5 ms·

Germany's Coming Energy Revolution

26 points by newacc 17y ago

ovi256 17y ago
No mention of what may well be the biggest contributor : passive houses. These regulate their interior climate without any active energy consumption. No heating, no cooling at all. They are extremely well insulated homes with big heat-exchangers between incoming and outgoing air. This way, incoming air is brought to the temperature of the outgoing air. No stale air and no energy consumption. They are almost exclusively new homes, as they require NASA-level insulation that is impossible to put on old, or simply existing, buildings. Also, the air-ducts and heat-exchanger needs to be engineered into the building.
- ugh 17y ago
  Probably not a useful solution for US climate and convenience demands.
  - Mz 17y ago
    I'm sure it doesn't fit well with current expectations for "convenience" in America. But I can't imagine why climate would be an objection. Historically, vernacular architecture here did cater to local climate -- back when you couldn't just crank the AC, houses in the South did use passive solar design to help keep homes and lifestyles livably cool. Plantations had a second smaller kitchen outside the main house to avoid heating up the main house during the summer months. Modern Southerners still often grill out during the summer months and upscale modern homes may have "outdoor kitchens" equipped with a place to eat, an upscale built-in grill, prep space and so on. The deep, wrap-around porches seen on some Southern homes not only prevent summer sun from heating the main house, they also made it possible to leave windows open for cross-draft ventilation in spite of nearly daily afternoon storms during the summer and into the fall.
    - ugh 17y ago
      I was specifically thinking about the passive house designs. I think you couldn’t just take those designs and build them in anywhere in the US. Germany has very moderate climate, and I think passive houses are optimized for that. But you are probably right, you could probably design passive houses that work in more extreme climates.
      - Mz 17y ago
        Oh, well, of course design aimed at working well in Germany wouldn't work well in many parts of the US -- though there are parts of the US which likely would do fine with a similar design. It's a big country with lots of different climates and landscapes.
      - eru 17y ago
        Oh, even Germany has different climates. Though not as extreme as Texes vs Alaska. E.g. in Magdeburg we could have above 30 degree Celsius in summer, and -20 some days in winter.
        Mz 17y ago
        I lived in Germany for nearly four years as an adult and for a time in my early childhood as well. So, yes, I am aware. Germany also was something like the world leader in recycling/environmental initiatives (or some such) when I lived there. So I am not surprised to see this green energy initiative.
      - pradocchia 17y ago
        > you couldn’t just take those designs and build them in anywhere in the US. This is the challenge of passive environmental design. Climate and topology make a huge difference in what works where. It's a built-in level of indirection: you can't take an effective design from Germany, and expect it to work well in Phoenix. You can take the design principles and (re)discover new pattens, but that's an order of magnitude more difficult.
- Mz 17y ago
  Passive solar design has been around a long time. I believe it was more popular in the past, when people were generally more in tune with the weather and the world around them. I think "modern" life has tended to make a lot of people somewhat oblivious to that. One reason it would need to be new construction is because orientation to the sun is part of the design which can't be fundamentally changed once it's built. However, there are passive solar things that can be added after the fact to improve on efficiency (granted it likely won't match the efficiencies you can get in new design). One example: Planting deciduous trees such that they shade the house from the worst of the sun in summer. In winter, their leaves fall off and you get free heating with passive solar. Interestingly, a discussion I saw elsewhere about "cooling towers" noted the two following tidbits: 1) Victorian housing in America had design elements like this which most people in the discussion had previously assumed was merely whimsical/decorative and 2) Middle Eastern countries, like Iran, have long used such designs as a fairly common element in housing.
  - miked 17y ago
    Odd, but I've never seen the use of deciduous trees on the south side of a home mentioned as an energy regulating device. They block the sun in the summer and let it thru in the winter. Simple and effective, and nice to look at, tho someone has to clean up the leaves.
    - Mz 17y ago
