Why Germans won't heat their homes even with free electricity? - <AUTHOR> https://kaikenhuippu.com/2020/02/18/why-germans-wont-heat-their-homes-even-with-free-electricity/ <comment><USER4> > _On Monday 10th February 2020 something historical happened. For the first > time, the market price of electricity fell below zero in Finland.(...) While > this single day was a very windy one..._

I feel I should point out that "a very windy day" is a _big_ understatement. February 10, 2020 was the day when storm Sabine arrived in northern Europe. In Germany, all medium and long distance trains stopped (electric trains, btw), and plenty of people stayed inside. Lots of closed schools, too.

I don't necessarily disagree with the article's central points. But picking up the _one_ outlier in which there's ridiculous amounts of wind and entire countries are working at half capacity seems naive at best.

<comment><USER5> We called it storm Ciara in the UK. I wonder why we don't unify names.

<comment><USER6> I wonder why we even name storms in the first place. All it does is feed the 24 hour news monster

<comment><USER7> The article linked above explains it [https://www.countryliving.com/uk/news/a28924357/met- office-s...](https://www.countryliving.com/uk/news/a28924357/met-office-storm- names-winter-2019-2020/)

To 'raise awareness' of weather events, as if one might not notice them otherwise. To be less cynical, people might pay more attention to weather warnings if they are named storms? Not sure how long that effect will stick if we have a named storm twice a month! I think you might not be far wrong saying it's about grabbing headlines.

<comment> Al-Khwarizmi In my home it definitely works. We say "Wow, a NAMED storm is coming tomorrow". We say it in a half joking tone, because the naming thing is a bit quirky, but we do pay more attention and are more careful when it's named.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I feel this article is missing the forest for the trees:

> German electricity consumers paid 80 million euros in tariffs to get 8 > million euros worth of wind power to the market.

> There is simply no point to make any market-driven investments in Germany; > the tariffs are simply too large compared to the market value of > electricity.

> (...)

> This might not be a problem if "getting more renewables" is the end-goal one > prefers, but I think the goal should be decreasing emissions.

That _is_ the stated end-goal. The subsidies are (overly) high so that lots of _renewable_ energy _production /infrastructure_ is built instead of whatever might be more profitable otherwise. While this is related to eletricity production (payout per MWh etc.), the actual building part is what is ecouraged.

You can of course argue whether that it is a good goal to pick, but to me this sounds not like an unintended "problem" but rather as the subsidies achieving exactly what they intended to.

<comment><USER9> Creating more renewable energy is pointless unless it reduces/replaces the use of fossil fuels. Having more energy than we need is useless, and there's an environmental footprint to even the greenest wind farm.

The point the article is making is that because of the way the renewable industry is being funded (from taxes on electricity consumption), consumers are opting to continue burning fossil fuels rather then use electricity.

This means that the supply of electricity is greater than demand for it, and prices go below zero.

This has two knock-on effects:

1\. Investment in electricity production is guided by government policy goals and support, rather than actual demand. The only source of revenue is government redistribution of energy taxes, and that can change quickly depending on government policy. This is not sustainable, there is no incentive here to produce efficient, long-lasting energy production infrastructure. There is only an incentive to maximise government subsidy payouts in the short term.

2\. Germany is producing more energy than it needs, and producing energy (from any source) has a negative environmental impact. These policies that were intended to preserve the environment and reduce fossil fuel use are actually causing more environmental damage and preserving fossil fuel use.

Of course, this only considers domestic consumption, and specifically heating. It may be that the policies do better in other areas.

<comment><USER10> > Creating more renewable energy is pointless unless it reduces/replaces the > use of fossil fuels.

It does.

> The point the article is making is that because of the way the renewable > industry is being funded (from taxes on electricity consumption), consumers > are opting to continue burning fossil fuels rather then use electricity.

No, it doesn't. Renewable energy has a systematic preference and its share in electricity production has risen from 6% (in 2000) to 42% (in 2019).

> Investment in electricity production is guided by government policy goals > and support, rather than actual demand

That's always the case. Energy policy is a government task. No nuclear would be build without MASSIVE government support and government demand.

Germany actually created an energy market, which before did not exist, since electricity production and distribution was in the hand of 4 big companies, each having a full monopoly in a large region.

> Germany is producing more energy than it needs

It doesn't. Far from. Also Germany is importing energy. Lots.

> reduce fossil fuel use are actually causing more environmental damage and > preserving fossil fuel use.

This is not what is happening. The goal is to have more than 85% renewable energy for electricity production in 2050.

<comment><USER9> >> Creating more renewable energy is pointless unless it reduces/replaces the use of fossil fuels.

>It does.

Maybe read the article before commenting? There's a whole section in there explaining why this isn't happening (for heating)

<comment><USER11> Electrical heating is seen as an emergency solution in Germany. There are nearly no homes with electrical heating systems in place, and if people heat electrical it is when their central heating system is broken.

I think most Germans wouldn't even get the idea to heat electrically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've not sure if has changed in the last few years, but one issue Denmark has run into is that our tariffs on CO2 actually harms the use of surplus green energy.

