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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?

#81

Post by codemac »

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.

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.

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

#82

Post by xnyan »

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…

When I run the numbers, a solar water heater does not work out for me. In order for me to eliminate my electric heater I would need an active (somewhat more costly) solar heating system which run ~$4k the lower end if you include the cost of installation. At a rate of about $500 a year in water heating costs that's a 8 year payback timeframe for a device that has a 5 year warranty (more expensive models have longer warranties).

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

#83

Post by oh_sigh »

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.

The lint in the lint trap comes from somewhere, and I really doubt that much material is flying off of air dried clothes.

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

#84

Post by unishark »

reaperducer wrote: post #47
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.

The irony is that dryer sheets promise "spring breeze" scent and have pictures of clothing hanging on a line outside.

Nature provides both the ideal outcome (great weather and lovely-smelling laundry on the clothesline) but also a lot of much-worse scenarios that drive the use of technological solutions. Like a long humid rainy season where hang-dried clothes does not come out smelling nice at all.

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

#86

Post by rvp-x »

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.

This comment is making me feel poor. I regularly wear a winter coat (and more) indoors instead of heating.

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

#88

Post by derefr »

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. So you need a backup, which is either gas or coal.

Why isn't nuclear the backup? "90% renewable, 10% nuclear" sounds politically-viable; it's still "moving away from nuclear."

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

#89

Post by Zenst »

lispm wrote: post #59
Zenst wrote: post #21

I'm somewhat shocked that they do they not load those subsidies onto the electricity charge on consumers as a tax and mean those that use more, pay more. That's what they do in the UK, though alas they loaded it onto the standing charge that is a flat rate per day for having a supply. Idealy it should be like personal TAX, you have a certain amount you get without being taxed, then after that you pay X amount until y…

> I'm somewhat shocked that they do they not load those subsidies onto the electricity charge on consumers as a tax German consumers pay 6.756 cents per kwh EEG tariff.

Aha, I have done a bit more digging into this after my post and found https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/what-german-house... which seems to clear up much.

Thank you for putting me on the right track.

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

#90

Post by makomk »

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 really nasty issue with heat pumps that I suspect is going to start biting countries which go for them in a big way is that a lot of the costs of supplying electricity depend on peak demand, not average demand, and because they're so much less efficient in cold weather when heating demand is at its highest they simply don't reduce peak demand in the same way that they do average.
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