      I'm not really a hacker. I'm really a wannabe urban planner/environmental studies major whose life got sidetracked by a health crisis and divorce. I imagine lots of folks in other places I hang out would have heard of this -- but, yes, it's sort of an 'old fashioned' thing and a lot of old fashioned ideas are either 'forgotten' or viewed as inferior to our modern gizmos.
  - pradocchia 17y ago
    My mother's an architect who specializes in old homes and historic renovation. She harps on this point constantly. The environmental techniques of yesteryear involved design elements like you mentioned, orientation, and also siting vis-a-vis water, hills, woodlots and neighboring building. To build a house otherwise would reduce the occupants' comfort. That kind of expertise, at one time common, has now been mostly lost. Sure, you can find it in books, but to effectively apply all those principles in concert to a particular design, that is high art. Mother's architecture blog: http://jgrarchitect.blogspot.com/ http://jgrarchitect.blogspot.com/
ugh 17y ago
My parents are already selling energy. Because of subsidies buying your own PV array has become a great and save investment in Germany. The banks are happy to give you credit because the price for every KWH is guaranteed (way above market prices — 20 Eurocent or so, I don't know exactly), the array is insured and has a twenty year warranty. And in those twenty years you will have paid off it all (right when most of those who bought it now hit retirement age). So all those PVs you see when visiting Germany? All built for totally selfish reasons, no tree huggers involved. (I'm personally agnostic as to whether those subsidies are an enviromentally sound idea. But this at least shows that subsidies can be a powerful tool.)
- gaius 17y ago
  Has anyone figured out the problem of the energy required to manufacture PV cells being greater than the power converted over their lifetime?
  - lispm 17y ago
    this problem has been solved years ago...
  - jsrn 17y ago
    > Has anyone figured out the problem of the energy required to manufacture PV cells being greater than the power converted over their lifetime? yes, it's no longer true (solar cells have an energy yield ratio of 4 in Northern Europe and much more elsewhere): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785279 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785279
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
catzaa 17y ago
This article paints Germany’s “Green Energy” in a way too rosy picture. The reality is much different. A good article about this is “Germany’s Green Energy Gap” in the August 2009 IEEE Spectrum (submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=887095 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=887095 original here: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-energy-gap http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-en... ). The problem is that Germany had massive subsidies (especially for Wind Farms). And offshore wind farms are being built in water 20-40 meters deep 40 kms of the coast (with the grid operators forced to connect offshore wind farms at their cost). So it has huge problems – the recession probably helped Germany to advert an energy crises. The phaseout of nuclear power stations will probably be delayed. IMHO people need to be a lot more pragmatic about green energy and nuclear power. Nuclear power still generates double the amount of electricity than renewable in Germany even while it is being phased out. It would be much better if they phased out the coal power stations instead.
- lispm 17y ago
  the problem with offshore wind in Germany is that it has to be far away from the coast in deeper water. The local conditions (islands and the Wattenmeer) enforce this. Investment in offshore wind farms is under theseGerman conditions much higher and also the technical hurdles are much higher (wind, waves, corrosion, ...). These offshore wind farms are built for very rough conditions. Still several are under being built now. So the delay has technical reasons and also the investment is quite high. But the new government has made clear that the investment in renewable energy will go on. That the nuclear reactors may not phased out as soon as planned before, is a victory of the large energy companies, who want to make the most money out of their investment. Still they are at best seen as a transition technology.
  - daniel-cussen 17y ago
    >That the nuclear reactors may not phased out as soon as planned before, is a victory of the large energy companies, who want to make the most money out of their investment. Still they are at best seen as a transition technology. It may be a victory on behalf of large energy companies, but I think nuclear is also a victory on behalf of the consumer/taxpayer. It's far and away the cheapest source of energy, cheaper even than coal. (PS I don't know what Germany's particular energy case looks like. They might be wrapping their nuclear power plants in sarcophagi a mile wide. But it's still generally true that nuclear is substantially cheaper than coal.)
c00p3r 17y ago
This is an answer to Russian gas shortage year ago. =)