Most of Denmark (at least in the cities) are heats using hot water from remote heating plants, either surplus heat from power generation or garbage incineration, with auxiliary gas and coal plants. 15 years ago many of the smaller gas powered heating plants offered to install the equipment needed to convert excess electrical power to heat. The idea being that they would save money, compared to buying gas, the only caveat: They didn't want to pay the CO2 tariffs, which made sense, given that the power would mostly be from wind anyway. Paying the tariff would completely negate any cost savings, compared to buying the gas.

This solution was refused by politicians for years, so instead the heating plants would burn gas, generation CO2, and the excess wind power would be sold to Germany for almost nothing, and in many cases for free. That this point Germany wasn't closing down its nuclear power plants, so the electricity the Danish windfarms replaced was also CO2 free.

<comment><USER13> I don't get it. Why would they pay CO2 tariff for heating with wind powered electricity?

<comment><USER12> Because the regulation, at the time, mandated CO2 tariff on ALL electricity, regardless of origin. That was the broken part of the regulation.

The tariff was/is calculated per kW and not actually based on CO2 emissions. It's basically just an extra tax placed on the consumers to help subsidize green energy. It just kinda backfired the cases of the heating plants, because they weren't never thought of a consumer of electricity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interestingly, most of Finland heats with electricity. I used to live there before I moved to Germany. Unlike Germany, Finland does not use a lot of natural gas.

So, Germans subsidizing Finnish heating with clean energy is not necessarily a bad deal for Finland. I'd say it's a better deal for the planet than Russia subsidizing gas usage in e.g. Belarus, which is currently negotiating a new deal for this with Russia (in exchange for becoming part of Russia). Finland is in any case not great for wind power.

The article is correct that bureaucratic inertia and taxing practices in Germany don't make much sense and are very counter productive (and not just for the energy market). I live there. German ineptness and inefficiency is cringe-worthy. It's a political problem; the current government seems paralyzed waiting for their term to run out and not getting much done at all.

That does not mean clean energy is a no go but it does mean that pressure on politicians to fix things will increase over time. Also, the rest of Europe gets a sweet deal on energy. E.g. the Netherlands where I'm from is far ahead in EV deployments and despite being a gas producer is already implementing a policy of decommissioning gas usage by households over the next decades (this is a big deal in NL). Germany has no such plans in place. Heating oil disappeared a long time ago from my country as well and apparently is still a thing in Germany. Even coal heating was still a thing when I moved to Berlin 11 years ago (you could smell it in the winter). That's a lot more rare now.

Fundamentally, selling excess clean energy at negative rates is a sign of desperation. It should be a very valuable commodity. The problem is that we subsidize production but tax/penalize consumption. It should be the other way around. That would drive demand up and the cheapest way to meet that demand would be clean energy. With plenty of EVs hitting the market at tens of thousands per month across the EU, there should be no shortage of new demand.

That's why Texas pumps and refines oil using lots of solar and wind power. It's an economic no-brainer for them. Most of the clean energy capacity in that state (and it is world leading on that front) is actually consumed by their industry.

<comment><USER15> Phasing out gas heating is going to be a very, very big job in the Netherlands. Replacing an energy source is easy, just place a nuclear power plant / solar field down and phase out the coal power station. Done.

However, almost all homes in the Netherlands are heated by gas directly from the source. The gas is used to heat up water in the home and pump it through radiators on the wall or in the floor. A highly efficient system. But we can't import the gas from other countries because of the calorific properties so we need to pump our own gas. Switching to electric systems in the home will double the cost for most home owners because it's not very efficient and electricity is expensive (though the government can lower taxes on it). It also means that home owners will have to convert their current system in the home and pay the price for this. But it should be a plug and play option.

An ever bigger project is switching to government provided hot water heating. That means that you have to dig up every single street in the country, get rid of all existing infrastructure (fiber, coax, power, gas, water, sewer), lay down a big water pipe in the middle, put the existing infrastructure back and repave the street. Have the hot water enter every home, redo the plumbing of the home and change the water systems. The downside to this is that instead of heating the home with 70 degrees water like we do now, it will only be around 50 degrees. You can't heat a home in the winter like that so you also need to isolate every home. And you are tied to a single provider for your heating, unlike the current system where you can occasionally switch energy provider to get a better price. People I know with this system pay more than I do with gas.

The second system is a gigantic job but somewhat cheaper overall and highly efficient. The only problem is heating the water in a central location. Near an industrial zone you can use waste water from cooling systems but if nothing is around you need a lot of electricity. Or geothermal. They are still trying to find a good way to do this.

<comment><USER16> Heating with an electric heat pump is quite efficient in most environments. Electric resistance heat is inefficient.

<comment><USER15> That is correct, but a heat pump requires a big unit placed outside the home that makes noise. Given our lack of space, closely grouped homes and apartment buildings, that is a challenge. Also a heat pump is not able to heat the water to 70 degrees, which is why you need to isolate your home even more for it to work.

Electric resistance heat is inefficient but it's a plug-and-play replacement solution for gas heaters. You can directly replace it without any changes to the home other than needing an extra circuit breaker and wire pulled.

<comment><USER17> "but a heat pump requires a big unit placed outside the home that makes noise."

Old ones maybe. We've installed a Mitsubishi mini-split that can heat a 1900 sq ft. mediocrely insulated home in Appalachia (this morning was -6C). Never mind, the indoor spits (<30dB?), the compressor outside is so quiet you can't hear it if you're next to it. My, brand new, radon pump is far noisier.

