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No, that isn't a realistic option. My grandparent's place over in Germany is a huge 3 story place heated by a hot water boiler system and plenty of rooms. The
by bcrl 4y ago
No, that isn't a realistic option. My grandparent's place over in Germany is a huge 3 story place heated by a hot water boiler system and plenty of rooms. There's absolutely no way that you can heat that place with electric heaters in every room without blowing fuses constantly, and if you switch over to an electric boiler, there's a good chance the connection to the electrical grid is inadequate as it was installed 70+ years ago when life was very different. Europe is not like north American as older housing stock is not easily retrofitted without significant costs being incurred. Plus there are plenty of high density buildings as land is precious and expensive, so we're not talking about 1 story bungalows being the norm. This is what happens when towns have already existed in place for centuries.
- trashtester 4y agoMy house is similar to that of your grandparents. The house was built 70 years ago, and originally it had a coal fueld boiler, which was switched to a heating oil boiler (twice, I think) with the one in place when I bought it also having a 6KW electrical backup coil. In 2020 my country (Norway) made it illegal to use fossil fuels for heating, so I had to upgrade my grid connection and buy a couple of space heaters to account for the days where 6kW is not enough. At the time (2020), electricity was still very cheap here, due to Norway being self supplied with almost-free hydropower. Now that we're able to export all our surplus electricity (and then some), and we're seeing German electricity prices here, I suppose I need to get a heat pump. TLDR; Given a couple of decades, it's perfectly possible to move the population away from fossil fuel heating IF you have large amounts of affordable electricity.