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The second example in the article shows someone using 5000 kWh in January of this year alone — how does one household reasonably use that amount of electricity?

The second example in the article shows someone using 5000 kWh in January of this year alone — how does one household reasonably use that amount of electricity? In The Netherlands and Germany the average is around 3500 kWh per household _per year_.

Havoc 6y ago
You can see the same effect in the /r/homelab subreddit - Europeans and Americans are picking very different hardware. US side it's usually ancient enterprise gear that businesses have dropped because of the insane power requirements
vlovich123 6y ago
The average home in Texas uses 1,176 kWh a month, or 14,112 kWh a year, based on EIA data As for using that much in one month and it being January (cold snap was in February, no?), I don’t know. Housing that’s not properly insulated and running a bunch of space heaters 24/7 instead of putting on warmer clothes and using central heating. Or Bitcoin mining. Edit: Never mind. Since it lists him as a contractor, it’s possible he uses a bunch of power tools out of his place (might not even be his personal home but a business).
wjnc 6y ago
Don't forget to convert the gas into MJ / kWh with an appropriate conversion factor. When I calculated total energy use for my household I was somewhat amazed at how much energy gas holds.
- eqvinox 6y ago
  There's no gas involved in any of these numbers. 3500 kWh/year is a typical number for pure electricity in Germany.
  - wjnc 6y ago
    Don't Americans use electric heat pumps / air-conditioning units for cooling and heating, while Europeans more often heat on natural gas? My point is you need to look at the per capita energy use in comparable terms (MJ or BTU/cap perhaps with CO2 MT/cap next to that). To put it in perspective. In the last month my household of 5 in NL used about 400 kWh of electricity and 400 m3 of gas. Those 400 m3 calculate to about 5 MWh (!) of electrical energy (Dutch gas is about 35 MJ per m3ans my heater is 95% efficient if used optimally). Since I expect Texans to mostly have electrical HVAC mostly for cooling ... My house is very inefficient in comparison. US: 49% gas, 34% electrical [1] NL: 90%+ gas [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-and-cool/home-heating-systems https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-and-cool/home-heatin... [2] https://www.milieucentraal.nl/energie-besparen/aardgasvrij-wonen/wonen-zonder-aardgas/ https://www.milieucentraal.nl/energie-besparen/aardgasvrij-w...
    - eqvinox 6y ago
      Yes, but also... it's Texas, and a HVAC cooling a house by x °C is significantly more efficient (factor ~1:3 usually) than heating the same house by x °C. (Since moving heat is more efficient than generating it...) So ... I don't think Texan climate can account for such a large difference in electricity consumption if the houses were equally well isolated? Presumably the cooling in the summer is the bigger problem & wasteful? (Yes, I don't really know... that's why I only pointed out that gas isn't involved without making further claims ;D)
    - perl4ever 6y ago
      >Don't Americans use electric heat pumps / air-conditioning units for cooling and heating In the northeastern US where I live, it gets down below 0 C for a good portion of the winter and usually once or twice to around -18 C. While certainly there are apartments, maybe houses, with electric heat and heat pumps, my experience has been that electric heat is expensive and undesirable and a heat pump is a useless gimmick that doesn't work in actual cold weather (although maybe a newer system would be better). It seems like the cheaper apartments in terms of rent have electric heat, which is more expensive. I think natural gas (I use around 140 therms at peak in the winter, which I think is about equivalent to 400 m^3) is typical if you live reasonably close to the city/inner suburbs, and if you don't have gas, you may well burn fuel oil, which is essentially diesel fuel that's delivered in trucks and stored in tanks. In some parts of the US, where coal is produced, I think people use that for heating, but it's less common overall because it isn't cost effective to ship a long way. Last month I used about 500 kWh which is higher than you but not hugely. I wonder if your climate is as cold as where I live though, or if you are using as much gas for a significantly more temperate region.