As to footprint, the compressor is tall and wide (about 1m). But it's only 25 cm thick, so it doesn't take much room at all along the wall.

Really, Europe has no reason at all not to go all in with splits.

<comment><USER18> _> Old ones maybe. _

Even the "quiet" new ones cause a problem when placed in the confined area between buildings[1]. It projects low frequency noise into the neighboring structure. Very hard to deal with. You still need to be careful with placement[2].

[1] [http://www.quiet.org/readings/a-c_sound%20advice.htm](http://www.quiet.org/readings/a-c_sound%20advice.htm)

[2] [https://www.eugene- or.gov/DocumentCenter/View/17196/Neighbor...](https://www.eugene- or.gov/DocumentCenter/View/17196/Neighborly-Installation-of-Heat-Pumps) (PDF)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Here in a central european country, end-user price for Russian natural gas is about 4 eurocents/kWh. Electricity is 12 cents/kWh, in Germany even more iirc.

I have no idea about wholesale spot prices, but I don't see any incentive to switch to electricity as the price isn't going below 4 cents so often.

<comment><USER20> That's crazy. I use Griddy in Texas and my price has been generally below $0.02c/kWh the past two months.

<comment><USER21> "$0.02c" \- does this notation mean 2 cents? Honest question, not American and never seen this format before. Is it considered more clear than just "$0.02"?

I'm guessing it really can't mean 0.02 cents.

See also: Verizon Math :-)

<comment><USER22> Correct; this doesn't make any sense.

$0.02 - two cents

2c - two cents

0.02c - 1/50th of a cent

$0.02c - does not compute

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Title is not really accurate: 1. Electricity is not free in Germany, it's actually expensive; and 2. Germans do heat their homes.

<comment><USER24> Your point (1) is the point of the article. If the market price of electricity is 0€/MWh, the retail price is still bloody expensive because there's a ton of taxes, most of which do not relate to source of the energy nor its cost.

You claim (2) is a misunderstanding of the title. The title is intended to be interpreted as "Why Germans won't heat their homes with electricity, even if it's free". That is how I immediately interpreted it so I don't think the claim that the title is inaccurate can be maintained on this basis.

The intersection of the two claims is a further point of the article. Since free electricity in Germany is too expensive to heat houses with, and since Germans are going to heat their houses (unlike, say, Australians—where a normal winter is comparable to this year's winter in Berlin—who will merely become uncomfortable and/or stay in bed when the cost of heating gets too high), we therefore have the unfortunate situation that Germans are not selecting the most abundant nor the most socially responsible forms of heating. The taxes do not act like a carbon tax when a person is encouraged to use natural gas to heat their house instead of superabundant wind power.

What a terrible system.

<comment><USER25> The market price does not directly correlate with the retail price even if you take into account taxes and other fees.

The _average_ market price may affect the retail prices in the long run if it goes up or down.

We're seeing prices for electricity as low as 0€ (or lower) because there isn't enough storage capacity.

<comment><USER24> We're seeing prices for electricity as low as 0€ or less because people aren't using it efficiently. Part of that is because there is insufficient storage capacity, preventing it from being used when there's more demand and less wind.

But another part of that is that retail prices don't correspond close enough to market prices, so people aren't incentivised to use the best source of energy available at a time. An electric heater isn't that expensive. An app that broadcasts the current energy price is probably a little more expensive, especially since the company that produces it will want to add as many expensive lock in features as they can.

The German marketplace is remarkably inefficient. It's extremely difficult to cancel contracts here for instance — you most commonly have to do it several months in advance, or else they will automatically extend themself without the actual, legitimate consent of the client.

There's many problems but most of them are caused by bugs in the German marketplace which could be fixed by regulation intended to improve efficiency. For some reason, all the regulation here is intended to reduce efficiency.

<comment><USER10> > extremely difficult to cancel contracts here for instance

No, it's not difficult. Changing your energy provider is usually quite easy and there are a lot to choose from. I did it a few years ago and the new provider did all the paper work for me.

It's just that many end consumers are not prepared to do it. And no one does it on a daily base on the spot market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here in UK on certain tariffs (Octopus Agile) price of electricity regularly falls below zero at night. If you have an electric car set to only charge when price of electricity is below zero, you're getting paid to charge your car.

<comment><USER27> Being in the UK myself, I'm curious about this.

Does Octopus provide the price of electricity at the current moment?

I had a quick look at their website but couldn't see anything obvious.

<comment><USER26> Yes, you get an app and you can see the current and historical prices, in 30 minute increments.

Looks like this:

[https://imgur.com/a/zva2yby](https://imgur.com/a/zva2yby)

But if you want, you can also export _all_ of the data as an excel spreadsheet.

Some car chargers(OHME for example) can read this data in real time and only start charging when the price per kWh falls below a pre-set level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I feel like the issue is that a lot of consumers get stuck paying a fixed per kWh delivery/transmission fee.

IMO: this doesn't make sense. Transmission and distribution costs are largely the amortization of the cost of building the system _peak_ carrying capacity.

There's no shame in charging higher D&T rates during peak times and near-zero rates at 3AM.

Could also make electricity taxes a percentage instead of a fixed $ per kWh.

Germany could encourage domestic consumption of its overproduction, which would further encourage demand smoothing, but instead exports it.

