4 ms·

If every German apartment dweller bought one 1500W, plug in heater, gas use would plummet. It would make a massive difference for this winter.

by b112 4y ago

CydeWeys 4y ago
Well, don't do that exactly, they're inefficient (but at least they're cheap). Ideal would be every house having a heat pump installed. Then you can heat a home much more efficiently using electricity than just going resistive.
- Balero 4y ago
  That won't make a massive difference for this winter thought. They need a fix that is going to be months away, not years.
- thinkcontext 4y ago
  The problem with heat pumps is scale. 30M out of Germany's 40M homes use gas or oil for heat. Last year 150K heat pumps were installed in the country. The government has set a goal of 500K installed per year by 2024 with 6M total reached by 2030. Every one possible should be installed, it just won't make a dent.
- ParksNet 4y ago
  A lot of homes and apartments already have AC. They are heat pumps. Just use them in heat mode.
- freeflight 4y ago
  Heat pump hardware, and installation talent, is massively supply constrained and can't keep up with the demand. [0] [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/europes-booming-demand-for-heat-pumps-exposes-bottlenecks/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eur...
layer8 4y ago
Gas would have to become much more expensive than electricity for that to happen at scale. Saying “if everyone would do X” isn’t very useful if the incentives aren’t in place that would compel everyone to do X.
lazide 4y ago
By collapsing the electric grid? Probably. Hopefully people are stocking up on coats! There are roughly 40 million households in Germany based on some random numbers I found googling. If every one of them had a 1500 Watt space heater (woefully undersized for some, fine for others I imagine), and used them during the expected coldest day, you’d be throwing an extra 60 billion watt hours (aka gigawatts) of extra load on the grid right when renewables are least capable (typically). That would also almost exactly double current German peak electrical energy consumption. The grid would collapse.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bell-cot 4y ago
  In my experience, all statements like "if everybody did {thing that I could do, and claim to be a social virtue}..." about energy / economic / environmental problems are 99% performative virtue. Even if they don't require Weihnachtsmann to take care a major "would not scale well" issue or ten, they almost universally assume that the great majority of "everybody" enjoys economic, housing, employment, etc. circumstances quite similar to the person making the statement.
  - lazide 4y ago
    I agree. I also lately seem to be in a mood to enjoy doing math and pointing out why such performative statements, if taken at face value, would either 1) do more harm than good, 2) would be impossible. As you might guess, in my current mood I’m not great at parties.
aeyes 4y ago
Storage heaters were somewhat common in the 60s and 70s in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater Together with significantly reduced electricity cost at night like in the past, this is probably the way to go if we wanted to go back to nuclear power.
freeflight 4y ago
If every German apartment dweller bought and ran an extra 1500W electric heater, then that would have a very noticeable effect on the German electricity grid and overall electricity consumption. This is already an issue in the UK with electric tea kettles during certain times [0], but those are only in use for a very short time, those German electric heaters would need to run a lot to get trough winter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup
croes 4y ago
Yeah, because you don't need resources for all that heaters.
hnaccount_rng 4y ago
So... Where do we get 45 million plug-in heaters? And to replace a 20kW gas heater you'll need _slightly_ more than 1 1.5kW plug-in heater. Yes.. it's a component. Yes I'm sure it will be employed. Yes it will stress the electric grid (but there is much more flexibility available). But it's not the solution to the majority of gas heating, because there simply isn't the capacity to get the required amount of hardware in the available time.
- brnt 4y ago
  Those gas heaters are usually overdimensioned by a few factors. Nobody needs to fill instantly fill a bathtubs with 60 degrees. My house came with an 14kW gas unit, but a 5kW heatpump is enough for cold winters. Naturally the unit will be running for longer, but that's an efficiency in itself (lower delta T). Assuming a conservative COP of 4, that comes down to 1.25kW primary electricity consumption. It's a no brainer.

