Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity? • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by akvadrako » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:01 AM UTC

econcon wrote: post #128

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 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. I wonder why they don't find a location on planet which is most stable, away from human settlement. Then create a nuclear reactor large enough to meet all the world requirement for electricity and supply it t…

Because the cost of transmission will be even higher. Moving large amounts of electricity over large distances is hard; it’s much cheaper to move gas or oil.

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

#132

Post by hurricanetc » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:04 AM UTC

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…

It wouldn’t cost so much or take so long if there hadn’t been decades of misguided propaganda and whining about nuclear.

The fact that nuclear is expensive is not an engineering or construction problem. China is building nuclear fast and cheap, right now.

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

#133

Post by akvadrako » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:08 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #118

buzzkillington wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one knows what the Chinese power grid does because it is a national secret. You can have a look at the power grids of the first world, like the European, North America and Australian ones. Europe is the only one with a true large scale interconnected grid[0] and even there the interconnects are expensive, small and marginal. With the majority of EU population being able to import or export only ~20% of the power g…

The Chinese power grid isn't especially secret. Data is available here[1] or a good write-up on Wikipedia[2]. I live in Australia so I know it pretty well. My state (South Australia) has multiple ~1000km interconnects with more being planned. Australia remains badly underconnected compared to other markets. Wikipedia has good data[3], and your idea about "looking at the first world" is dramatically outdated. Most new…

It’s not about the distance of the transmission lines - it’s the capacity.

You lose a lot more energy moving electricity through small wires then oil in tanks.

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

#134

Post by akvadrako » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:17 AM UTC

robocat wrote: post #77

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 dep…

Heat pumps vary widely in efficiency based on temperature and you don’t mention what you are using.

It isn’t just efficiency but size. A heat pump that can work on the occasional very cold day is impractical.

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

#135

Post by number6 » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:28 AM UTC

hurricanetc wrote: post #132

diegocg wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It wouldn’t cost so much or take so long if there hadn’t been decades of misguided propaganda and whining about nuclear. The fact that nuclear is expensive is not an engineering or construction problem. China is building nuclear fast and cheap, right now.

And there will never be a nuclear disaster in china. Ah the wonders of progress and dictatorships

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

#136

Post by pergadad » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:45 AM UTC

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…

Nuclear is subsidised by billions of dollars, starting from the ongoing research to buying land to construction to security to the massive grid investments needed for any new power plant, to security and contingency measures to finally the eventually externalised costs of (unlikely but possible) incidents and most importantly long-term storage and decommissioning.

Huge huge tax payer subsidies are put into all stages of nuclear, which never show up on the energy company's balance sheets or the 'operating costs'.

I'm not against nuclear but saying renewables are not competitive with this is incredibly naive and blatantly wrong - the subsidies and funds directly or indirectly provided for nuclear are on an entirely different scale than for renewables, which have mainly some research funding, grid extension and development subsidies behind them.

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

#137

Post by anticodon » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:45 AM UTC

number6 wrote: post #135

hurricanetc wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn’t cost so much or take so long if there hadn’t been decades of misguided propaganda and whining about nuclear. The fact that nuclear is expensive is not an engineering or construction problem. China is building nuclear fast and cheap, right now.

And there will never be a nuclear disaster in china. Ah the wonders of progress and dictatorships

So, Fukushima disaster could be blamed on Japanese dictatorship?

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

#138

Post by Marsymars » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:50 AM UTC

unishark wrote: post #84

reaperducer wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that dryer sheets promise "spring breeze" scent and have pictures of clothing hanging on a line outside.

Nature provides both the ideal outcome (great weather and lovely-smelling laundry on the clothesline) but also a lot of much-worse scenarios that drive the use of technological solutions. Like a long humid rainy season where hang-dried clothes does not come out smelling nice at all.

Or in my locale, a long dry pollen season that's murder on my sinuses. :(

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

#139

Post by serpix » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:51 AM UTC

akvadrako wrote: post #134

robocat wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“ 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 dep…

Heat pumps vary widely in efficiency based on temperature and you don’t mention what you are using. It isn’t just efficiency but size. A heat pump that can work on the occasional very cold day is impractical.

Modern air pumps work with good efficiency even down to around -15c which is a rare temperature for post global warming world.

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

#140

Post by Scarblac » Fri, Feb 21, 2020, 6:57 AM UTC

tau255 wrote: post #27

skybrian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd have to do the math, but it might be because the surplus doesn't last long enough to pay for the equipment. Even if the prices were low enough for half the year, this means the equipment sits idle half the time. Most energy surpluses are shorter than that.

Yes, probably it would not be making enough money to sustain operation. But I still think that we (as a world) should start capture carbon actively during this decade. Last summer in Europe was hottest yet and with such hot winter we are for even hotter summer this year. Keeping energy prices up would be just added benefit.

For the coming decades it must be far far cheaper to start emitting less.