<comment><USER29> About encourage domestic consumption: the local power infrastructure does not have enough capacity to distribute all the energy produced by wind turbines (in the north) across the country.

<comment><USER28> Possibly true, but I have a doubt that their local D&T rates in that area reflect that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm somewhat shocked that they do they not load those subsidies onto the electricity charge on consumers as a tax and mean those that use more, pay more. That's what they do in the UK, though alas they loaded it onto the standing charge that is a flat rate per day for having a supply. Idealy it should be like personal TAX, you have a certain amount you get without being taxed, then after that you pay X amount until you use another threshold and then the tax upon the unit rate of energy is taxed more. That would be the ideal fair way of doing energy. Certainly would be a socially more acceptable way. Of course you can allocate people a higher initial rate they can use without paying tax upon the charge for things like disabilities, health needs etc. Again, be no simple solution, but working on something that sees it paid for fairly always works out best for all as above all, people love fairness. At least, that is how I'd like things done.

But do remember, Germany recently went thru an anti nuclear phase and that forced many coal reactors to carry on longer, so they did need to compensate and a push on solar and wind power was a logical move. How that was subsidies and paid for was and is perhaps an avenue they need to address.

All that said, much respect to the people of Germany for responsibly using energy. That has probably done way more than anything to help.

<comment><USER31> > alas they loaded it onto the standing charge that is a flat rate per day for > having a supply.

Not true, source: my electricity bill. A standing charge exists, but the vast majority of what we pay is per kWh.

The part that you misunderstood, I think, is that the EEG is fixed per kWh and not per euro paid (just like most of our fuel taxes, even if crude doubles or halves in price our price at the pump only shifts a little). The article was quite misunderstable, bordering on wrong even, in that part because it reads as if market rate had any influence on German electricity bills and only the EEG charge was fixed. In reality, it's impossible for a households to get a contract that follows market rate, you always pay the same per kWh no matter if it's Sunday or Monday, windy or calm. The electricity spot market price is only relevant for utilities and for a few heavy industrial users with special contracts (the kind of heavy use where you'd be mandated to give the utility a heads up before increasing or dropping the load).

This will have to change eventually, because load shift is so much mow efficient than storage, but it's difficult to implement because you can't really have both constant rate and variable rate in parallel due to an abundance of bad actors who would have both and ruin the pricing models by opportunistically switching between them.

<comment><USER32> > In reality, it's impossible for a households to get a contract that follows > market rate, you always pay the same per kWh no matter if it's Sunday or > Monday, windy or calm.

In the UK you can use the Agile tariff from Octopus Energy ([https://octopus.energy/agile/](https://octopus.energy/agile/)) which has half hourly dynamic pricing per electricity kWh. The next 24hrs worth of prices are released each day around 4pm and follow market cost. There's a 12p/kWh surcharge between 4pm and 7pm during peak demand. Used in conjunction with a smart meter it bills per half hour usage and can go negative.

Twice in the last two week's it has gone below zero due to recent storms. It's a great tariff if you have an electric car to charge in the early hours when prices are cheapest and can reduce usage during the peak three hours. A home battery would also help out as it could be charged during cheap periods and discharged when prices are too high.

<comment><USER30> Thank you for that, very very useful and good to see the smart meters with some consumer benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> NPR's Planet Money podcast recently had a relevant episode on Germany's feed- in tariff.

[https://www.npr.org/2020/01/17/797322305/episode-965-das- gre...](https://www.npr.org/2020/01/17/797322305/episode-965-das-green-old- deal)

</comment><comment><USER34> I worked in the Utility Software area for a while. Everything related to energy in Germany looks like corruption if you look to closely.

Everyone is buddies with someone in politics, otherwise screw your career.

Laws are mainly pre written by the industry which is afraid of the risks associated with tackling the challenges involved in climate change. But also afraid of doing nothing, since this would make them clear targets for disruption through voters. So when they do change something it is always in extremely small steps, limited in scope, without changes to the wider system.

While politics give a clear sense of direction regarding renewable energy, the whole thing seems to be to complex for politicians to fully grasp.

<comment><USER35> "Laws are mainly pre written by the industry which is afraid..." That's actually how lots of laws are written. Because when politicians write new laws, they listen to expert opinion. And the best experts come - of course - from the relative industry.

Sometimes this makes sense, and sometimes to inane protection of incumbent interests like happened with digital content (it's illegal to copy the DVD you've purchased etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I recall talking to some europeans and they said they like their driers, which only half dry clothes (they put them up on a line to finish) but use less energy. It's some sort of virtue thing, I guess.

<comment><USER37> Overdrying clothes damages them. Hang-drying clothes increases the clothes' longevity.

<comment><USER36> My collection of 20+ year old T-shirts does not support this hypothesis. my experience has been the agitator in the washer is what causes the most damage.

<comment><USER38> The lint in the lint trap comes from somewhere, and I really doubt that much material is flying off of air dried clothes.

<comment><USER39> Judging by the color of my lint, 99% of it comes off bath towels rather than clothing. At least, with my towels and my clothing.

(My towels are a very distinct shade of red, a color I never wear. The lint is the exact same color.)

<comment><USER40> Lower quality towels have a very loose weave that easily comes apart both in the washing and in the drying. Some of the very worst, in my case Eastern European, towels are so bad that they show near bald spots after just 3 washing cycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why not capture carbon from air with surplus energy? Build few capture plants and buy energy to keep price positive, then sell carbon cerificates on european market.

