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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?

#201

Post by turbinerneiter »

marcosscriven wrote: post #173

Do I understand correctly from the article, that these negative prices are so that the suppliers can still claim their subsidy for supplying you. They are effectively giving you a cut of the subsidy?

I believe it's rather about making sure the power gets drawn and it's more about the power from the slow plants, like coal.

Basically:

strong wind -> a lot of wind power -> coal plant can't lower its output -> excess energy -> pay somebody for allowing you to dump your power in their system

But whether you see this as a problem of coal not being able to power down quick enough or wind not being a steady power source is dependent on whether you think CO2 emissions are bad or not.

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

#202

Post by [deleted] »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #163
tpxl wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but share his views. I wash my clothes in the washing machine, then hang them to dry, that's all there is to it. It takes time (about a day) and some space for the clothes hanger in a rather small apartment, but that doesn't bother me.

Thank you. But how do you hang wet clothes and not ruin your floors? Sorry if I sound stupid. American apartments aren't set up for this and I would rather handle it this way and I've had challenges.

[deleted]

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

#203

Post by squiggleblaz »

csomar wrote: post #191

Title is not really accurate: 1. Electricity is not free in Germany, it's actually expensive; and 2. Germans do heat their homes.

Your point (1) is the point of the article. If the market price of electricity is 0€/MWh, the retail price is still bloody expensive because there's a ton of taxes, most of which do not relate to source of the energy nor its cost.

You claim (2) is a misunderstanding of the title. The title is intended to be interpreted as "Why Germans won't heat their homes with electricity, even if it's free". That is how I immediately interpreted it so I don't think the claim that the title is inaccurate can be maintained on this basis.

The intersection of the two claims is a further point of the article. Since free electricity in Germany is too expensive to heat houses with, and since Germans are going to heat their houses (unlike, say, Australians—where a normal winter is comparable to this year's winter in Berlin—who will merely become uncomfortable and/or stay in bed when the cost of heating gets too high), we therefore have the unfortunate situation that Germans are not selecting the most abundant nor the most socially responsible forms of heating. The taxes do not act like a carbon tax when a person is encouraged to use natural gas to heat their house instead of superabundant wind power.

What a terrible system.

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

#204

Post by diffeomorphism »

I feel this article is missing the forest for the trees:

> German electricity consumers paid 80 million euros in tariffs to get 8 million euros worth of wind power to the market.

> There is simply no point to make any market-driven investments in Germany; the tariffs are simply too large compared to the market value of electricity.

> (...)

> This might not be a problem if “getting more renewables” is the end-goal one prefers, but I think the goal should be decreasing emissions.

That is the stated end-goal. The subsidies are (overly) high so that lots of renewable energy production/infrastructure is built instead of whatever might be more profitable otherwise. While this is related to eletricity production (payout per MWh etc.), the actual building part is what is ecouraged.

You can of course argue whether that it is a good goal to pick, but to me this sounds not like an unintended "problem" but rather as the subsidies achieving exactly what they intended to.

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

#205

Post by PeterStuer »

usrusr wrote: post #165
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.

Advertising is far ahead of you: the driers have a feature to keep the clothes just damp enough for perfect ironing. The same driers have A+++ energy ratings, because progress. They carefully avoid hinting at a connection between these two because the virtuous ones are not in the market for a drier.

Also, most (all?) dryers over here will have multiple settings to select ending the drying cycle at different sensed humidity points, from 'maximum' dry to 'cupboard' dry to 'ready for ironing' dry etc. These programs are more convenient and used much more commonly than setting a timer for the cycle.

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

#206

Post by mrweasel »

I've not sure if has changed in the last few years, but one issue Denmark has run into is that our tariffs on CO2 actually harms the use of surplus green energy.

Most of Denmark (at least in the cities) are heats using hot water from remote heating plants, either surplus heat from power generation or garbage incineration, with auxiliary gas and coal plants. 15 years ago many of the smaller gas powered heating plants offered to install the equipment needed to convert excess electrical power to heat. The idea being that they would save money, compared to buying gas, the only caveat: They didn't want to pay the CO2 tariffs, which made sense, given that the power would mostly be from wind anyway. Paying the tariff would completely negate any cost savings, compared to buying the gas.

This solution was refused by politicians for years, so instead the heating plants would burn gas, generation CO2, and the excess wind power would be sold to Germany for almost nothing, and in many cases for free. That this point Germany wasn't closing down its nuclear power plants, so the electricity the Danish windfarms replaced was also CO2 free.

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

#207

Post by teraku »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #204

I feel this article is missing the forest for the trees: > German electricity consumers paid 80 million euros in tariffs to get 8 million euros worth of wind power to the market. > There is simply no point to make any market-driven investments in Germany; the tariffs are simply too large compared to the market value of electricity. > (...) > This might not be a problem if “getting more renewables” is the end-goal one…

But most subsidies are towards coal and gas. They even stopped wind subsidies, because windenergy was too flexible and pushed coal out of the market, since coal is not flexible enough. So now we have to wait until more power plants get shut down before they pick up on building more wind energy again. Until then, they are powering the existing wind energy platforms up.

The "stated end-goal" and what is actually done is very divergent in modern day Germany.

Just saying that right now you pay on average 0,25€/kWh here. Although the market price is almost naught.

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

#208

Post by nottorp »

endorphone wrote: post #114
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…

"The issue with heat pumps is you may need far less heat at 15c when their very efficient than at -15c when their not." My home is heated with a heat pump. I live in Canada, and just went through a period of -20C. It works great and is a fraction of the cost of heating with natural gas. It also operates as a fantastic AC in the summer. It uses a closed loop of water to pipes in the ground, with the ground as the "sin…

So it only works when you live in a house on the ground, not in an apartment building.

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

#209

Post by pazimzadeh »

undersuit wrote: post #127
pazimzadeh wrote: post #72

Something something mine bitcoin?

Cryto-mining with excess energy is only effective when you have excess computing power too. Maybe a gamer with a GPU could get the opportunity to use all the excess resources for a little bit of profit, but the payoff rate for buying a GPU needs 24/7 mining to even make a profit over a year.

That's the case even when electricity is free?

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

#210

Post by newqer »

lexa1979 wrote: post #189
marcosscriven wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We called it storm Ciara in the UK. I wonder why we don’t unify names.

t'was called Ciara in Belgium also.

The Netherlands it was also called Ciara. A few days later Dennis came around the block.
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