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I don't think you need much new infra to switch to electrical resistance heating. Where to get this energy? Turn off bitcoin mining (200 TWh/year) and you prob

I don't think you need much new infra to switch to electrical resistance heating. Where to get this energy? Turn off bitcoin mining (200 TWh/year) and you probably get enough energy to replace the heat lost from stopping German imports of Russian natural gas (40 billion cubic meters/year, 10 kWH per cubic meter = 40 TWh). Don't know how much mining is on the European grid though. As a bonus electrical resistance heating can work in a single room at a time.

abalashov 5y ago
With average household electricity price in the EU at €0.2134/KWHr (second half 2021), I really wonder how much Bitcoin mining goes on there. The average cost in the US is less than half that, less in many of the southern states.
beiller 5y ago
Why turn it off (mining)? It is literally electrical resistance heating. Sorry for being glib but maybe it could actually help subsidize the electricity cost.
- labster 5y ago
  The point of getting off Russian gas is to stop subsidizing genocide. So why support a currency whose main purpose is international money laundering? (Secondary purpose: asset bubbles) It would be counterproductive to the goal to give Russia a bigger way to participate in the global economy through crypto. Note I mean purpose of cryptocurrency itself from a systems perspective, not the purpose of those who made it.
- agrajag 5y ago
  Because mining rigs aren’t heating houses, they’re heating datacenters. Even if you did want to heat a house with a mining rig, they’re generally going to be mounted on a rack and providing a lot of heat to one room. And making a ton of noise while they do it.
Tostino 5y ago
You'd really want to replace the gas heating with heat pump systems rather than resistive heating elements. Resistive heating is ~100% efficient at converting electricity into heat, but a heat pump can do a trick to get above 100% efficiency by not actually trying to convert electricity directly into heat, but instead to move heat around so it stays on one side of a loop. Heat pumps are efficient down to 25f (-4c) [https://www.moncriefair.com/blog/at-what-temperature-does-a-heat-pump-stop-being-effective/ https://www.moncriefair.com/blog/at-what-temperature-does-a-...], so many parts of Europe would be just fine with heat pumps, though it wouldn't be the most practical in the coldest parts.
- dzhiurgis 5y ago
  Some heat pumps are useable at -20C and are widely sold around north. In fact Lithuania subsidises if you replace coal furnace with heat pump. It’s kinda replacing home scale geothermal installs too.
  - Tostino 5y ago
    That's great to hear, appreciate you letting me know there are options that do work at low temps!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- fulafel 5y ago
  In nordic countries heat pumps (and good insulation) are more common for heating than gas. To echo the sibling comment, cold weather air heat pumps work, they get efficiency over resistive heating down to about -25 or -30C, and are widely used in colder climates. There are also ground and water heat pumps that exploit the higher ground/water temperature in the winter. There are also utility scale versions of these used in district heating plants.
- mortehu 5y ago
  Yes, but you can build tens of millions of resistance heaters much faster than tens of millions of heat pumps. They're also trivial to install. I was trying to propose something possible, not something ideal.
lazide 5y ago
You're vastly underestimating the amount of heat energy produced by this gas. Last I checked, even the most efficient (heat pump) method of producing an equivalent amount of heat just for Germany would require 7x more electrical production than all of Germany's entire grid right now.
- mortehu 5y ago
  Am I underestimating the volume of gas, or the energy density?
  - lazide 5y ago
    Total thermal energy quantity. Edit: add numbers. According to Reuters, Germany uses about 100+ billion cubic meters of natural gas/yr right now [https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-dependent-is-germany-russian-gas-2022-03-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-dependent-is-ger...], with Russia accounting for about 30% of that supply. A billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_cubic_metres_of_natural_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_cubic_metres_of_natura...] is about 38 petajoules of energy or 1.06×10^10 kWh. Or about 10 TWh of energy. So Russia is supplying Germany with approximately 300TWh of thermal energy/yr. Total natural gas usage is in the peta watt hour/yr range for them. Resistive hearing is (not quite) 100% efficient at the point source, but when adding in transmission losses it’s often more like 90%. High efficiency natural gas heaters are similarly efficient. Heat pumps can go over unity, so assuming 3x efficiency is not bad. Capex is high though. And if burning natural gas to generate the power, efficiencies aren’t great end to end. Not much better than just burning the gas directly on site. What makes it worse is that much of this energy needs to be released during winter months when renewables have the toughest time, and if it isn’t available people will freeze to death. So it needs a high capacity safety multiple, and needs a decent amount of storage. It wouldn’t be a good idea to only have a day or two capacity stored for instance, since a unusual storm or quiet period could mean unexpected emergencies with little time to prepare. Burning it to convert for electricity isn’t ideal either, as even burning it in a turbine and using very efficient heat pumps has roughly the same end to end efficiency (not counting storage) as just burning it on-site for heat, but dramatically higher capex.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
BitCoin mining seems like a real problem. I was recently in Macedonia, and apparently it’s common there to steal electricity to mine crypto. They are heavily dependent on energy imports, and much of the energy they do have is being siphoned off to crypto. It’s not a good situation. https://english.republika.mk/news/macedonia/bitcoin-miners-with-links-to-the-ruling-sdsm-party-suspected-of-stealing-electricity-in-skopjes-iconic-gtc-mall/ https://english.republika.mk/news/macedonia/bitcoin-miners-w...
p_l 5y ago
Switching to electrical heating (even with heat pumps, not resistive) can create considerably different flows on the electricity grid. Considering all the time I hear complaints about electricity being blocked as means for heating in at least some places in Germany, I wonder if they simply haven't found out that their grid can't take it under current setup.
- KarlKemp 5y ago
  Electric heating is almost immoral in environmental terms. Instead of getting close to 100 % efficiency by burning fossil fuel in place, it is burned in a power plant at 30 % efficiency. This is changing with increasing solar and wind power, and heating is a flexible load that is useful to stabilize the grid. It as of now it‘s net-negative.
  - p_l 5y ago
    Interestingly, apparently the further the Energiewende goes, the less approval there is for electric heating, including attempts to force removal of storage heaters.