<comment><USER42> You'd have to do the math, but it might be because the surplus doesn't last long enough to pay for the equipment. Even if the prices were low enough for half the year, this means the equipment sits idle half the time. Most energy surpluses are shorter than that.

<comment><USER41> Yes, probably it would not be making enough money to sustain operation.

But I still think that we (as a world) should start capture carbon actively during this decade. Last summer in Europe was hottest yet and with such hot winter we are for even hotter summer this year. Keeping energy prices up would be just added benefit.

<comment><USER43> For the coming decades it must be far far cheaper to start emitting less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Using electricity to heat buildings should be one of the last steps to take, after almost everything else using energy is renewable. Electricity is a precious form of energy, while heat is primitive. Converting in both directions is not lossless, so you want to keep the precious form.

The author makes it seem like that the negative prices are constant, which is not the case. Germany also does not have 100% renewable energy. Once you have an electric heater at your home, you will be using electric energy generated by burning coal to heat your home.

It also does not solve the problem of the German electricity market, which is mostly that renewable energy is not steady. Power is not distributed evenly across space and time. So you need to store the energy and move it from North to South. But storage and transmission lines are lacking to say the least.

One intermediate strategy you could take, would be to convert abundant electric energy to hydrogen, which you can feed into the already existing natural gas pipes and burn inside the already existing gas heaters, the author is criticizing. This way you would solve both problems (missing network and missing storage) at the same time.

<comment><USER45> I couldn't disagree more.

Electric heating via heat pump is ridiculously efficient and has a much bigger bang for your carbon-reducing buck than anything else a homeowner can do.

<comment><USER46> The issue with heat pumps is you may need far less heat at 15c when their very efficient than at -15c when their not. Couple that with the losses from heat to electricity at power plants and burning natural gas at home is about as efficient on average depending on your area.

So, it really does depend on how cold it gets where you are if it's better to burn fuel at home or at a powerplant.

PS: Solar hot water heaters are generally the best overall option any place heat pumps are actually efficient.

<comment><USER47> "The issue with heat pumps is you may need far less heat at 15c when their very efficient than at -15c when their not."

My home is heated with a heat pump. I live in Canada, and just went through a period of -20C. It works great and is a fraction of the cost of heating with natural gas. It also operates as a fantastic AC in the summer.

It uses a closed loop of water to pipes in the ground, with the ground as the "sink". It is _very_ efficient, and the ground is always 8-10C.

This conversation seems to be dominated, and moderated, by a lot of people who are in the dark, or misunderstand the fundamental physics behind how a heat pump works, or who gatekeep what "electric" means with heating (which is particularly bizarre).

<comment><USER46> The ground ends up close to the average temperature of the local environment which in your case is a long way from -15c. Excluding of course hot springs etc, but that's a separate and very localized solution. Further, if you're that far south a solar hot water heater system is still cheaper to build + operate and in terms of energy costs.

People dealing with permafrost both directly are stuck with lower temperatures and would need to dig much further as your dependent on water exchanging heat with a large thermal mass. That's the tipping point I am talking about, not your balmy 8-10c average temperatures.

<comment><USER48> Only about 35 million people in the entire world are dealing with permafrost.

<comment><USER46> And people in the tropics have little need for heating.

My point is solar hot water heaters are generally the better solution, even if they don't work in the very far north. But, if you're that far north heat pumps also fail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do I understand correctly from the article, that these negative prices are so that the suppliers can still claim their subsidy for supplying you. They are effectively giving you a cut of the subsidy?

<comment><USER49> I believe it's rather about making sure the power gets drawn and it's more about the power from the slow plants, like coal.

Basically:

strong wind -> a lot of wind power -> coal plant can't lower its output -> excess energy -> pay somebody for allowing you to dump your power in their system

But whether you see this as a problem of coal not being able to power down quick enough or wind not being a steady power source is dependent on whether you think CO2 emissions are bad or not.

<comment><USER50> I love the slightly dishonest comments like this one.

Wind power caused the instability but you fault the coal for not being able to compensate for it. What happens when you have 100 wind/solar and too much energy... Who do you fault then?

Coal is bad, obviously. But don't use that fact to scapegoat it so you can ignore the glaring problem with renewables that all electro engineers in Europe are screaming about: critically increasing instability of the grid due to _improper_ rollout of renewables.

<comment><USER49> Where have I been dishonest?

I literally pointed out that the "who is at 'fault'" questions depends on how you frame the problem.

> But whether you see this as a problem of coal not being able to power down > quick enough or wind not being a steady power source is dependent on whether > you think CO2 emissions are bad or not.

What exactly is improper about the current rollout of renewables? The missing storage (batteris, gas)? True! But this would not be a problem if we had gas plants instead of coal, which can turn on and off much quicker. So again, you could frame this as improper rollout of renewables or as coal not being able to handle the new realities of the energy market.

I actually agree with you about the issues we are facing and I see your comment as a very valuable addition to my comment, which simplified the issue too much, losing important detail. I was not trying to be dishonest.

<comment><USER50> Sorry, I was a bit too combatitive.

Anyway, my critique is of the 'if we had gas plants'. But we don't. I see building a wind farm without storage as a similar thing to building a coal plant without a high chimney and filters. Sure, your making energy but your just making everyone deal with your shit while making everything worse.

