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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?

#121

Post by xnyan »

lispm wrote: post #70
xnyan wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's being done by the biggest power utility in Germany: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-13/germany-s... You're not hearing about it because it's very embarrassing to Germans, as it should be in my honest opinion. I get that Germans have a very unique and real perspective on the use of nuclear power. I get that nuclear power has very real and serious risks. It's still done less harm to the planet and…

> but the way I see it Germany is sacrificing the overall less negatively impactful option (nuclear power) for fossil fuel but we don't. Fossil fuel consumption for electricity production is going down.

I'm sure locals and many others know far more about this than I. I'm very happy with Germany's 2050 renewable plan which is way more than my country would ever think about doing.

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

#122

Post by breatheoften »

buzzkillington wrote: post #93
codemac wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year? It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

Actually economically speaking — what reason is there to think that the total supportable size of an economy which operates with grid instability is smaller than one with perfect or nearly perfect grid predictability?

Maximizing value in a world with “power production weather” would be a valuable task from which rewards that aren’t necessarily obvious could be mined if the pursuit becomes incentivized on a larger scale.

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

#124

Post by thereisnospork »

breatheoften wrote: post #122
buzzkillington wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the wrong question. The right question is how much time do you think the grid should be offline each year? It's a simple question no renewable proponent wants to talk about because it makes their whole case indefensible.

Actually economically speaking — what reason is there to think that the total supportable size of an economy which operates with grid instability is smaller than one with perfect or nearly perfect grid predictability? Maximizing value in a world with “power production weather” would be a valuable task from which rewards that aren’t necessarily obvious could be mined if the pursuit becomes incentivized on a larger sca…

> Actually economically speaking — what reason is there to think that the total supportable size of an economy which operates with grid instability is smaller than one with perfect or nearly perfect grid predictability?

The short answer is pretty much all of them. It's pretty much canonical that it is economically more productive to have a resource continually available than not. The right economic question to ask is: Where does the marginal cost of increasing uptime meet the marginal benefit of further increased uptime?

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

#125

Post by Retric »

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…

The ground ends up close to the average temperature of the local environment which in your case is a long way from -15c. Excluding of course hot springs etc, but that’s a separate and very localized solution. Further, if you’re that far south a solar hot water heater system is still cheaper to build + operate and in terms of energy costs.

People dealing with permafrost both directly are stuck with lower temperatures and would need to dig much further as your dependent on water exchanging heat with a large thermal mass. That’s the tipping point I am talking about, not your balmy 8-10c average temperatures.

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

#126

Post by Scoundreller »

lnsp wrote: post #31
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…

About encourage domestic consumption: the local power infrastructure does not have enough capacity to distribute all the energy produced by wind turbines (in the north) across the country.

Possibly true, but I have a doubt that their local D&T rates in that area reflect that.

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

#127

Post by undersuit »

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.

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

#128

Post by econcon »

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 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 to all the world.

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

#129

Post by tzs »

dekhn wrote: post #76
shazow wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Overdrying clothes damages them. Hang-drying clothes increases the clothes' longevity.

My collection of 20+ year old T-shirts does not support this hypothesis. my experience has been the agitator in the washer is what causes the most damage.

Aren't most washers in Europe front-loaders, which do not have an agitator?

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

#130

Post by ficklepickle »

devmunchies wrote: post #6
fishmaster wrote: post #3

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.

Assuming you live somewhere where the pipes won't freeze. That makes one heck of a mess.
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