Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
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Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
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Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#2NPR's Planet Money podcast recently had a relevant episode on Germany's feed-in tariff.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/17/797322305/episode-965-das-gre...
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#3I don't heat because I want it cold. It's hot enough in summer, in winter it's finally cool.
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#4I don't heat because I want it cold. It's hot enough in summer, in winter it's finally cool.
The article is about energy politics, not personal preferences.
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#5Why not capture carbon from air with surplus energy? Build few capture plants and buy energy to keep price positive, then sell carbon cerificates on european market.
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#6I don't heat because I want it cold. It's hot enough in summer, in winter it's finally cool.
There was an article I read on that solar powered website that's been shared on HN a few times that changed by view on heating.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not...
Basically, just wear a sweater and long pants in the house in the winter so you don't have to heat it so much. And if you need to, put a heat source near you, but there's no need to heat the whole house.
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#7"Only turbines built in 2016 or later take even a small hit to their revenues if prices go below zero, and more than 75 % of the production capacity was built before that."
That seems like a recipe for folks just building endlessly regardless of demand, pulling money from government... and an eventual mess when you fix it and nobody is making money suddenly...
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#8Why not capture carbon from air with surplus energy? Build few capture plants and buy energy to keep price positive, then sell carbon cerificates on european market.
It would be more efficient for Germans to pay for new energy production in their neighbors. Poland for example has lots of coal that makes it untenable to do green energy.
[edit] though frankly it’s probably even easier for Germans to just pay their domestic coal producers not to produce.
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#9I don't heat because I want it cold. It's hot enough in summer, in winter it's finally cool.
There was an article I read on that solar powered website that's been shared on HN a few times that changed by view on heating. https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not... Basically, just wear a sweater and long pants in the house in the winter so you don't have to heat it so much. And if you need to, put a heat source near you, but there's no need to heat the whole house.
Still not comfortable having skin exposed to the cold, and texting gloves never seem to work that great for me.
Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?
#10I feel like the issue is that a lot of consumers get stuck paying a fixed per kWh delivery/transmission fee.
IMO: this doesn’t make sense. Transmission and distribution costs are largely the amortization of the cost of building the system peak carrying capacity.
There’s no shame in charging higher D&T rates during peak times and near-zero rates at 3AM.
Could also make electricity taxes a percentage instead of a fixed $ per kWh.
Germany could encourage domestic consumption of its overproduction, which would further encourage demand smoothing, but instead exports it.