Renewables are, currently, incompatible with the current grid past a certain percentage of total production. Anything past that point requires a much more responsible approach. Aka storage is to wind what a damn is to hydro.

Now gas can help. But gas isn't storage, it can only help smooth out the bigger disturbances.

But since we're already having issues with storage and we're still just at the 'smooth out instabilities' part... I have no idea how we're going to deal with baseload since no one wants to touch nuclear and we can't build them anyway even if we wanted to.

<comment><USER49> It's cool, and I generally agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'm rather a noob in the topic, but I've been reading in recent months about energy market and it seems like a collective insanity in the light of the climate crisis.

\- In most(whole?) Europe, electricity used by trains is taxed higher than jet fuel used by planes (legacy measure from decades ago which was meant to boost air market; of course now it's hugely difficult to change it)

\- Germany went strongly into renewables which is laudable, but CO2 footprint barely changed, because...

\- Going away from nuclear and into renewables is in theory good, but the open secret is that _you can never reach 100% renewables_. So you need a backup, which is either gas or coal. In fact Germany even recently invested in new coal powered plants.

\- Basically the effect of going away from nuclear is increasing CO2 emissions, and this is the last thing that we want at this time. But even Macron wants to reduce nuclear % in power production of France. Which means more CO2.

Am I missing something or this is total madness?

<comment><USER52> >Am I missing something or this is total madness?

You're not missing anything. This is madness.

Renewables will never be competitive in a market that they dominate because they are intermittent and you can't just turn a city off because it's cloudy and calm.

Nuclear power is the only solution but decades of delusion have made it impossible to build anywhere. In short industrial civilization will be non- viable in the tropics by the 2050s and world wide by the 2100s.

<comment><USER53> It is not delusion, but simple economics what makes it impossible to build new nuclear plants. The Obama administration granted permissions to build new plants, but few people were interested because fracking made gas cheaper - <USER2> even the ones that were built required loan guarantees from the government. The private sector wasn't able to find a solution by itself.

A nuclear power plant requires billions in up front costs, which take a long period of time to recover, a time which can not be calculated reliably because nobody can predict the future and nobody knows how technology may evolve during that time and how will it affect power prices, how future wars will affect supply, how much demand developing nations will bring to the markets, etc. Even if nuclear power is cheap, the margins are not static and betting billions without knowing when you will get them back is not something everyone wants to do.

Nuclear is going to need a lot of government subsidies if it wants to have a renaissance.

<comment><USER54> It wouldn't cost so much or take so long if there hadn't been decades of misguided propaganda and whining about nuclear.

The fact that nuclear is expensive is not an engineering or construction problem. China is building nuclear fast and cheap, right now.

<comment><USER55> And there will never be a nuclear disaster in china. Ah the wonders of progress and dictatorships

<comment><USER56> So, Fukushima disaster could be blamed on Japanese dictatorship?

<comment><USER31> GP is being part sarcastic, part claiming that China would just keep it under wraps. It worked for the Soviets, for three whole days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Subsidies for those who don't pollute seems like such a backwards solution compared to taxing those who do pollute. If you want people to stop dumping trash in your backyard do you think it's saner to punish those who do or to reward everyone else in your neighborhood who gets rid of their trash in other ways?

The atmosphere and its ability to contain a limited amount of carbon is a public good, and we should stop giving away the right to dump stuff in it for free.

</comment><comment><USER10> The households are not heating with electricity, because electricity for household consumers is expensive and not free.

The share of electricity for renewable energy is currently at 42%. There is not a large surplus of electricity from renewable energy for heating.

</comment><comment><USER58> I've not checked this particular occurrence yet, so it's possible there's good news, but I've never found one of these "renewables cause negative prices" stories yet where the system was actually running on 100% renewable.

Usually there's some coal or gas supply that decides for whatever reason to not turn itself off. Often because ramp downs and then up again will cost them more than the negative price.

So it's all geeky accounting, but basically non renewables are being fined so they make slightly less money overall if they aren't flexible to demand.

</comment><comment><USER59> Jean Marc Jancovici is a french energy expert, and he often talks about Germany.

An important story to remember about Germany, is how Fukushima led the country to stop using nuclear power. Merkel has a PhD in physics, so naturally she understands that nuclear power is green and just better than renewable and coal.

But after Fukushima, she was forced to stop nuclear plants, because as Jancovici argued, she is an "assermented executor": if all germans want to stop nuclear energy, then there's nothing to do.

<comment><USER60> > nuclear power is green and just better than renewable and coal

How do you arrive at that conclusion? Better in what regard?

AFAIK nuclear power has all sorts of problems, the main one being that nobody knows what to do about the waste. Building nuclear power plants isn't exactly carbon emission free either.

<comment><USER59> The waste is a non-problem, especially when you compare with co2 over decades.

Nuclear energy emits less co2 than renewables: it requires less metals (especially if you store electricity with batteries or other means), and renewables are not baseload energies, meaning you need to burn either coal or gas when there's no sun or wind.

Wind mills require a lot of metals, and installing them is complicated. Solar panels require mining elements, and solar panels degrade over time.

Nuclear energy is green. It's time to say it.

<comment><USER61> Just tell this to the people in Fukushima and Tschernobyl.

