5 ms·

"usually" just means when their renewable power happens to be running. French have been using the last few years to do maintenance on their nuclear plants. Go

"usually" just means when their renewable power happens to be running. French have been using the last few years to do maintenance on their nuclear plants. Going into this winter, Germany will suffer far far more than France.

quonn 4y ago
Let‘s see. France heats with incredibly inefficient wall heaters. In any case, this winter is very special. It‘s not a good example to make an argument for one technology or another. Long-term I think Germany is better prepared. A lot of work has been going into heat pumps, properly isolating houses, renewables and so on.
- koheripbal 4y ago
  WINTER is a special case? Is this a serious comment? If renewables cannot handle WINTER then that's pretty telling of what quality of a solution it is.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Current existing renewables infrastructure, not renewable energy theoretically. If you had no natural gas infrastructure it would be useless.
  - algorias 4y ago
    We're talking about a winter with out-of-equilibrium energy markets here, not generic winter.
- panick21_ 4y ago
  If you already have a system where everybody uses electricity in house warming its far, far, far (and lots more fars) easier to switch to heat pumps while in Germany lots of houses have gas/oil heating. Going from that to heat pumps is 100x more difficult and costly. France is in a much better situation. Better isolation, heat pumps are technology independent, you just need reliable electricity.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Actually it is the other way around. The houses designed for electric heating usually don't have any heating pipes but just resistive heaters as part of the floor. You cannot convert that to heat pumps, you have to build a new heating system into the house including laying pipes, new floors. On the other side, if you have a central heating system, you can replace the burner with a heat pump and leave the rest mostly unchanged. I say mostly, as you want to optimize the whole system towards lower water temperatures to get higher efficiencies of the heat pumps. But this can be done, and if you have in-the-floor heating already, this can be skipped as that works with low water temperatures anyway.
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      You can have airair pumps, but ye airwater or waterwater (ground heat) is better. Especially if the house is not small.
  - ahartmetz 4y ago
    Switching from electric heaters to heat pumps is very easy for the grid, but not at all easy in existing homes. Central heating needs water pipes, which traditional electric heating doesn't have. Adding the pipes is going to be a major hassle. I'm not sure if there is a major difference in insulation. Old houses are in Germany are not great, new houses usually are, and it's probably the same in France.
hrpnk 4y ago
You can watch live on https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map how cross-border exports look like across the countries. There is also a historical view.

quonn 4y ago

Let‘s see. France heats with incredibly inefficient wall heaters. In any case, this winter is very special. It‘s not a good example to make an argument for one technology or another. Long-term I think Germany is better prepared. A lot of work has been going into heat pumps, properly isolating houses, renewables and so on.

koheripbal 4y ago
WINTER is a special case? Is this a serious comment? If renewables cannot handle WINTER then that's pretty telling of what quality of a solution it is.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Current existing renewables infrastructure, not renewable energy theoretically. If you had no natural gas infrastructure it would be useless.
- algorias 4y ago
  We're talking about a winter with out-of-equilibrium energy markets here, not generic winter.
panick21_ 4y ago
If you already have a system where everybody uses electricity in house warming its far, far, far (and lots more fars) easier to switch to heat pumps while in Germany lots of houses have gas/oil heating. Going from that to heat pumps is 100x more difficult and costly. France is in a much better situation. Better isolation, heat pumps are technology independent, you just need reliable electricity.
- _ph_ 4y ago
  Actually it is the other way around. The houses designed for electric heating usually don't have any heating pipes but just resistive heaters as part of the floor. You cannot convert that to heat pumps, you have to build a new heating system into the house including laying pipes, new floors. On the other side, if you have a central heating system, you can replace the burner with a heat pump and leave the rest mostly unchanged. I say mostly, as you want to optimize the whole system towards lower water temperatures to get higher efficiencies of the heat pumps. But this can be done, and if you have in-the-floor heating already, this can be skipped as that works with low water temperatures anyway.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    You can have airair pumps, but ye airwater or waterwater (ground heat) is better. Especially if the house is not small.
- ahartmetz 4y ago
  Switching from electric heaters to heat pumps is very easy for the grid, but not at all easy in existing homes. Central heating needs water pipes, which traditional electric heating doesn't have. Adding the pipes is going to be a major hassle. I'm not sure if there is a major difference in insulation. Old houses are in Germany are not great, new houses usually are, and it's probably the same in France.

hrpnk 4y ago

You can watch live on https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map how cross-border exports look like across the countries. There is also a historical view.