26 points by newacc 17y ago

No mention of what may well be the biggest contributor : passive houses. These regulate their interior climate without any active energy consumption. No heating, no cooling at all. They are extremely well insulated homes with big heat-exchangers between incoming and outgoing air. This way, incoming air is brought to the temperature of the outgoing air. No stale air and no energy consumption. They are almost exclusively new homes, as they require NASA-level insulation that is impossible to put on old, or simply existing, buildings. Also, the air-ducts and heat-exchanger needs to be engineered into the building.

ugh 17y ago
Probably not a useful solution for US climate and convenience demands.
- Mz 17y ago
  I'm sure it doesn't fit well with current expectations for "convenience" in America. But I can't imagine why climate would be an objection. Historically, vernacular architecture here did cater to local climate -- back when you couldn't just crank the AC, houses in the South did use passive solar design to help keep homes and lifestyles livably cool. Plantations had a second smaller kitchen outside the main house to avoid heating up the main house during the summer months. Modern Southerners still often grill out during the summer months and upscale modern homes may have "outdoor kitchens" equipped with a place to eat, an upscale built-in grill, prep space and so on. The deep, wrap-around porches seen on some Southern homes not only prevent summer sun from heating the main house, they also made it possible to leave windows open for cross-draft ventilation in spite of nearly daily afternoon storms during the summer and into the fall.
  - ugh 17y ago
    I was specifically thinking about the passive house designs. I think you couldn’t just take those designs and build them in anywhere in the US. Germany has very moderate climate, and I think passive houses are optimized for that. But you are probably right, you could probably design passive houses that work in more extreme climates.
    - Mz 17y ago
      Oh, well, of course design aimed at working well in Germany wouldn't work well in many parts of the US -- though there are parts of the US which likely would do fine with a similar design. It's a big country with lots of different climates and landscapes.
    - eru 17y ago
      Oh, even Germany has different climates. Though not as extreme as Texes vs Alaska. E.g. in Magdeburg we could have above 30 degree Celsius in summer, and -20 some days in winter.
      - Mz 17y ago
        I lived in Germany for nearly four years as an adult and for a time in my early childhood as well. So, yes, I am aware. Germany also was something like the world leader in recycling/environmental initiatives (or some such) when I lived there. So I am not surprised to see this green energy initiative.
    - pradocchia 17y ago
      > you couldn’t just take those designs and build them in anywhere in the US. This is the challenge of passive environmental design. Climate and topology make a huge difference in what works where. It's a built-in level of indirection: you can't take an effective design from Germany, and expect it to work well in Phoenix. You can take the design principles and (re)discover new pattens, but that's an order of magnitude more difficult.
Mz 17y ago
Passive solar design has been around a long time. I believe it was more popular in the past, when people were generally more in tune with the weather and the world around them. I think "modern" life has tended to make a lot of people somewhat oblivious to that. One reason it would need to be new construction is because orientation to the sun is part of the design which can't be fundamentally changed once it's built. However, there are passive solar things that can be added after the fact to improve on efficiency (granted it likely won't match the efficiencies you can get in new design). One example: Planting deciduous trees such that they shade the house from the worst of the sun in summer. In winter, their leaves fall off and you get free heating with passive solar. Interestingly, a discussion I saw elsewhere about "cooling towers" noted the two following tidbits: 1) Victorian housing in America had design elements like this which most people in the discussion had previously assumed was merely whimsical/decorative and 2) Middle Eastern countries, like Iran, have long used such designs as a fairly common element in housing.
- miked 17y ago
  Odd, but I've never seen the use of deciduous trees on the south side of a home mentioned as an energy regulating device. They block the sun in the summer and let it thru in the winter. Simple and effective, and nice to look at, tho someone has to clean up the leaves.
  - Mz 17y ago
    I'm not really a hacker. I'm really a wannabe urban planner/environmental studies major whose life got sidetracked by a health crisis and divorce. I imagine lots of folks in other places I hang out would have heard of this -- but, yes, it's sort of an 'old fashioned' thing and a lot of old fashioned ideas are either 'forgotten' or viewed as inferior to our modern gizmos.
- pradocchia 17y ago
  My mother's an architect who specializes in old homes and historic renovation. She harps on this point constantly. The environmental techniques of yesteryear involved design elements like you mentioned, orientation, and also siting vis-a-vis water, hills, woodlots and neighboring building. To build a house otherwise would reduce the occupants' comfort. That kind of expertise, at one time common, has now been mostly lost. Sure, you can find it in books, but to effectively apply all those principles in concert to a particular design, that is high art. Mother's architecture blog: http://jgrarchitect.blogspot.com/ http://jgrarchitect.blogspot.com/

