211–220 of 397 posts
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.
I 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.
Unless you're living in an area that never goes below zero, which is not the case in most of Europe.
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 think it's mostly due to the structure of the market: you can't sensibly reduce supply of power when demand drops like with commodities like oil. So the price is the only free variable left.
I always wondered what happened if there was 100units of energy in the system and only 90 were used in that minute/hour. I imagined a place where they offloaded it to the ground, much like lightning.
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.
Germany is at about 30 cents/kWh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern air pumps work with good efficiency even down to around -15c which is a rare temperature for post global warming world.
Aren't air pumps less power efficient then ground ones? Also, is it possible for air pump to heat a liquid in pipes? I mean can I have air pump that provides heating to the floor? If the floor is warm then body thinks it is warm. I know air pumps only as air conditioners and they just blew warm air around, which is not that comfortable if you are just where the warm wind blows :)
- air/air
- air/water (i.e. an "air pump that heats a liquid in pipes")
- ground/water
https://www.nibe.eu/en-eu/products/heat-pumps
The efficiency depends on the pump, the house and the weather. At +10 (Celsius) ambient temperature, the air source pumps will generally come out ahead, at -20 the ground-source pump is going to win.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's mostly due to the structure of the market: you can't sensibly reduce supply of power when demand drops like with commodities like oil. So the price is the only free variable left.
get up get up...lets wash our clothes right now, free, and then some, electricity. I always wondered what happened if there was 100units of energy in the system and only 90 were used in that minute/hour. I imagined a place where they offloaded it to the ground, much like lightning.
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 i…
Germany has/had extensive coal production (complete exit by 2038 IIRC) with lots of employment tied to it; of course that has subsidies.
> They even stopped wind subsidies, because windenergy was too flexible and pushed coal out of the market, since coal is not flexible enough
That sounds more like a conspiracy theory. You don't stop stuff for being "too flexible" but because of other problem, e.g. offshore vs. onshore, transmission to the south, environmental concerns, wanting a different mix of renewables etc. .
> The "stated end-goal" and what is actually done is very divergent in modern day Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
There are more and more people employed in these industries. Production capacities went up etc. . Seems to be doing what it says on the tin.
> Just saying that right now you pay on average 0,25€/kWh here. Although the market price is almost naught.
Yeah, so? Consumer electricity prices were never even mentioned in the "end-goal"?
> On Monday 10th February 2020 something historical happened. For the first time, the market price of electricity fell below zero in Finland.(...) While this single day was a very windy one... I feel I should point out that "a very windy day" is a big understatement. February 10, 2020 was the day when storm Sabine arrived in northern Europe. In Germany, all medium and long distance trains stopped (electric trains, bt…
We called it storm Ciara in the UK. I wonder why we don’t unify names.
There are now two regions in Europe where names are decided in cooperation: West, and Southwest.
West is Ireland, United Kingdom, Netherlands, and Belgium, where storms tend to originate in the West.
Southwest is the Iberian peninsula and France.
A third region (Southeast) is being set up for the Mediterranean.
Every region has its own list of names, but when a storm is first named in one region, the other regions will use that name instead of assigning their own (if the storm crosses regions).
This means that everyone called this storm Ciara, except for the Germans. Germany is an exception, and has its own (commercial) naming system at the moment.
Source: https://www.knmi.nl/kennis-en-datacentrum/uitleg/naamgeving-... (Dutch)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern air pumps work with good efficiency even down to around -15c which is a rare temperature for post global warming world.
Aren't air pumps less power efficient then ground ones? Also, is it possible for air pump to heat a liquid in pipes? I mean can I have air pump that provides heating to the floor? If the floor is warm then body thinks it is warm. I know air pumps only as air conditioners and they just blew warm air around, which is not that comfortable if you are just where the warm wind blows :)
Only when the air temperature is less than the ground temperature. On average, yes, air source is slightly less efficient than ground source, but the initial cost of ground source is so much higher that you will not make up the difference in the lifetime of the pump. Air source is fine.
Also, is it possible for air pump to heat a liquid in pipes?
Yes.
I mean can I have air pump that provides heating to the floor?
Yes. This is generally considered the best way to do it as the water does not need to be as hot as with conventional radiators, so it is somewhat more efficient. However, conventional low temperature radiators work fine, too.
I know air pumps only as air conditioners and they just blew warm air around, which is not that comfortable if you are just where the warm wind blows :)
To each their own. I grew up with forced air heating and prefer it to radiated heat.
An important story to remember about Germany, is how Fukushima led the country to stop using nuclear power. Merkel has a PhD in physics, so naturally she understands that nuclear power is green and just better than renewable and coal.
But after Fukushima, she was forced to stop nuclear plants, because as Jancovici argued, she is an "assermented executor": if all germans want to stop nuclear energy, then there's nothing to do.