Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

kaikenhuippu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 397 posts

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

#221

Post by _glass »

marcosscriven wrote: post #179
probably_wrong wrote: post #148

> 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.

germans sold the naming off to sponsor students. so germany is the outlier here.

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

#222

Post by dusted »

ben_w wrote: post #188
dusted wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except some places in Russia it's still common to go below -20, and in a post-global warming world, these areas will likely experience a new ice-age. Electricity is the best bet, as gas can freeze too, while copper just becomes able to carry higher loads.

What’s the total population of And why should anyone outside that area care if the equipment they use will or won’t work in weather that they won’t experience?

It's not relevant what the total population is. Even if it's 1, you can't tell that person to use a heat-pump.

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

#223

Post by C1sc0cat »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #190
Brakenshire wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK is a better example.

The dash for gas, it had big environmental benefits but they weren't the original justification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash_for_Gas

It was also to punish the NUM (Miners Union)

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

#224

Post by teraku »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #217
teraku wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But most subsidies are towards coal and gas. 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 be…

>Germany has/had extensive coal production (complete exit by 2038 IIRC) with lots of employment tied to it; of course that has subsidies.

I get that and I am glad it happened, it's just way too late for my liking. At least it's done, I can agree on that.

>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. .

You can't have energy produced disappear. So if you overproduce, it has to go somewhere and you need to stop production to not fry your energy grid. If you overproduce, and your coal energy can't shut down, so your network becomes more green/clean, the obvious choice is to shut down the flexible generator, i.e. wind energy.

>Yeah, so? Consumer electricity prices were never even mentioned in the "end-goal"?

That is true, but the EEG is making renewable energies more expensive for end-consumers. And I think that is the main point of this article.

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

#225

Post by Freak_NL »

ysr23 wrote: post #183
marcosscriven wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

brexit means brexit /s In seriousness, wasn't Storm Ciara named by Met Éireann ? that was certainly my impression, given that most people in the UK struggled to pronounce it. So there is some unification between The Met offices of Ireland and the UK with regard to naming.

It would have been called Ciara even if the storm was named by the Met Office. The names are unified and a list is published every September:

https://www.countryliving.com/uk/news/a28924357/met-office-s...

> The names are a mix of British, Irish and Dutch monikers.

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

#226

Post by flo123456 »

jokoon wrote: post #220

Jean Marc Jancovici is a french energy expert, and he often talks about Germany. 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 "asse…

> nuclear power is green and just better than renewable and coal

How do you arrive at that conclusion? Better in what regard?

AFAIK nuclear power has all sorts of problems, the main one being that nobody knows what to do about the waste. Building nuclear power plants isn’t exactly carbon emission free either.

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

#227

Post by nickysielicki »

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.

That’s crazy. I use Griddy in Texas and my price has been generally below $0.02c/kWh the past two months.

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

#228

Post by brtkdotse »

krzyk wrote: post #193
serpix wrote: post #139

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 :)

>Aren't air pumps less power efficient then ground ones?

Not modern ones. When outside temperature is above 5C, they're actually more efficient.

> 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?

Yes, via a heat exchanger. This isn't new techonology, I have a 10 year old version of this warmning my house as I type: https://www.nibe.eu/sv-se/produkter/varmepumpar/luft-vattenv...

>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 :)

The pump linked above connect to the water based heating system in my house. Works like a charm and I heat ~260 m2 (badly isolated) with 1500 kWh per month (wintertime)

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

#229

Post by MauranKilom »

Scoundreller wrote: post #10

I feel like the issue is that a lot of consumers get stuck paying a fixed per kWh delivery/transmission fee. IMO: this doesn’t make sense. Transmission and distribution costs are largely the amortization of the cost of building the system peak carrying capacity. There’s no shame in charging higher D&T rates during peak times and near-zero rates at 3AM. Could also make electricity taxes a percentage instead of a fixed…

FWIW, there are systems/installations in Germany for having different electricity prices at day and at night (source: my home). There used to be a large difference (like 10 vs 20 cent/kWh according to landlords), but now it's pretty insignificant with 23 vs 25 cent/kWh.

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

#230

Post by ben_w »

dusted wrote: post #222
ben_w wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s the total population of And why should anyone outside that area care if the equipment they use will or won’t work in weather that they won’t experience?

It's not relevant what the total population is. Even if it's 1, you can't tell that person to use a heat-pump.

So one person uses a different heat source. So what? Why is that important? Nobody else has to just because they do.
Post reply on HN