4 ms·

Electric radiators are quite cheap (they retail for less than $100), and homes in the cold parts of europe are typically well insulated, and if you bought a rad

by pliny 4y ago

Electric radiators are quite cheap (they retail for less than $100), and homes in the cold parts of europe are typically well insulated, and if you bought a radiator for every person in the eu (0.5B * $100) it would cost .3% of europe's gdp ($18 trillion), or 5% of the eu's budget for 1 year. This helps reduce the reliance on gas for domestic heating.

hef19898 4y ago
Those heaters heat one room, not a house or appartment complex. They consume a ton of electricity, are higly inefficient and don't heat your water supply. And while they maybe cheap (are those cheap ones rated for contonous usage or are they some cheap Wish knockoffs?) they are not available in sufficient numbers... Seriously, how comes that people fail to realize how complex things around them are, like infrastructure? These things are not like a consumer grade app or some ride share business...
- jfim 4y ago
  Most of the houses I've seen in Canada are heated using baseboard heaters, they're not exactly uncommon. Efficiency seems fine, and most of Europe doesn't get as cold as Canada during winter.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Where in Canada? Almost everything on the nat gas grid has furnace heating. In the sticks you’ll have wood biomass, propane or kerosene heat. Anyone using electric baseboards is getting highly subsidized electricity because any other energy source is cheaper. Only place I saw baseboard heating was in school portables.
    - jfim 4y ago
      Québec. Then again that might be because of the low electricity prices there.
      - 8note 4y ago
        BC too. I imagine it goes hand in hand with hydro
    - ricardobeat 4y ago
      I'm standing on floor heating at this very moment (off, of course). It uses district heating / hot water, which could be heated by any kind of energy source, including nuclear.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > Those heaters heat one room, not a house or appartment complex. It’s something I’ve always wondered: At night, it might be more cost effective to heat a bedroom electrically than an entire household with gas. But that’s a forced air heating issue: you can’t block 75% of a furnace’s airflow and expect it to keep working. Europe usually has boilers and radiators so dialing down heating to just a room is possible. Or better yet, heat the person with a mattress pad instead of the building air at night.
  - 8note 4y ago
    You don't want your pipes freezing though
    - hef19898 4y ago
      Lucky that some regions actually understood how isolation of pipes works...
- seabrookmx 4y ago
  Not sure where you're getting your facts. I'm sitting in a house with all of these things you claim don't exist, and I'm not an anomaly where I live. My water heater, cooking stove, furnace.. all electric. Most of it installed in the 80's and all original (other than the water heater which has a 10-15 year lifespan). Electric water heaters and baseboard heaters are common, and extremely efficient. In fact, resistive heaters in the scientific sense (watts in vs. watts out) are the most efficient form of heating. They're extremely reliable and cheap because of how simple they are. They may not be _cost effective to run_ in many regions due to high cost of electricity (per watt as compared to gas). But here in BC Canada, resistive elements are extremely common due to relatively cheap power (Hydro in our case). For whole home heating, heat pumps are usually used in new builds because of their advantages, but they're still very tied to the grid and have elements in them for defrosting and the like. If you scaled up nuclear you'd similarly see prices of electricity drop, and if you have the grid infrastructure (or build it), electric heating (for your home, water, cooking, whatever) becomes pretty attractive.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Sure it exists. My point was that switching from one to the other is the problem. Europe has issues with gett;ng gas and can't switch to electric. If you use electric and run into electricity issues you cannot switch to gas. Even if both solutions are working just fine.
    - seabrookmx 4y ago
      Your comment I replied to claimed electric heaters were inefficient and not available in numbers. I also don't see any mention of existing infrastructure. But I'm glad you've been convinced :)
- kalleboo 4y ago
  > are highly inefficient Electric resistive heaters are 100% efficient - they convert 100% of the electricity into heat.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    That's 0% efficient. Same as gas heating. Electricity heating does produce a bunch of heat at other places though, and it all comes from work, whereas the gas could only produce maybe 70% as much work if used some other way.
    - Thorrez 4y ago
      How is this 0% measured? I would think 1 J coming in from the wall making 1 J of heat means 100% efficient. Yes there are inefficiencies at generation and transportation. But I don't think those are usually counted when talking about the efficiency of a home device. And it certainly won't be enough to bring it down to 0%.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        energy that did work / energy in As an illustrative example, you could get the same heating effect by putting the electricity through a computer or other appliance, or by putting the gas through a heat engine to produce electricity which is used inside the home and warming the house with the waste heat.
        Thorrez 4y ago
        Hmm, that type of measurement probably works in some situations, but I don't think it works for heating. For example, I don't think that type of measurement would be as useful for comparing resistive heaters to heat pumps. I know about heating by computer because for the last several years I've heated my apartment solely by mining Ethereum on my computer. The only dedicated heaters that my apartment has are resistive electric heaters built into the walls, so it's better for me to get a little Ethereum plus heat than just heat.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  The consumer side is actually a lot more trivial than you are making out. It's also about as efficient as gas (0% at the point of consumption as you are producing heat, with about 40% energy loss on the production side). Electric heating is about the simplest machine you can possibly make (it's just NiCr wire and a thermostat which is already there), and the cost would almost exclusively be the labour of installation. Even heat pumps (including for water) could be built in relatively short order. The problem is it would entail quadrupling the electricity generating and transmission infrastructure. This is the hard part that takes decades.
DocTomoe 4y ago
In fact, electric heating was actively discouraged and built back around 1995. It was often being replaced with gas and wood pellets (which also come from Ukraine/Russia).

