A winter day

January 14, 2014. It's a nice winter day.


And it's a bit cold. Not extreme, just -12C.
















And this is the status report of the Nordic power market system.

Total electric power consumption in Finland is about 12500 MW. And wind power production is... about 1 MW. It actually oscillates between 0 and 1, so sometimes it rounds down to 0 and sometimes up to 1.

So wind power produces about 0.005 % of our electricity consumption - which in turn is only a part of our total power consumption, as I can attest as I watch the fireplace in my living room.

Yes, it is true that in Denmark there is just now currently quite a good availability of wind power and the electricity we buy from there is wind power. Unfortunately, it seldom works the other way round: we can't really sell wind electricity to Denmark, or anyone. So my point is: why do we subsidize the stuff to such an outrageous extent? I'd rather have us sell some other energy to the Danes when there is no wind either in Denmark or Finland. They are, after all, a producer with large wind energy capacity, which means that they have huge coal power plants, and if we care about CO2 emissions, we should be selling them hydroelectric and nuclear power.

Or we can go the way Germany does: extraordinarily expensive energy, large subsidies, and firms going belly up.