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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?

#91

Post by diegocg »

buzzkillington wrote: post #71
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…

It is not delusion, but simple economics what makes it impossible to build new nuclear plants. The Obama administration granted permissions to build new plants, but few people were interested because fracking made gas cheaper - but even the ones that were built required loan guarantees from the government. The private sector wasn't able to find a solution by itself.

A nuclear power plant requires billions in up front costs, which take a long period of time to recover, a time which can not be calculated reliably because nobody can predict the future and nobody knows how technology may evolve during that time and how will it affect power prices, how future wars will affect supply, how much demand developing nations will bring to the markets, etc. Even if nuclear power is cheap, the margins are not static and betting billions without knowing when you will get them back is not something everyone wants to do.

Nuclear is going to need a lot of government subsidies if it wants to have a renaissance.

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

diegocg wrote: post #91
buzzkillington wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

It is not delusion, but simple economics what makes it impossible to build new nuclear plants. The Obama administration granted permissions to build new plants, but few people were interested because fracking made gas cheaper - but even the ones that were built required loan guarantees from the government. The private sector wasn't able to find a solution by itself. A nuclear power plant requires billions in up front…

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by buzzkillington »

codemac wrote: post #81
buzzkillington wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Nuclear power is the only solution. How much energy storage do we need to not need nuclear? That seems to be an assumption you're making that I'm not actually familiar with.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year?

It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

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

#94

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #88
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…

> you can never reach 100% renewables. So you need a backup, which is either gas or coal. Why isn't nuclear the backup? "90% renewable, 10% nuclear" sounds politically-viable; it's still "moving away from nuclear."

[deleted]

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

#95

Post by Zenst »

usrusr wrote: post #50
Zenst wrote: post #21

I'm somewhat shocked that they do they not load those subsidies onto the electricity charge on consumers as a tax and mean those that use more, pay more. That's what they do in the UK, though alas they loaded it onto the standing charge that is a flat rate per day for having a supply. Idealy it should be like personal TAX, you have a certain amount you get without being taxed, then after that you pay X amount until y…

> alas they loaded it onto the standing charge that is a flat rate per day for having a supply. Not true, source: my electricity bill. A standing charge exists, but the vast majority of what we pay is per kWh. The part that you misunderstood, I think, is that the EEG is fixed per kWh and not per euro paid (just like most of our fuel taxes, even if crude doubles or halves in price our price at the pump only shifts a l…

Yes, thank you for your clarity - I did a bit of digging and found https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-house... which does seem to clear up many aspects.

I will say, the shift in electric cars and more so the iminante arrival of solid state lithium batteries, distributed and more so, local home storage will start to become and more open avenue. This would be great for flats that can not avail the installation of solar panels and also those that rent (more an aspect in Germany) which are limited. A battery tech that you don't have to worry about exploding and you can literally drive nails into and be safe, will be game changing (not advocating that people drive nails into batteries, more a way to explain how much safer they are). That level of safety will open up the home storage market more as well.

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

#96

Post by redprince »

bulkan wrote: post #41
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…

> In fact Germany even recently invested in new coal powered plants. Any sources on this? In Australia in the past few weeks Germany is given as an ideal example of a country decommissioning all of its coal mines and power plants.

The only ongoing commissioning of a coal fired plant is Datteln 4. Construction was started 13 years ago to replace several ageing coal fired power plants. Due to technical and legal delays it will go online in 2020. Several other power plants will go offline afterwards, roughly with the same generation capacity as Datteln 4. I think it is safe to assume that this will be the last newly built coal fired power plant in Germany.

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

#97

Post by makomk »

usrusr wrote: post #64
Gibbon1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes if you analyze it thermodynamically heating via natural gas is terrible. You're taking a high quality source of energy (a flame at 3500 degF) and turning it into the thermodynamic equivalent of garbage (hot air at 70 degF). All the work it could have done (say generating electricity) is tossed.

Which is where district heating comes in. Utilities, who unlike households are fully exposed to fluctuations of the electricity market, are increasingly switching their cogen pants to decoupled operation where large heat storage elements are added so that the plant can run as a peaker plant. It's not glamorous because they are still burning fossil fuel, but it's a huge improvement not only over separate burning for h…

Yeah, in practice I think district heating is probably the only way to actually improve on the thermodynamic efficiency of just taking all that high-grade energy and converting it straight to low-grade heat. Running heat pumps off electricty from non-cogeneration gas plants can only roughly match the efficiency of gas heating, and smaller-scale CHP setups have efficiency losses that make them questionable.

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

#98

Post by Retric »

xnyan wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with heat pumps is you may need far less heat at 15c when their very efficient than at -15c when their not. Couple that with the losses from heat to electricity at power plants and burning natural gas at home is about as efficient on average depending on your area. So, it really does depend on how cold it gets where you are if it’s better to burn fuel at home or at a powerplant. PS: Solar hot water heaters…

When I run the numbers, a solar water heater does not work out for me. In order for me to eliminate my electric heater I would need an active (somewhat more costly) solar heating system which run ~$4k the lower end if you include the cost of installation. At a rate of about $500 a year in water heating costs that's a 8 year payback timeframe for a device that has a 5 year warranty (more expensive models have longer w…

The best time to do an install is when you’re looking at buying a water heater either way. Thus significantly reducing the price premium. Further, sizing a system to also handle home heating is generally where the real savings takes place.

As to warranty, they generally last well past that point. You may be replacing a part or to at ~10 years, but a 20+ year lifespan is common depending on the model and your water hardness.

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

#99

Post by nl »

buzzkillington wrote: post #71
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…

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.

This is simply wrong.

Firstly, renewables plus transmission reduce the intermittentcy problem enormously. China has multiple 2000km+ transmission lines already working, and preliminary work has started on a 3800km transmission line from Australia to Singapore[1].

Combine that with comparatively small amounts of short term storage (eg, batteries), as much long term storage (eg pump hydro) as possible and fill the rest with gas generation (around 30% of the CO2 output of coal or oil) and you have a generation mix that is very quick to build, competitive with coal on price and dramatically cheaper than nuclear.

[1] https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/singapore-power-retaile...

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

#100

Post by aftbit »

xnyan wrote: post #82
Retric wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with heat pumps is you may need far less heat at 15c when their very efficient than at -15c when their not. Couple that with the losses from heat to electricity at power plants and burning natural gas at home is about as efficient on average depending on your area. So, it really does depend on how cold it gets where you are if it’s better to burn fuel at home or at a powerplant. PS: Solar hot water heaters…

When I run the numbers, a solar water heater does not work out for me. In order for me to eliminate my electric heater I would need an active (somewhat more costly) solar heating system which run ~$4k the lower end if you include the cost of installation. At a rate of about $500 a year in water heating costs that's a 8 year payback timeframe for a device that has a 5 year warranty (more expensive models have longer w…

Can you do solar preheat as a retrofit to an existing electric (or natural gas) hot water heater? Coil some flexible water line in a plywood box, spray paint it all black, put a plexiglass lid on, caulk it up, and lay it out in the sun. Feed cold water through it before it hits your hot water heater.

It probably would not be as efficient as a commercial solution, but it would be very cheap.

Don't forget about water safety, backflow valves, or local plumbing and building codes. Or winter - would want a bypass valve for flushing and draining it.

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