If every German apartment dweller bought one 1500W, plug in heater, gas use would plummet. It would make a massive difference for this winter.

by b112 4y ago

If every German apartment dweller bought one 1500W, plug in heater, gas use would plummet. It would make a massive difference for this winter.

CydeWeys 4y ago

Well, don't do that exactly, they're inefficient (but at least they're cheap). Ideal would be every house having a heat pump installed. Then you can heat a home much more efficiently using electricity than just going resistive.

Balero 4y ago
That won't make a massive difference for this winter thought. They need a fix that is going to be months away, not years.
thinkcontext 4y ago
The problem with heat pumps is scale. 30M out of Germany's 40M homes use gas or oil for heat. Last year 150K heat pumps were installed in the country. The government has set a goal of 500K installed per year by 2024 with 6M total reached by 2030. Every one possible should be installed, it just won't make a dent.
ParksNet 4y ago
A lot of homes and apartments already have AC. They are heat pumps. Just use them in heat mode.
freeflight 4y ago
Heat pump hardware, and installation talent, is massively supply constrained and can't keep up with the demand. [0] [0] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/europes-booming-demand-for-heat-pumps-exposes-bottlenecks/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/eur...

layer8 4y ago

Gas would have to become much more expensive than electricity for that to happen at scale. Saying “if everyone would do X” isn’t very useful if the incentives aren’t in place that would compel everyone to do X.

lazide 4y ago

By collapsing the electric grid? Probably. Hopefully people are stocking up on coats! There are roughly 40 million households in Germany based on some random numbers I found googling. If every one of them had a 1500 Watt space heater (woefully undersized for some, fine for others I imagine), and used them during the expected coldest day, you’d be throwing an extra 60 billion watt hours (aka gigawatts) of extra load on the grid right when renewables are least capable (typically). That would also almost exactly double current German peak electrical energy consumption. The grid would collapse.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bell-cot 4y ago
In my experience, all statements like "if everybody did {thing that I could do, and claim to be a social virtue}..." about energy / economic / environmental problems are 99% performative virtue. Even if they don't require Weihnachtsmann to take care a major "would not scale well" issue or ten, they almost universally assume that the great majority of "everybody" enjoys economic, housing, employment, etc. circumstances quite similar to the person making the statement.
- lazide 4y ago
  I agree. I also lately seem to be in a mood to enjoy doing math and pointing out why such performative statements, if taken at face value, would either 1) do more harm than good, 2) would be impossible. As you might guess, in my current mood I’m not great at parties.

aeyes 4y ago

Storage heaters were somewhat common in the 60s and 70s in Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater Together with significantly reduced electricity cost at night like in the past, this is probably the way to go if we wanted to go back to nuclear power.

freeflight 4y ago

If every German apartment dweller bought and ran an extra 1500W electric heater, then that would have a very noticeable effect on the German electricity grid and overall electricity consumption. This is already an issue in the UK with electric tea kettles during certain times [0], but those are only in use for a very short time, those German electric heaters would need to run a lot to get trough winter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_pickup

croes 4y ago

Yeah, because you don't need resources for all that heaters.

hnaccount_rng 4y ago

So... Where do we get 45 million plug-in heaters? And to replace a 20kW gas heater you'll need _slightly_ more than 1 1.5kW plug-in heater. Yes.. it's a component. Yes I'm sure it will be employed. Yes it will stress the electric grid (but there is much more flexibility available). But it's not the solution to the majority of gas heating, because there simply isn't the capacity to get the required amount of hardware in the available time.

brnt 4y ago
Those gas heaters are usually overdimensioned by a few factors. Nobody needs to fill instantly fill a bathtubs with 60 degrees. My house came with an 14kW gas unit, but a 5kW heatpump is enough for cold winters. Naturally the unit will be running for longer, but that's an efficiency in itself (lower delta T). Assuming a conservative COP of 4, that comes down to 1.25kW primary electricity consumption. It's a no brainer.