4 ms·

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.
- mortehu 5y ago
  Yes, looking at my comment again I see I wrote 40 x 10 = 40, rather than 400. That's closer to the total energy use of all proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, and not a fifth of Bitcoin alone as I suggested.

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.

mortehu 5y ago
Yes, looking at my comment again I see I wrote 40 x 10 = 40, rather than 400. That's closer to the total energy use of all proof-of-work cryptocurrencies, and not a fifth of Bitcoin alone as I suggested.