Also you worded it like you don't need mining to produce nuclear energy, it's not complicated to handle and reactors don't fall apart over time.

<comment><USER59> As it was answered above in another comment, there are far more deaths caused by coal (particles, radioactivity of coal fumes). Stop the nuclear fear- mongering.

You need less mining for uranium.

Reactors have a huge lifespan. They're cheap and clean when considering the energy they bring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Do German households even have smart meters? To me this is the most important thing in a renewable world. I'd imagine the wholesale market electricity was free but consumers pay a fixed charge that doesn't change even on windy days. The most important thing is changing people's behaviour on the peak cold windless cloudy days when the market price is high people shouldn't be washing clothes or ironing or using electric heating.

<comment><USER63> If I understand this article correctly: The 2016 law to install smart meters came into effect Feb/2020\. Well for those households over 6000 kWh. It's expected that 10% of households will have those within 3 years. [https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intelligente- Stromza...](https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Intelligente-Stromzaehler- Startschuss-fuer-verpflichtenden-Smart-Meter-Einbau-4651422.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> The wording of the current title is unnecessarily insulting. The point of the article is that Germans don't _use electricity_ to heat their homes because the weird economics plus possibly some sunk costs favor natural gas or oil. Germans aren't sitting around in the cold winters wearing parkas and shaking their thrifty fists at the powers that be.

</comment><comment><USER65> "Only turbines built in 2016 or later take even a small hit to their revenues if prices go below zero, and more than 75 % of the production capacity was built before that."

That seems like a recipe for folks just building endlessly regardless of demand, pulling money from government... and an eventual mess when you fix it and nobody is making money suddenly...

<comment><USER10> > building endlessly regardless of demand, pulling money from government

But that's not what happens. Germany has a tight control over how much is build every year. Actually there are lots of complaints that currently Germany builds not enough renewable energy capacity per year.

<comment><USER65> Very weird... drive the market into a very non market and price to 0...but still manage it the other way.

<comment><USER10> The market currently has some weird effects, but the 0 price you mention is not the price of electricity on the market. It is the price on the spot market in some days or hours. The whole market is larger than short-term traded electricity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Can somebody explain why electricity rates would go negative? That blows my mind.

Edit: also why don't they just mine some coins?

<comment><USER67> While subsidies are one cause, another cause is demand response problems:

Imagine you have a greenhouse factory producing strawberries. The strawberries come out of the factory on a conveyor belt. Now, you can't just turn off this factory easily since it might take a week to get it up running again and you don't have any storage, so what happens when nobody wants your strawberries for a day?

You pay someone to take them.

And yes, it happens to physical products too, e.g. household electronics - <USER3> need to pay someone to scrap them.

<comment><USER68> A better example would be plastic production. In an emergency stop, factories need to change several pipes because the plastic solidified inside. Stopping production properly takes days, and even then, resuming it also takes days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> TL; DR: crazy taxes based off quantity rather than price make electricity cost 200 €/MWh even when the base cost is free, whereas natural gas is taxed lightly, making it cheaper to the consumer.

</comment><comment><USER70> Hooray for the energy market being disrupted. It's a sign of the success of government subsidies to renewable power. Obviously adjustments are required as the disruption proceeds. Hopefully governments and private concerns in Europe can cooperate to make workable new rules and tariffs. I'm not so hopeful in the US because our federal government is the servant of big oil.

Here in Massachusetts USA I pay USD0.24 per kWh delivered to my home (generation + transmission + distribution + taxes). Our energy markets are generally mired in 19th-century ways of measuring, so it's harder to tell what natural gas costs (what is a therm???) But I believe it's about USD0.08 per kWh.

I've just signed up for "community solar." A developer is building a PV farm (in the median strip of a large highway, I believe). It will save me on generation costs, but not transmission or distribution, so my rate will fall to about USD0.18 I believe.

Here we have high generation costs partly because Hydro Quebec drove a hard long-term bargain ("take-or-pay" they call it) with our electric company long ago. Towns with municipal power usually pay less because they're not stuck with Hydro Quebec, but sometimes pay more.

I could go on and on, but here's the thing. It's expensive for generators to participate in long-distance grids. Why? If their AC frequency drifts even a tiny amount, the grid must disconnect. How can companies maintain the AC frequency under heavy load?

1\. expensive and filthy peak-load generators (diesel-powered often) spinning ready to take load.

2\. big batteries. Telsa and some Australian government utilities have had great success with this.

3\. excess renewable capacity. But at times of heavy demand there isn't any.

4\. SMART DISTRIBUTION: the ability to quickly and selectively shed load temporarily. Space- and water- heating are perfect applications for this. So is battery charging for transportation.

We aren't nearly done with the disruption yet. Now it starts to get interesting. Electricity companies are in the information business; they just don't know it yet.

</comment><comment><USER71> Interesting, I live in Denmark, and we pay a premium for electricity.. Average consumer price is 0,33 USD per KW/h, almost three times the US average.

<comment><USER72> We use the most expensive power provider in Germany (Greenpeace Energy) and it's also 0,33 USD per KW/h.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> So would it be a legit business model to just run a 1billion gigawatt heater to profit from those negative rates?

<comment><USER74> Run a Bitcoin miner, and you can double-dip.