abalashov 5y ago

With average household electricity price in the EU at €0.2134/KWHr (second half 2021), I really wonder how much Bitcoin mining goes on there. The average cost in the US is less than half that, less in many of the southern states.

beiller 5y ago

Why turn it off (mining)? It is literally electrical resistance heating. Sorry for being glib but maybe it could actually help subsidize the electricity cost.

labster 5y ago
The point of getting off Russian gas is to stop subsidizing genocide. So why support a currency whose main purpose is international money laundering? (Secondary purpose: asset bubbles) It would be counterproductive to the goal to give Russia a bigger way to participate in the global economy through crypto. Note I mean purpose of cryptocurrency itself from a systems perspective, not the purpose of those who made it.
agrajag 5y ago
Because mining rigs aren’t heating houses, they’re heating datacenters. Even if you did want to heat a house with a mining rig, they’re generally going to be mounted on a rack and providing a lot of heat to one room. And making a ton of noise while they do it.

Tostino 5y ago

You'd really want to replace the gas heating with heat pump systems rather than resistive heating elements. Resistive heating is ~100% efficient at converting electricity into heat, but a heat pump can do a trick to get above 100% efficiency by not actually trying to convert electricity directly into heat, but instead to move heat around so it stays on one side of a loop. Heat pumps are efficient down to 25f (-4c) [https://www.moncriefair.com/blog/at-what-temperature-does-a-heat-pump-stop-being-effective/ https://www.moncriefair.com/blog/at-what-temperature-does-a-...], so many parts of Europe would be just fine with heat pumps, though it wouldn't be the most practical in the coldest parts.

