
Why Germans won’t heat their homes even with free electricity? - ericdanielski
https://kaikenhuippu.com/2020/02/18/why-germans-wont-heat-their-homes-even-with-free-electricity/
======
probably_wrong
> _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.

~~~
marcosscriven
We called it storm Ciara in the UK. I wonder why we don’t unify names.

~~~
louthy
I wonder why we even name storms in the first place. All it does is feed the
24 hour news monster

~~~
feintruled
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.

~~~
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.

------
diffeomorphism
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.

~~~
marcus_holmes
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.

~~~
lispm
> 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.

~~~
marcus_holmes
>> 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)

~~~
atoav
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.

------
mrweasel
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.

~~~
trenchgun
I don't get it. Why would they pay CO2 tariff for heating with wind powered
electricity?

~~~
mrweasel
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.

------
jillesvangurp
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.

~~~
systemtest
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.

~~~
dgacmu
Heating with an electric heat pump is quite efficient in most environments.
Electric resistance heat is inefficient.

~~~
systemtest
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.

~~~
Throwaway984332
"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.

~~~
wrp
_> 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)

------
rini17
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.

~~~
nickysielicki
That’s crazy. I use Griddy in Texas and my price has been generally below
$0.02c/kWh the past two months.

~~~
scbrg
"$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 :-)

~~~
mtrower
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

------
csomar
Title is not really accurate: 1. Electricity is not free in Germany, it's
actually expensive; and 2. Germans do heat their homes.

~~~
squiggleblaz
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.

~~~
Tepix
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.

~~~
squiggleblaz
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.

~~~
lispm
> 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.

------
gambiting
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.

~~~
webignition
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.

~~~
gambiting
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.

------
Scoundreller
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.

~~~
lnsp
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.

~~~
Scoundreller
Possibly true, but I have a doubt that their local D&T rates in that area
reflect that.

------
Zenst
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.

~~~
usrusr
> 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.

~~~
slashdotdash
> 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.

~~~
Zenst
Thank you for that, very very useful and good to see the smart meters with
some consumer benefits.

------
dacohenii
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)

------
Radle
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.

~~~
fsloth
"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).

------
dekhn
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.

~~~
shazow
Overdrying clothes damages them. Hang-drying clothes increases the clothes'
longevity.

~~~
dekhn
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.

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

~~~
catalogia
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.)

~~~
PeterStuer
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.

------
tau255
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.

~~~
skybrian
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.

~~~
tau255
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.

~~~
Scarblac
For the coming decades it must be far far cheaper to start emitting less.

------
allendoerfer
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.

~~~
nostromo
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.

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
endorphone
"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).

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
Marsymars
Only about 35 million people in the entire world are dealing with permafrost.

~~~
Retric
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.

------
marcosscriven
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?

~~~
turbinerneiter
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.

~~~
sputr
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.

~~~
turbinerneiter
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.

~~~
sputr
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.

~~~
turbinerneiter
It's cool, and I generally agree.

------
jakub_g
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?

~~~
buzzkillington
>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.

~~~
diegocg
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 - but
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.

~~~
hurricanetc
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.

~~~
number6
And there will never be a nuclear disaster in china. Ah the wonders of
progress and dictatorships

~~~
anticodon
So, Fukushima disaster could be blamed on Japanese dictatorship?

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

------
m12k
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.

------
lispm
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.

------
ZeroGravitas
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.

------
jokoon
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.

~~~
flo123456
> 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.

~~~
jokoon
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.

~~~
rmetzler
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.

~~~
jokoon
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.

------
rb808
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.

~~~
mtmail
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)

------
cardiffspaceman
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.

------
duxup
"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...

~~~
lispm
> 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.

~~~
duxup
Very weird... drive the market into a very non market and price to 0...but
still manage it the other way.

~~~
lispm
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.

------
somerandomness
Can somebody explain why electricity rates would go negative? That blows my
mind.

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

~~~
olau
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 - you
need to pay someone to scrap them.

~~~
victorNicollet
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.

------
kazinator
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.

------
OliverJones
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.

------
dusted
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.

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

------
epicgiga
So would it be a legit business model to just run a 1billion gigawatt heater
to profit from those negative rates?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Run a Bitcoin miner, and you can double-dip.

~~~
epicgiga
Genius...

------
fishmaster
I don't heat because I want it cold. It's hot enough in summer, in winter it's
finally cool.

~~~
devmunchies
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.

~~~
docflabby
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)

------
pazimzadeh
Something something mine bitcoin?

~~~
undersuit
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.

~~~
pazimzadeh
That's the case even when electricity is free?

~~~
undersuit
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?

------
xab19920
"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.]

------
binichgross
Tradition! Tradition!

------
omgtehlion
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...

~~~
cm2187
What I don't get is how renewable energy are supposed to be cheaper though
they still need massive subsidies.

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

------
nostromo
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.