whoknew1122 6y ago
I'm not an expert in energy consumption between localities (much less countries), but one thing to consider is house construction. House construction in the Netherlands and Germany are likely far different. Both places are much cooler than Texas on average. From what I've glanced at, average summer high temperatures in the Netherlands and Germany are around 25C. In Texas, it's around 35C. In Texas, with its long and oppressive summers, houses are constructed to be cooler inside than it is outside. This is great during the summer. Not so great when it hits -17C outside. So to get their house warm, Texans are literally fighting against what their houses are engineered to do. Also, energy efficiency and weatherization isn't well-regulated in Texas. So you have old, inefficient houses that are designed to stay cold.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Insulation helps keep heat out just as much as it keeps it in. Summer design elements use air flows that can be blocked off for winter, or things like awnings that don't block the lower winter sun. So it's more that many houses aren't particularly well insulated or sealed in the US, which costs energy in summer too. Plenty of new houses are built with a tight envelope and require active ventilation for air exchange. Most older houses are not like that.
maxerickson 6y ago
Prices are likely part of it. My electric is $0.098 per kWh, natural gas is less than $0.02 per kWh. I don't use anywhere near 5000 kWh of electric in a year, but I have several months of high natural gas use for heat, where making the building 2x as efficient would save a few hundred dollars a year (which I'm implying is not a huge incentive; this event in Texas certainly has me planning to reevaluate for easy improvements). As far as the high usage in the article, one reasonable explanation would be an electric vehicle (but it's not clear that is the case either).
perl4ever 6y ago
I have a <1300 square foot home, in the northeastern US, with adjoining units sharing the walls on either side, so not exposed to the outdoor temperatures except at front and back, and it has gas heat, not electric, and I think I have all LED lighting at this point. I do not have a electric car either. The biggest piece of glass on an external wall is in a practically new patio door that's supposed to be to the highest thermal standards. I apparently use a little over 7000 kWh per year. So while 5000 kWh per month does sound high, 3500 kWh per year sounds almost as inexplicable on the low side. Maybe people in the Netherlands and Germany don't have A/C, as people in the US from NY to Texas do, but I'm not sure that's a plausible explanation. My power consumption isn't that much lower when the A/C is off; while the year-round average is about 600 kWh per month, it's typically over 500 kWh in the colder part of the year. Another data point is that our power company (which is a UK company by the way) sends a periodic comparison of energy usage with similar homes, and mine is supposedly a little higher than peers but not that much. I felt like something must be wrong, in fact, when I first moved in, and tried to figure out what was drawing all the power when the A/C is off. I didn't come to any conclusion except that maybe the furnace has a blower fan that draws a lot of power. I have the opposite of a plan that passes through the spot price, by the way - my payment plan attempts to equalize the seasonal variations and charge the same amount each month for the whole year.