ugh 17y ago

My parents are already selling energy. Because of subsidies buying your own PV array has become a great and save investment in Germany. The banks are happy to give you credit because the price for every KWH is guaranteed (way above market prices — 20 Eurocent or so, I don't know exactly), the array is insured and has a twenty year warranty. And in those twenty years you will have paid off it all (right when most of those who bought it now hit retirement age). So all those PVs you see when visiting Germany? All built for totally selfish reasons, no tree huggers involved. (I'm personally agnostic as to whether those subsidies are an enviromentally sound idea. But this at least shows that subsidies can be a powerful tool.)

gaius 17y ago
Has anyone figured out the problem of the energy required to manufacture PV cells being greater than the power converted over their lifetime?
- lispm 17y ago
  this problem has been solved years ago...
- jsrn 17y ago
  > Has anyone figured out the problem of the energy required to manufacture PV cells being greater than the power converted over their lifetime? yes, it's no longer true (solar cells have an energy yield ratio of 4 in Northern Europe and much more elsewhere): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785279 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=785279
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]

catzaa 17y ago

This article paints Germany’s “Green Energy” in a way too rosy picture. The reality is much different. A good article about this is “Germany’s Green Energy Gap” in the August 2009 IEEE Spectrum (submitted here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=887095 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=887095 original here: http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-energy-gap http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-en... ). The problem is that Germany had massive subsidies (especially for Wind Farms). And offshore wind farms are being built in water 20-40 meters deep 40 kms of the coast (with the grid operators forced to connect offshore wind farms at their cost). So it has huge problems – the recession probably helped Germany to advert an energy crises. The phaseout of nuclear power stations will probably be delayed. IMHO people need to be a lot more pragmatic about green energy and nuclear power. Nuclear power still generates double the amount of electricity than renewable in Germany even while it is being phased out. It would be much better if they phased out the coal power stations instead.

lispm 17y ago
the problem with offshore wind in Germany is that it has to be far away from the coast in deeper water. The local conditions (islands and the Wattenmeer) enforce this. Investment in offshore wind farms is under theseGerman conditions much higher and also the technical hurdles are much higher (wind, waves, corrosion, ...). These offshore wind farms are built for very rough conditions. Still several are under being built now. So the delay has technical reasons and also the investment is quite high. But the new government has made clear that the investment in renewable energy will go on. That the nuclear reactors may not phased out as soon as planned before, is a victory of the large energy companies, who want to make the most money out of their investment. Still they are at best seen as a transition technology.
- daniel-cussen 17y ago
  >That the nuclear reactors may not phased out as soon as planned before, is a victory of the large energy companies, who want to make the most money out of their investment. Still they are at best seen as a transition technology. It may be a victory on behalf of large energy companies, but I think nuclear is also a victory on behalf of the consumer/taxpayer. It's far and away the cheapest source of energy, cheaper even than coal. (PS I don't know what Germany's particular energy case looks like. They might be wrapping their nuclear power plants in sarcophagi a mile wide. But it's still generally true that nuclear is substantially cheaper than coal.)

c00p3r 17y ago

This is an answer to Russian gas shortage year ago. =)