65 TWh more energy

Ten Years

Ten years. That's the waiting time that could be announced by Statnett (TSO) and the local grid company (DSO) when you ask for a grid connection to install your new industry or to further electrify your activities in Norway. With lead times like that, we shouldn’t be surprised that industrial decarbonization is falling behind schedule.

But what if the grid we already have could carry way more than it does today?

Let’s take the example of an industrial port that has a subscribed grid capacity of 10 MW and transports 40 GWh per year. Maybe, the port is using its maximum grid capacity during the daytime, in February or November, when lots of fishing boats arrive in the port, businesses are running at full speed, and extra heating of the buildings is required due to the cold weather. However, at night, during low-activity periods or when there are no fishing boats in the port, the capacity of the grid remains untapped.

Drawing on our findings, industrial parks and ports may use less than half of their subscribed capacity over a year. This would leave our port with a theoretical potential to transport around 50 GWh more energy through the same cables.

65 TWh

Now, let’s scale this example to the rest of Norway. Norway consumes approximately 130 TWh of electricity per year. If this represents only half of what the grid is built for, this would theoretically mean that the country could double its electricity use, adding another 130 TWh, without expanding its infrastructure. 100% utilization of the grid is not possible, but if we by smart utilization of the grid can increase the transport capacity by 25 % (65 TWh) it’s still significant. If we use all of it to replace propane in industrial processes the savings is 15 million tons CO2 per year.

To put that in perspective, in 2024 the industrial sector (excluding oil and gas) had a final energy consumption, electricity included, of ~72 TWh; residential buildings one of ~42 TWh; and transport reached 53 TWh. This “new” 65 TWh could cover more than a significant share of this.

So why isn’t the industrial sector fully electrified yet? From our perspective we see two main challenges. Propane is today cheaper for the industry since they already have invested in a gas facility, and secondly that everyone wants power at the same time. The Norwegian 2030 ban of fossil usage may change the economic situation, but we still have the peak load issue. During morning and afternoon rush hours, the grid is built for these peaks where the capacity is used close to its maximum. Thus, despite the “25%” availability in the grid, existing industries and new industries are not connected to the existing grid.

Shift it. Store it. Convert it.

This is where flexibility turns latent capacity into opportunity: Shift it, by running your energy-intensive processes when the grid has room; Store it, by charging a storage unit to produce the steam you’ll later need; Convert it, by turning it into hydrogen or ammonia to produce green fuels.

Of course, this is a theoretical case, and several technical implications should be considered along the way. However, the conclusion is simple: you don’t need to wait 10 years to have more electricity available. There is grid capacity available now.

Flex. Share. Store. Power More.

Flexpartner Energy makes a connection by terms agreement stable to industries and ports that need more power capacity by monitoring the grid utilization constantly, and using all tools of flexibility to make this happen. New lines remain necessary eventually; but flexibility is the cheapest, fastest grid expansion available, and it's ready today.

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