Havoc 6y ago

You can see the same effect in the /r/homelab subreddit - Europeans and Americans are picking very different hardware. US side it's usually ancient enterprise gear that businesses have dropped because of the insane power requirements

vlovich123 6y ago

The average home in Texas uses 1,176 kWh a month, or 14,112 kWh a year, based on EIA data As for using that much in one month and it being January (cold snap was in February, no?), I don’t know. Housing that’s not properly insulated and running a bunch of space heaters 24/7 instead of putting on warmer clothes and using central heating. Or Bitcoin mining. Edit: Never mind. Since it lists him as a contractor, it’s possible he uses a bunch of power tools out of his place (might not even be his personal home but a business).

wjnc 6y ago

Don't forget to convert the gas into MJ / kWh with an appropriate conversion factor. When I calculated total energy use for my household I was somewhat amazed at how much energy gas holds.

eqvinox 6y ago
There's no gas involved in any of these numbers. 3500 kWh/year is a typical number for pure electricity in Germany.
- wjnc 6y ago
  Don't Americans use electric heat pumps / air-conditioning units for cooling and heating, while Europeans more often heat on natural gas? My point is you need to look at the per capita energy use in comparable terms (MJ or BTU/cap perhaps with CO2 MT/cap next to that). To put it in perspective. In the last month my household of 5 in NL used about 400 kWh of electricity and 400 m3 of gas. Those 400 m3 calculate to about 5 MWh (!) of electrical energy (Dutch gas is about 35 MJ per m3ans my heater is 95% efficient if used optimally). Since I expect Texans to mostly have electrical HVAC mostly for cooling ... My house is very inefficient in comparison. US: 49% gas, 34% electrical [1] NL: 90%+ gas [2] [1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-and-cool/home-heating-systems https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-and-cool/home-heatin... [2] https://www.milieucentraal.nl/energie-besparen/aardgasvrij-wonen/wonen-zonder-aardgas/ https://www.milieucentraal.nl/energie-besparen/aardgasvrij-w...
  - eqvinox 6y ago
    Yes, but also... it's Texas, and a HVAC cooling a house by x °C is significantly more efficient (factor ~1:3 usually) than heating the same house by x °C. (Since moving heat is more efficient than generating it...) So ... I don't think Texan climate can account for such a large difference in electricity consumption if the houses were equally well isolated? Presumably the cooling in the summer is the bigger problem & wasteful? (Yes, I don't really know... that's why I only pointed out that gas isn't involved without making further claims ;D)
  - perl4ever 6y ago
    >Don't Americans use electric heat pumps / air-conditioning units for cooling and heating In the northeastern US where I live, it gets down below 0 C for a good portion of the winter and usually once or twice to around -18 C. While certainly there are apartments, maybe houses, with electric heat and heat pumps, my experience has been that electric heat is expensive and undesirable and a heat pump is a useless gimmick that doesn't work in actual cold weather (although maybe a newer system would be better). It seems like the cheaper apartments in terms of rent have electric heat, which is more expensive. I think natural gas (I use around 140 therms at peak in the winter, which I think is about equivalent to 400 m^3) is typical if you live reasonably close to the city/inner suburbs, and if you don't have gas, you may well burn fuel oil, which is essentially diesel fuel that's delivered in trucks and stored in tanks. In some parts of the US, where coal is produced, I think people use that for heating, but it's less common overall because it isn't cost effective to ship a long way. Last month I used about 500 kWh which is higher than you but not hugely. I wonder if your climate is as cold as where I live though, or if you are using as much gas for a significantly more temperate region.

whoknew1122 6y ago

I'm not an expert in energy consumption between localities (much less countries), but one thing to consider is house construction. House construction in the Netherlands and Germany are likely far different. Both places are much cooler than Texas on average. From what I've glanced at, average summer high temperatures in the Netherlands and Germany are around 25C. In Texas, it's around 35C. In Texas, with its long and oppressive summers, houses are constructed to be cooler inside than it is outside. This is great during the summer. Not so great when it hits -17C outside. So to get their house warm, Texans are literally fighting against what their houses are engineered to do. Also, energy efficiency and weatherization isn't well-regulated in Texas. So you have old, inefficient houses that are designed to stay cold.

maxerickson 6y ago
Insulation helps keep heat out just as much as it keeps it in. Summer design elements use air flows that can be blocked off for winter, or things like awnings that don't block the lower winter sun. So it's more that many houses aren't particularly well insulated or sealed in the US, which costs energy in summer too. Plenty of new houses are built with a tight envelope and require active ventilation for air exchange. Most older houses are not like that.

maxerickson 6y ago

Prices are likely part of it. My electric is $0.098 per kWh, natural gas is less than $0.02 per kWh. I don't use anywhere near 5000 kWh of electric in a year, but I have several months of high natural gas use for heat, where making the building 2x as efficient would save a few hundred dollars a year (which I'm implying is not a huge incentive; this event in Texas certainly has me planning to reevaluate for easy improvements). As far as the high usage in the article, one reasonable explanation would be an electric vehicle (but it's not clear that is the case either).

perl4ever 6y ago

I have a <1300 square foot home, in the northeastern US, with adjoining units sharing the walls on either side, so not exposed to the outdoor temperatures except at front and back, and it has gas heat, not electric, and I think I have all LED lighting at this point. I do not have a electric car either. The biggest piece of glass on an external wall is in a practically new patio door that's supposed to be to the highest thermal standards. I apparently use a little over 7000 kWh per year. So while 5000 kWh per month does sound high, 3500 kWh per year sounds almost as inexplicable on the low side. Maybe people in the Netherlands and Germany don't have A/C, as people in the US from NY to Texas do, but I'm not sure that's a plausible explanation. My power consumption isn't that much lower when the A/C is off; while the year-round average is about 600 kWh per month, it's typically over 500 kWh in the colder part of the year. Another data point is that our power company (which is a UK company by the way) sends a periodic comparison of energy usage with similar homes, and mine is supposedly a little higher than peers but not that much. I felt like something must be wrong, in fact, when I first moved in, and tried to figure out what was drawing all the power when the A/C is off. I didn't come to any conclusion except that maybe the furnace has a blower fan that draws a lot of power. I have the opposite of a plan that passes through the spot price, by the way - my payment plan attempts to equalize the seasonal variations and charge the same amount each month for the whole year.