dzhiurgis 5y ago
Some heat pumps are useable at -20C and are widely sold around north. In fact Lithuania subsidises if you replace coal furnace with heat pump. It’s kinda replacing home scale geothermal installs too.
- Tostino 5y ago
  That's great to hear, appreciate you letting me know there are options that do work at low temps!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fulafel 5y ago
In nordic countries heat pumps (and good insulation) are more common for heating than gas. To echo the sibling comment, cold weather air heat pumps work, they get efficiency over resistive heating down to about -25 or -30C, and are widely used in colder climates. There are also ground and water heat pumps that exploit the higher ground/water temperature in the winter. There are also utility scale versions of these used in district heating plants.
mortehu 5y ago
Yes, but you can build tens of millions of resistance heaters much faster than tens of millions of heat pumps. They're also trivial to install. I was trying to propose something possible, not something ideal.

lazide 5y ago

You're vastly underestimating the amount of heat energy produced by this gas. Last I checked, even the most efficient (heat pump) method of producing an equivalent amount of heat just for Germany would require 7x more electrical production than all of Germany's entire grid right now.

mortehu 5y ago
Am I underestimating the volume of gas, or the energy density?
- lazide 5y ago
  Total thermal energy quantity. Edit: add numbers. According to Reuters, Germany uses about 100+ billion cubic meters of natural gas/yr right now [https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-dependent-is-germany-russian-gas-2022-03-08/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-dependent-is-ger...], with Russia accounting for about 30% of that supply. A billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_cubic_metres_of_natural_gas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion_cubic_metres_of_natura...] is about 38 petajoules of energy or 1.06×10^10 kWh. Or about 10 TWh of energy. So Russia is supplying Germany with approximately 300TWh of thermal energy/yr. Total natural gas usage is in the peta watt hour/yr range for them. Resistive hearing is (not quite) 100% efficient at the point source, but when adding in transmission losses it’s often more like 90%. High efficiency natural gas heaters are similarly efficient. Heat pumps can go over unity, so assuming 3x efficiency is not bad. Capex is high though. And if burning natural gas to generate the power, efficiencies aren’t great end to end. Not much better than just burning the gas directly on site. What makes it worse is that much of this energy needs to be released during winter months when renewables have the toughest time, and if it isn’t available people will freeze to death. So it needs a high capacity safety multiple, and needs a decent amount of storage. It wouldn’t be a good idea to only have a day or two capacity stored for instance, since a unusual storm or quiet period could mean unexpected emergencies with little time to prepare. Burning it to convert for electricity isn’t ideal either, as even burning it in a turbine and using very efficient heat pumps has roughly the same end to end efficiency (not counting storage) as just burning it on-site for heat, but dramatically higher capex.

devoutsalsa 5y ago

BitCoin mining seems like a real problem. I was recently in Macedonia, and apparently it’s common there to steal electricity to mine crypto. They are heavily dependent on energy imports, and much of the energy they do have is being siphoned off to crypto. It’s not a good situation. https://english.republika.mk/news/macedonia/bitcoin-miners-with-links-to-the-ruling-sdsm-party-suspected-of-stealing-electricity-in-skopjes-iconic-gtc-mall/ https://english.republika.mk/news/macedonia/bitcoin-miners-w...

p_l 5y ago

Switching to electrical heating (even with heat pumps, not resistive) can create considerably different flows on the electricity grid. Considering all the time I hear complaints about electricity being blocked as means for heating in at least some places in Germany, I wonder if they simply haven't found out that their grid can't take it under current setup.

KarlKemp 5y ago
Electric heating is almost immoral in environmental terms. Instead of getting close to 100 % efficiency by burning fossil fuel in place, it is burned in a power plant at 30 % efficiency. This is changing with increasing solar and wind power, and heating is a flexible load that is useful to stabilize the grid. It as of now it‘s net-negative.
- p_l 5y ago
  Interestingly, apparently the further the Energiewende goes, the less approval there is for electric heating, including attempts to force removal of storage heaters.