by pliny 4y ago

hef19898 4y ago

Those heaters heat one room, not a house or appartment complex. They consume a ton of electricity, are higly inefficient and don't heat your water supply. And while they maybe cheap (are those cheap ones rated for contonous usage or are they some cheap Wish knockoffs?) they are not available in sufficient numbers... Seriously, how comes that people fail to realize how complex things around them are, like infrastructure? These things are not like a consumer grade app or some ride share business...

jfim 4y ago
Most of the houses I've seen in Canada are heated using baseboard heaters, they're not exactly uncommon. Efficiency seems fine, and most of Europe doesn't get as cold as Canada during winter.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Where in Canada? Almost everything on the nat gas grid has furnace heating. In the sticks you’ll have wood biomass, propane or kerosene heat. Anyone using electric baseboards is getting highly subsidized electricity because any other energy source is cheaper. Only place I saw baseboard heating was in school portables.
  - jfim 4y ago
    Québec. Then again that might be because of the low electricity prices there.
    - 8note 4y ago
      BC too. I imagine it goes hand in hand with hydro
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    I'm standing on floor heating at this very moment (off, of course). It uses district heating / hot water, which could be heated by any kind of energy source, including nuclear.
Scoundreller 4y ago
> Those heaters heat one room, not a house or appartment complex. It’s something I’ve always wondered: At night, it might be more cost effective to heat a bedroom electrically than an entire household with gas. But that’s a forced air heating issue: you can’t block 75% of a furnace’s airflow and expect it to keep working. Europe usually has boilers and radiators so dialing down heating to just a room is possible. Or better yet, heat the person with a mattress pad instead of the building air at night.
- 8note 4y ago
  You don't want your pipes freezing though
  - hef19898 4y ago
    Lucky that some regions actually understood how isolation of pipes works...
seabrookmx 4y ago
Not sure where you're getting your facts. I'm sitting in a house with all of these things you claim don't exist, and I'm not an anomaly where I live. My water heater, cooking stove, furnace.. all electric. Most of it installed in the 80's and all original (other than the water heater which has a 10-15 year lifespan). Electric water heaters and baseboard heaters are common, and extremely efficient. In fact, resistive heaters in the scientific sense (watts in vs. watts out) are the most efficient form of heating. They're extremely reliable and cheap because of how simple they are. They may not be _cost effective to run_ in many regions due to high cost of electricity (per watt as compared to gas). But here in BC Canada, resistive elements are extremely common due to relatively cheap power (Hydro in our case). For whole home heating, heat pumps are usually used in new builds because of their advantages, but they're still very tied to the grid and have elements in them for defrosting and the like. If you scaled up nuclear you'd similarly see prices of electricity drop, and if you have the grid infrastructure (or build it), electric heating (for your home, water, cooking, whatever) becomes pretty attractive.
- hef19898 4y ago
  Sure it exists. My point was that switching from one to the other is the problem. Europe has issues with gett;ng gas and can't switch to electric. If you use electric and run into electricity issues you cannot switch to gas. Even if both solutions are working just fine.
  - seabrookmx 4y ago
    Your comment I replied to claimed electric heaters were inefficient and not available in numbers. I also don't see any mention of existing infrastructure. But I'm glad you've been convinced :)
kalleboo 4y ago
> are highly inefficient Electric resistive heaters are 100% efficient - they convert 100% of the electricity into heat.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  That's 0% efficient. Same as gas heating. Electricity heating does produce a bunch of heat at other places though, and it all comes from work, whereas the gas could only produce maybe 70% as much work if used some other way.
  - Thorrez 4y ago
    How is this 0% measured? I would think 1 J coming in from the wall making 1 J of heat means 100% efficient. Yes there are inefficiencies at generation and transportation. But I don't think those are usually counted when talking about the efficiency of a home device. And it certainly won't be enough to bring it down to 0%.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      energy that did work / energy in As an illustrative example, you could get the same heating effect by putting the electricity through a computer or other appliance, or by putting the gas through a heat engine to produce electricity which is used inside the home and warming the house with the waste heat.
      - Thorrez 4y ago
        Hmm, that type of measurement probably works in some situations, but I don't think it works for heating. For example, I don't think that type of measurement would be as useful for comparing resistive heaters to heat pumps. I know about heating by computer because for the last several years I've heated my apartment solely by mining Ethereum on my computer. The only dedicated heaters that my apartment has are resistive electric heaters built into the walls, so it's better for me to get a little Ethereum plus heat than just heat.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
The consumer side is actually a lot more trivial than you are making out. It's also about as efficient as gas (0% at the point of consumption as you are producing heat, with about 40% energy loss on the production side). Electric heating is about the simplest machine you can possibly make (it's just NiCr wire and a thermostat which is already there), and the cost would almost exclusively be the labour of installation. Even heat pumps (including for water) could be built in relatively short order. The problem is it would entail quadrupling the electricity generating and transmission infrastructure. This is the hard part that takes decades.

DocTomoe 4y ago

In fact, electric heating was actively discouraged and built back around 1995. It was often being replaced with gas and wood pellets (which also come from Ukraine/Russia).