by Starvid » Wed 23 Jul 2008, 18:50:08
A map of the Nordic transmission grid, page 2 in English. Not all planned expansions are shown. Also the HVDC (the worlds first, from 1954) to the island of Gotland (the big one next to Oskarshamn and Norrkoping) is not shown.
http://www.svk.se/upload/3756/SVKK030121.pdf
For some more information (if anyone cares reading it) I'll quote Magnus Redin, a member of the Oil Drum who has debated nuclear energy on TV in Sweden.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') am a technology nerd from Sweden with some understanding of economics and politics. The nordic energy problems, and opportunities, are handled with market pricing plus heavy taxation.
We have one of the worlds most unregulated electricity trading markets:
www.nordpool.comThe heavy taxation were originally purely fiscal and have then also been motivated by environmental reasons.
Other market manipulations that have been done is early state involvement in hydro power and large scale grid building and at least in Sweden in nuclear research.
All nordic countries have strong municipialities and manny of them have built local grids and invested in power production. But this is more or less local government acting as a market player in a sane way.
There is a regulation preassure on all power industry to comply to fairly strict codes and this adds to the cost. On the other hand it rewards long term planning and parts of the power industry is sometimes ahead in this, probably people who like to do a good job.
Overall it seems like grid quality is improving but the service is not improving since a lot of the investments is a replacement of repair staff with cabels that dont break down as often.
I think the Swedish grid have about three generations. Pre WW-2, post WW-2 hydro boom and 70/80:s nuclear boom. Pre WW-2 is mostly gone or being replaced real fast now, post WW-2 hydro boom major switchyards are being replaced and almost all of the rural distribution grid is being replaced. A lot of the high voltage nuclear boom switchyards are being updated or rebuilt to get higer reliability and a lot of the rural investments will be redone with only a fraction of the life lenght used to storm proof the distribution.
I guess the period of about 2000 - 2015 will be another major generation in the grid due to cablification and manny investments done for the nordic power trading and better reliability. Hopefulle the period will be ended by additions for new nuclear powerplants in Swden and not only Finland and strenghtening for plug-in hybrids and EV:s and thus lenghten this generation to about 2020.
The major investments in production are both done by established power companies and customers cooperating to build their own production to undercut the oligopolies.
I think most of the energy future is electric, with lots and lots of electricity.
PS. Hey I really like what Magnus is saying about other things too!

So for those interested in reading more OT stuff about Sweden, just plow on.
"expat" who seems to be an American, says:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ''')But this is more or less local government acting as a market player in a sane way.'
For most Americans who have grown up in the last generation, this statement is essentially incomprehensible. Government is the opposite of market, the same way day is the opposite of night.
Which may explain why Americans so often deride Europe's over-regulated socialist economy, with its maternity leave, essentially universal health care, 4-6 weeks paid vacation per year, safety regulations, and on, and on.
Both systems have flaws, but one seems oriented to the long term, taking into account multiple factors, while the other seems oriented to the rich getting richer as proof that it is superior.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd it is correct that over regulating and toying with socialism can be very hurtfull for your economy and the well being for a countries citizens.
Our luck in Sweden has probably been that previous generations only socialized some sectors and then slowly started to back off. We now need to hurry up with that since we need more efficiency.
The more theoretical and ideological your socialism is the worse it becommes. The early generations of socialists in Sweden had a practical mindsets and a lot of what were done where simply about building things in an efficient way intended do be lived in by those in charge and the rest of the people. One of the major problems with that is that those in charge dont have the same taste and wishes as everybody else. This mindset dont work well when you do something more complex then clean water, distributing electricity or paving roads. Thus manny of our cities look like they were bombed during WW-2 when in reality they were redeveloped for the common good, a disaster wich will take further decades to repair.
Things started to go south in the late 60:s when socialism should equalize man, should be extended to include private companies and should transform children into realy happy and equalized citizens. It had been so successfull in so much so they probably felt it to be logical to extend the project.
Dident work and it is quite a lot of work to get childcare, schools, hospitals, etc to start to function in a more efficient way and get all those people who thought it were a good idea to rethink it.
Myself as a right wing hobby politician I have a kind of two front battle since I advocate large government investments and so on in preparation for global warming and peak oil while at the same time wanting to back off in other sectors and redistribute the funds. Arguing for bigger government in some sectors and smaller in other is hard since it no longer is ideologically simple. At least I am sure that free enterprize is vital for getting things built and run in an efficient way.
Perhaps the difference between our system and yours is that we in Sweden fairly often think about longer time spans of both history and future and have a tradition of some technocracy. If something works or not when you analyze it is fairly often a valid argument and a reasonable share of the general public understands such reasoning.