3 ms·
Electric heaters are cheap (it's just a glorified resistance). It's easy to switch home heating from gas to electric (with portable devices). Maybe not for ever
by cm2187 4y ago
Electric heaters are cheap (it's just a glorified resistance). It's easy to switch home heating from gas to electric (with portable devices). Maybe not for every room but enough to survive a winter or two. Water heating is more complicated.
- Johnny555 4y agoResistance heaters are a very inefficient way to heat (yes, I know they are 100% efficient), and I wonder if the grid could handle a significant number of homes switching to electrical resistance heat? Hopefully the government is already incentivizing switching to heat pumps, but that's not a quick solution.
- shafyy 4y agoThe heaters them themselves are cheap, but running them is not. I've done the calculation for my situation last year in Germany, and using the gas heating came out much cheaper (at least with gas prices last year). I think that's because most portable electric room heaters are not as efficient as the built in gas-based heaters. Does anyone know more about this topic?
- cm2187 4y agoCost isn't even the question. We are talking about a severe gas shortage scenario here.