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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?

#111

Post by buzzkillington »

nl wrote: post #99
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…

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 alr…

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 generated locally.

The US and Australian grids are even less connected, with the project you're quoting being simply a pipe dream to steal money from idiots. I've worked in data analysis for an energy company and renewables are amazing because they make the energy markets volatile and unpredictable. They allow rent-seeking in power generation. Something that hadn't been possible for decades.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_grid_of_Continenta...

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

#112

Post by cameronh90 »

anoncake wrote: post #106
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 Bullshit. You need storage, obviously. > Am I missing something Yes.

Or alternatively/in combination with dynamic demand, smart grids, wide area transmission and overprovisioning.

I don't really get why the nuclear "base load" generation even helps. If nuclear generates 70% of our peak load, and our peak load happens on a windless, dark day - what then? We still need storage and likely CCGT as backup of last resort.

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

#113

Post by cameronh90 »

diroussel wrote: post #29
somerandomness wrote: post #20

Can somebody explain why electricity rates would go negative? That blows my mind. Edit: also why don’t they just mine some coins?

This happens when the electricity supply is higher than the demand. It only affects the wholesale rate, not consumer rates (at least in Uk and US) Normally supply and demand need to be matched to obtain a balance. If the supply is not enough for demand then the frequency drops below 50Hz, if it drops too low bad things happen.

Actually there's at least one provider (octopus) that occasionally passes the negative rate onto the consumer with their dynamic plan.

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

#114

Post by endorphone »

Retric wrote: post #30
nostromo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't disagree more. Electric heating via heat pump is ridiculously efficient and has a much bigger bang for your carbon-reducing buck than anything else a homeowner can do.

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 "sink". It is very efficient, and the ground is always 8-10C.

This conversation seems to be dominated, and moderated, by a lot of people who are in the dark, or misunderstand the fundamental physics behind how a heat pump works, or who gatekeep what "electric" means with heating (which is particularly bizarre).

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

#115

Post by nl »

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.

To actually answer this question is hard. The best answer I've seen is between 3% and 10% of total grid capacity, depending on interconnectivity and geographical diversity[1].

That's for a 100% renewable approach, which is great. Personally I think there is a role for gas fired stations - these produce about 50% of the emissions of coal stations, are cheap and quick to build (very roughly $1M for 1MW) and most importantly can ramp up and down power generation quickly and economically.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/grid-energy...

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

#116

Post by duxup »

lispm wrote: post #65
duxup wrote: post #7

"Only turbines built in 2016 or later take even a small hit to their revenues if prices go below zero, and more than 75 % of the production capacity was built before that." That seems like a recipe for folks just building endlessly regardless of demand, pulling money from government... and an eventual mess when you fix it and nobody is making money suddenly...

> building endlessly regardless of demand, pulling money from government But that's not what happens. Germany has a tight control over how much is build every year. Actually there are lots of complaints that currently Germany builds not enough renewable energy capacity per year.

Very weird... drive the market into a very non market and price to 0...but still manage it the other way.

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

#117

Post by endorphone »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #69
johnr2 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Electric heating via heat pump is ridiculously efficient Strictly speaking that's "electrically assisted" heating. What most people refer to as electric heating is the conversion of electricity directly into heat, eg. by a resistive element.

You're claiming that when mostly people say "electric heating" they are specifically excluding heat pumps? Do you have something to back that up?

It is a bit of gatekeeping that has little relation with reality.

When people say that their home is heated by natural gas, they mean that they have a supply of natural gas, and that is the consumable they use / pay for, not the specific chemical process when it is oxidized. Similarly, when people say they heat their home with electricity, whether it's a heat pump or electric radiators is just a secondary possibility. I heat my home with electricity and it's a ground-source heat pump. If someone has some weird hangup or ignorance about that, that's on them.

If someone said that they cooled their home in the winter with "electricity assistance" I think everyone would rightly laugh.

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

#118

Post by nl »

buzzkillington wrote: post #111
nl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alr…

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 power generation is being done in Asia (and to some degree Africa) which is where these long distance power transmission lines are mostly being built. If you don't trust the Chinese ones (not sure why - you can go visit a lot of these installations because the hydro dams are tourist attractions, and you can see them on Google Maps) you can just look at the multiple 1000km+ installations in India[4].

[1] https://chinaenergyportal.org/en/category/stats/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_China

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#Asia

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

#119

Post by woodandsteel »

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…

>- Going away from nuclear and into renewables is in theory good, but the open secret is that you can never reach 100% renewables. So you need a backup, which is either gas or coal.

I am not really opposed to nuclear. But on the renewable side, for the intermittency problem, you have overprovisioning, regional transmission, short range storage with batteries, and long term storage with hydro and hydrogen gas produced from renewables. And both batteries and hydrogen gas are steadily getting cheaper.

That means when a utility is deciding to spend 10 billion or so on a nuclear plant, and it is trying to figure out future rates for the next 30 years to pay that back, it needs to take into account all these future developments, instead of assuming they will stay the same.

I have read a lot of comments from nuclear supporters, but I can't recall one that covers all that. They all seem to assume the situation for storage and interconnection will not improve in the future.

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

#120

Post by solarkraft »

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…

> the open secret is that you can never reach 100% renewables

What, why?

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