - then, if it doesn't activate by UEFI I should be able to sign in to my MS account and activate it that way or something? Wasn't real clear on that last bit.
This is supposed to be a new feature with Win11.
Does anyone know anything about this, or otherwise know how I can accomplish the above?
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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honey the codewitch wrote: Swap out the system drive, install win 11, choosing "I don't have a product key" - then, if it doesn't activate by UEFI I should be able to sign in to my MS account and activate it that way or something? Wasn't real clear on that last bit.
This has been like this since Win8 IIRC.
I used to do a lot of swaps and reinstalls during my college years.
If it's not an OEM license (some manufacturers ship with OEM license to save on costs), you'll be able to install without the product key and then login to your MS account.
It should automatically verify the installation.
Alternatively you could run the following command in the command prompt as admin to get the product key and keep it somewhere for reference.
wmic path softwarelicensingservice get OA3xOriginalProductKey
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Thank you! Yeah, I'm not sure what the story with this license is. It's whatever Lenovos ship with.
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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I got curious and tried to write:
slmgr /dli in cmd, which apparently lets you know if you have OEM, Retail, or Volume license.
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awesome, thanks!
There's smoke in my iris
But I painted a sunny day on the insides of my eyelids
So I'm ready now (What you ready for?)
I'm ready for life in this city
And my wings have grown almost enough to lift me
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I'd grab AOMEI Backupper (there is a free version) and hit the "Clone" button. Then select "System Clone - Clone or migrate your system to SSD or other disk." and follow the instructions it will give.
It's been a while since I did that, but last time (Win 10) it was extremely pain free. Changing your disk does not invalidate your registration, it should work right away.
Then I'd use their Partition Assistant (again a free version is available) to faff with the disk sizes.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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