<comment><USER73> Genius...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I don't heat because I want it cold. It's hot enough in summer, in winter it's finally cool.

<comment><USER76> There was an article I read on that solar powered website that's been shared on HN a few times that changed by view on heating.

[https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people- not...](https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/02/heating-people-not- spaces.html)

Basically, just wear a sweater and long pants in the house in the winter so you don't have to heat it so much. And if you need to, put a heat source near you, but there's no need to heat the whole house.

<comment><USER77> Hypothesis I would like to test one day - does the increase in calories (and therefore additional energy used to produce food) to heat your body offset the energy saved by reduced heating. Start by assuming person living alone.

Then could take it a step further increase number of people and take into account the body heat of each person (people produce alot of heat + water)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Something something mine bitcoin?

<comment><USER79> Cryto-mining with excess energy is only effective when you have excess computing power too. Maybe a gamer with a GPU could get the opportunity to use all the excess resources for a little bit of profit, but the payoff rate for buying a GPU needs 24/7 mining to even make a profit over a year.

<comment><USER78> That's the case even when electricity is free?

<comment><USER79> It's not always free. What's the prices when it's not free? Do you just take a bath on profitability every time you have to pay higher prices when there is demand? Do you not mine when it's not free?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> "And here lies the final problem. Germany taxes natural gas very lightly. "

Cannot cut into the action of Putin and Gazprom Schroeder.

[We can bet that this entirely correct comment will be deleted by the censors.]

</comment><comment><USER81> Tradition! Tradition!

</comment><comment><USER82> First, they killed nuclear, which prompted more coal production. Now they skewed wind so much that burning gas is cheaper than using green energy.

It seems no matter what Germany does, it only promotes fossil fuel usage. Quite opposite of what they wanted...

<comment><USER83> What I don't get is how renewable energy are supposed to be cheaper though they still need massive subsidies.

<comment><USER84> Subsidize it until the cost per unit is cheaper than fossil fuels due to economies of scale, then the subsidies are no longer necessary

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is why identifying unintended consequences beforehand is so important.

"We want green energy -- let's subsidize green energy by taxing electricity."

Seems fair enough... fast forward several years and:

1\. People burn fossil fuels for heating because electricity is too expensive, increasing their carbon footprint.

2\. Poorer people in apartments and cities pay out the nose to fund rebates to wealthier suburban homeowners with solar roofs.</comment>


How We Killed Expertise (And why we need it back.) (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/05/how-we-killed-expertise-215531 <comment><USER2> This is a rant but still worth the read. It's about a general distain for expertise, not just, say, in the government.

FWIW this is also why I oppose term limits for politicians+: the officeholders aren't around long enough to build up expertise in how their job works (i.e. legislative chamber, A-G etc), making lobbyists more powerful.

+: I would make an exception for executional jobs that are supposed to set an agenda, such as US president or corporate CEO</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't wildfires be stopped small? - <AUTHOR> hy can't this be implemented immediately: Detect a wildfire / bushfire almost as soon as the first sparks occur. My understanding is that satellites that can do this are already in place. It should not be too difficult to apply this available realtime data to stopping fires very quickly after they are detected, while they are very small. Automatically generate alerts and trigger launch of firefighting helicopters / drones to douse within a few minutes of detection ... Use chemical fire-stopping bombs to kill every wildfire while it is still very small AI to predict rate and direction of expansion of fire based on weather-station data [ambient temperatures, humidity, wind speed and direction, and realtime satellite thermographic analysis - to predict rate and direction of fire growth). <comment><USER2> One question I have about your idea is how small is small ?

If your detection threshold is too low you'll be dispatching drones to people's campfires or grills. If it's much larger than that the fire will be too big for any drones that currently exist and/or are approved for use in the airspace to extinguish.

There's also the issue of how quickly a fire can spread. Unless you have a very dense network of firefighting assets ready to deploy at a moment's notice the fire may be too big for them to put out by the time they arrive at the scene.

<comment><AUTHOR> They should have banned campfires and open grill cooking in known fire-prone areas, during fire-risk seasons. System design WILL require determination of 1] Smallest satellite-detectable fire sizes; 2] Size of fire-stopper bombs needed for various fire sizes; 3] system processing times for fire location, size, direction detection; 4] system response time to launch firefighting drone/s; 5] drone travel time. ... These delays can be estimated right now, and then established empirically in a short time. ... Fire-prone areas are probably known already. These system response time estimates, verified by trials, will determine how many drones / drone-stations will be needed

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> High wind speeds can make it spread over acres in minutes - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_(2018)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Fire_\(2018\))

Also air units had to wait around till sunrise.

</comment><comment><USER4> Example for wildfire detection using ML [https://samsammurphy.users.earthengine.app/view/hotmap](https://samsammurphy.users.earthengine.app/view/hotmap) by [https://twitter.com/samsammurphy](https://twitter.com/samsammurphy) His startup is [http://www.earthscope.io/](http://www.earthscope.io/)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is done since 80 years. People doing that are called [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokejumper](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokejumper)

Of course it would be nice to have robots doing the job, being faster, stronger and more fire proof then humans.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would have to be done by an automated drone firefighting systems. ... Wildfires cannot wait for offices to open</comment></comment>


Show HN: 'Scriptura' – A material design inspired, simple Bible app for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.only5c.bible <comment><USER2> awesome :)</comment>