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Comment by Arn_Thor | Hacker News Reader

It is a problem, if not a very big one right now. With the climate changing, expect Europe to build out more air conditioning to cope with hotter summers, raising power usage. Dismissing this very real operational problem for the power plants is unwise.

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Air conditioning is consuming much less electricity than heating, there's no scenario where it would become greater than the winter usage. And there's only a few reactors affected by this issue, you have this kind of clickbait article every year.

Doesn't have to be greater than winter usage to be problematic. All it takes is several unfortunate events occurring at the same time—the kind of curve ball father time likes to throw occasionally. Say, extra hot weather, little wind which leaves wind power lacking, a few gas power plants out for technical reasons or supply shortage and then throw in baseload nuclear power plants short on water.. Unlikely? Yes, but unlikely events occur all the time. And for something essential as electricity..such a risk should be taken seriously, not dismissed out of hand as a "non-problem"

Well, right now there is extra hot weather, little wind, little installed solar power in France (and reduced solar power output because of the heat) and no problem at all either. There is a lot of spare gas capacity, the gas plants are mostly unused right now, and the nuclear plants are more than able to cope with the power demand, as less than 60% of installed capacity is needed now.

There is really no reason to think there is, or could be any problem in summer in the foreseeable future, since we are already in a worst case situation (highest temperatures ever recorded, basically no renewables used, nuclear as almost the only source of electricity at the moment) that is not problematic.

Agree on most things except on the worst case scenario being constant with time. We should expect things to get worse and plan accordingly.

> Air conditioning is consuming much less electricity than heating, there's no scenario where it would become greater than the winter usage.

How about "most people aren't using electricity for heating"? People rarely heat their houses with electricity in Europe, that would be very expensive. It's usually gas or oil boiler, sometimes a coal one.

You have about 50% share of electricity heating in France, it's far from nothing.

Edit: And coal heating is probably close to zero to be honest, that sounds old, even for the countryside. The rest of those 50% would be gas, petrol and wood.

I am so jealous. Here in Kazakhstan we use coal-powered central heating. And here is the kind of air it gives us:

https://b.radikal.ru/b12/1902/bd/a6d615dba25b.jpg

https://d.radikal.ru/d15/1901/1b/ea0e8c26f8d2.jpg

It gets much worse in the evening.

These photos were taken in Almaty, but the situation is the same everywhere (if not worse).

At first I wanted to post this particular photo, but couldn't find it, and now I can't edit the original comment.

https://d.radikal.ru/d17/1812/fd/ed5cc5dcd4c4.jpg

Those pictures look awful, I hope it will improve in the future :/

This is very location dependent. Some nations are almost entirely warming their homes with electricity.

The problem is two-fold: maintenance scheduled in the summer when the demand is “usually” lower. And stations operating with a river for cooling, where they have severe restrictions on many parameters, including maximum output temperature, which the river itself now goes over during a heatwave, so they need to shut down. It is a paradoxical situation in which the combination of our use of fossil fuels worldwide and inadequate legislation bars us from using a decarbonized energy source.

Most offices are already airconned in Europe. There might still be a bit of market expansion in private homes, but probably not that much - due to cost and urban landscape (old houses that are hard to retrofit for aircon). The landscape is also variegated enough that one can get relief from oppressive heating with little effort (going to seashore/lakeshore/hills).

Also note that PV efficiency goes down with heat, so I fully agree with you that excessive AC reliance is a very real concern. Insulating buildings should be a big priority.

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