[HN Gopher] Why Germans won't heat their homes even with free el...
___________________________________________________________________
Why Germans won't heat their homes even with free electricity?
Author : ericdanielski
Score : 50 points
Date : 2020-02-20 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (kaikenhuippu.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (kaikenhuippu.com)
| fishmaster wrote:
| I don't heat because I want it cold. It's hot enough in summer,
| in winter it's finally cool.
| 9nGQluzmnq3M wrote:
| The article is about energy politics, not personal preferences.
| devmunchies wrote:
| 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.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Still not comfortable having skin exposed to the cold, and
| texting gloves never seem to work that great for me.
| ska wrote:
| Unclear how that is relevant to energy policy. I guess we can
| infer that some people who live in clemant regions will choose
| not to heat. That's not really novel though.
| tau255 wrote:
| Why not capture carbon from air with surplus energy? Build few
| capture plants and buy energy to keep price positive, then sell
| carbon cerificates on european market.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| It would be more efficient for Germans to pay for new energy
| production in their neighbors. Poland for example has lots of
| coal that makes it untenable to do green energy.
|
| [edit] though frankly it's probably even easier for Germans to
| just pay their domestic coal producers not to produce.
| skybrian wrote:
| You'd have to do the math, but it might be because the surplus
| doesn't last long enough to pay for the equipment. Even if the
| prices were low enough for half the year, this means the
| equipment sits idle half the time. Most energy surpluses are
| shorter than that.
| duxup wrote:
| "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...
| inetknght wrote:
| Mess? Turn that around into an opportunity: charge for clean-
| energy-powered carbon capture.
| duxup wrote:
| I'm not sure I follow, charge ... who for what?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| 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
| $ per kWh.
|
| Germany could encourage domestic consumption of its
| overproduction, which would further encourage demand smoothing,
| but instead exports it.
| binichgross wrote:
| Tradition! Tradition!
| rini17 wrote:
| 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.
| allendoerfer wrote:
| Using electricity to heat buildings should be one of the last
| steps to take, after almost everything else using energy is
| renewable. Electricity is a precious form of energy, while heat
| is primitive. Converting in both direction is not lossless, so
| you want to keep the precious form.
|
| It also does not solve the problem of the German electricity
| market, which is mostly that renewable energy is not steady.
| Power is not distributed evenly across space and time. So you
| need to store the energy and move it from North to South. But
| storage and transmission lines are lacking to say the least.
|
| One intermediate strategy you could take, would be to convert
| abundant electric energy into hydrogen, which you can feed into
| the already existing natural gas pipes and burn inside the
| already existing gas heaters, the author is criticizing. This way
| you would solve both problems (missing network and missing
| storage) at the same time.
| nostromo wrote:
| I can'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.
| nostromo wrote:
| A perfect example of unintended consequences.
|
| "We want green energy! Let's subsidize green energy by taxing
| electricity!"
|
| Seems fair enough... fast forward several years and:
|
| 1. People burn fossil fuels for heating because electricity is
| too expensive.
|
| 2. Poorer people in apartments and cities pay out the nose to
| fund rebates to wealthier suburban homeowners with solar roofs.
| somerandomness wrote:
| Can somebody explain why electricity rates would go negative?
| That blows my mind.
|
| Edit: also why don't they just mine some coins?
| nostromo wrote:
| Because the German government is paying for renewables, via a
| tax on electricity, even when there is no additional demand.
| Zenst wrote:
| 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 you use another threshold and
| then the tax upon the unit rate of energy is taxed more. That
| would be the ideal fair way of doing energy. Certainly would be a
| socially more acceptable way. Of course you can allocate people a
| higher initial rate they can use without paying tax upon the
| charge for things like disabilities, health needs etc. Again, be
| no simple solution, but working on something that sees it paid
| for fairly always works out best for all as above all, people
| love fairness. At least, that is how I'd like things done.
|
| But do remember, Germany recently went thru an anti nuclear phase
| and that forced many coal reactors to carry on longer, so they
| did need to compensate and a push on solar and wind power was a
| logical move. How that was subsidies and paid for was and is
| perhaps an avenue they need to address.
|
| All that said, much respect to the people of Germany for
| responsibly using energy. That has probably done way more than
| anything to help.
| dacohenii wrote:
| NPR's Planet Money podcast recently had a relevant episode on
| Germany's feed-in tariff.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/01/17/797322305/episode-965-das-gre...
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2020-02-20 23:00 UTC)