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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?

#71

Post by buzzkillington »

jakub_g wrote: post #32

I'm rather a noob in the topic, but I've been reading in recent months about energy market and it seems like a collective insanity in the light of the climate crisis. - In most(whole?) Europe, electricity used by trains is taxed higher than jet fuel used by planes (legacy measure from decades ago which was meant to boost air market; of course now it's hugely difficult to change it) - Germany went strongly into renewa…

>Am I missing something or this is total madness?

You're not missing anything. This is madness.

Renewables will never be competitive in a market that they dominate because they are intermittent and you can't just turn a city off because it's cloudy and calm.

Nuclear power is the only solution but decades of delusion have made it impossible to build anywhere. In short industrial civilization will be non-viable in the tropics by the 2050s and world wide by the 2100s.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#74

Post by Dylan16807 »

somerandomness wrote: post #20

Can somebody explain why electricity rates would go negative? That blows my mind. Edit: also why don’t they just mine some coins?

> Edit: also why don’t they just mine some coins?

Nobody is going to pay for mining rigs that are idle 99% of the time.

If it happened enough you'd have people set up cheap resistor banks to eat all the excess, so that provides a natural cap on how much negative pricing there can be.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#75

Post by lispm »

The households are not heating with electricity, because electricity for household consumers is expensive and not free.

The share of electricity for renewable energy is currently at 42%. There is not a large surplus of electricity from renewable energy for heating.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#76

Post by dekhn »

shazow wrote: post #43
dekhn wrote: post #36

I recall talking to some europeans and they said they like their driers, which only half dry clothes (they put them up on a line to finish) but use less energy. It's some sort of virtue thing, I guess.

Overdrying clothes damages them. Hang-drying clothes increases the clothes' longevity.

My collection of 20+ year old T-shirts does not support this hypothesis. my experience has been the agitator in the washer is what causes the most damage.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#77

Post by robocat »

rini17 wrote: post #13

Here in a central european country, end-user price for Russian natural gas is about 4 eurocents/kWh. Electricity is 12 cents/kWh, in Germany even more iirc. I have no idea about wholesale spot prices, but I don't see any incentive to switch to electricity as the price isn't going below 4 cents so often.

“ An Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) will typically produce around 3kW thermal energy for every 1kW of electrical energy consumed” i.e. modern electric heating might cost you 4¢ per kWh of heating.

Comparing kWh for natural gas (some loss up flue) with a heat pump in your case it seems they cost roughly the same marginally (although you might have grossly different installation costs, risks of outages, and CO2 impact depending on your individual circumstances).

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#78

Post by Krasnol »

jakub_g wrote: post #32

I'm rather a noob in the topic, but I've been reading in recent months about energy market and it seems like a collective insanity in the light of the climate crisis. - In most(whole?) Europe, electricity used by trains is taxed higher than jet fuel used by planes (legacy measure from decades ago which was meant to boost air market; of course now it's hugely difficult to change it) - Germany went strongly into renewa…

Nuclear is and never was a solution for Germany:

there is a nice read on it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/de/comments/emc2ne/quelle_surprise_...

Here is one for the base load myth: https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=374

Many reasons for the slow fall are based in politics (coal industry is a job machine especially in the troubled eastern parts) and nimbys (hindering wind development) and politicians helping them out (ridiculous policies governing the distance to "settlements").

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#79

Post by xnyan »

jsjddbbwj wrote: post #38
dekhn wrote: post #36

I recall talking to some europeans and they said they like their driers, which only half dry clothes (they put them up on a line to finish) but use less energy. It's some sort of virtue thing, I guess.

It's not a virtue thing. Energy is just very expensive in Europe compared to for example the US.

One of the things I missed the most living in Europe without a dryer (this was the norm in my experience, at least when/where I lived) was a warm fluffy cotton towel fresh from the dryer. I pay 8-9 US cents per kW/h which with a 240V 20A dryer (little known fact even to people who live here, almost every house in the US has both ~240V and ~120V service) pulling 3000W in service runs me about 25-35 cents a load or closer to $1 in Germany. Worth it.

Re: Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity?

#80

Post by hocuspocus »

dekhn wrote: post #36

I recall talking to some europeans and they said they like their driers, which only half dry clothes (they put them up on a line to finish) but use less energy. It's some sort of virtue thing, I guess.

This makes zero sense. I hang dry most of my laundry because, why not? But the few things that go into my tumble dryer had better get out completely dry, what would be the point otherwise? Recent dryers with heat-pumps take longer but consume less energy.
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