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Comment by dr_faustus | Hacker News Reader

I really don't understand the doom and gloom wrt next year. What was obviously completely underestimated was the elasticity of consumer demand for gas. In Germany, consumers are using 25% less gas even if you account for the weather.

So with increased supply from Netherlands and Norway, even a limited amount of LNG will probably be enough to fill the storage again and compensate the missing Russian gas (which accounted for about 40% of the German gas supply.

We, too, have not switched on the gas based heating yet. Instead, we are using a mix of wood and infrared electrical heaters to keep the rooms at a bearable (albeit not overly comfortable) 19 degrees celsius.

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> What was obviously completely underestimated was the elasticity of consumer demand for gas

I don't think it was evident that individuals and businesses would be willing to make some of these changes they have. For example, German companies are planning on shutting down factories for the winter. Cities are planning on ending night lighting.

In addition, winter so far has been fairly warm. It may still turn cold, so Europe isn't out of the woods yet.

Finally, the increase in the LNG supply was achieved incredibly fast. If someone had predicted Europe would have the LNG supply they do today at the beginning of the war they would have been dismissed as a utopist.

> In addition, winter so far has been fairly warm.

It's Autumn. Winter starts on the 21st Dec.

October in most of the Europe is not that much of a heating season, November will make us start digging into the gas we prepared. It's way too early for early to judge how easy it'll be.

> Winter starts on the 21st Dec.

21 December is Midwinter Solstice...

By orbital mechanics, winter starts around 10 November.

Nope.

This year, astronomical winter begins on 21 December 2022 and ends on 20 March 2023.

Meteorological winter begins on 1 December.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/sea...

Irish winter starts the day after Halloween https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_calendar

      Now is the winter of our discontent
      Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
      And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
      In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.[1]

[1] Shakespeare, William, Richard III, 1.1.1-4

That's true but I think the normal reaction is when it feels cold to turn up the heater and not waste a thought about getting wool blankets to sleep for instance. Also I never used indoor thermometers until very recently.

> Winter starts on the 21st Dec.

Or on Nov 10, or on Dec 1 depending on how you count.

> If someone had predicted Europe would have the LNG supply they do today at the beginning of the war they would have been dismissed as a utopist.

Not really. It was always a matter of cost. Losing 30% of gas supply is no laughing matter - and the shock will naturally push governments to willingness to pay above premium prices to stabilize supply.

Europe can't just "pay above premium prices" to replace Russian gas. It would have been physically impossible to replace the Russian gas (and it still is physically impossible to fully replace Russian gas within 2022) without creating a tremendous amount of infrastructure around getting LNG, which European countries have been incredibly successful at doing so.

The progress they've made in creating that infrastructure is beyond what basically anyone would have predicted at the start of the war.

Replacing gas also means taking it from someone else and, hence, disturbing poor countries.

> a bearable (albeit not overly comfortable) 19 degrees celsius

Interesting to see what temp other people keep their homes at. Our normal indoor temp is 19 and I sometimes find that too warm.

Temperature isn't the full story, what you really want is the combination of temperature and humidity, i.e. the heat index.

Temperature pretty much is the full story indoors. If you live in an area with 80%+ humidity outdoors, you make sure that isn't true indoors.

I like mine at 23-24 in the winter, although the 'default' in the US is usually 20-22

I would generally want 21 or 22.

> We, too, have not switched on the gas based heating yet. Instead, we are using a mix of wood and infrared electrical heaters

In the event that your electric power is derived from gas, you've shifted the burden elsewhere and actually increased overall gas consumption, since using gas to warm your home directly would be more efficient.

Not if the electric heaters aren't producing the same amount of heat. The comment suggested they've reduced heat consumption.

With the current weather, most electricity during the day is generated by wind and solar. So, thats not that much of a concern.

Producing that amount of heat with gas would still be better than using electricity.

Infrared heaters are just resistive heaters with reflectors to redirect the radiation to where it's needed. You can aim one at yourself while you're working to remain comfortable even when the rest of the room is cold. This can sometimes be cheaper than running a heat pump to heat the whole room.

You might think it's impossible to beat a modern 98% efficient gas furnace, but electric heat pumps can have effective efficiencies greater than 100%. (sometimes 200% or 300%!) They can do this because they "steal" heat energy from outside (yes, even in the cold winter air)

Moving heat is always cheaper than creating it.

Also, gas furnaces get those 99+% efficiencies only at input=output (ie no heating) temperature. Most radiators require a water temperature well north of 50C to emit the power required, and for decades gas furnaces were thus set to default output temperatures of 70-80C. At that point, the maximum thermodynamic efficiency (which is a curve as function of temperature differential, with the optimum at Tdiff=0, ie no technical improvements are going to improve this) is more like 70-80%. Actually, a cheap way to get a ~10% gas bill reduction is to change the output temp to 50C (if yours runs at 70+) and see if your radiators still can emit enough heat to reach your desired room temperature.

Long term, heat pumps are the only sane choice. Burning gas in a plant and running a heat pump off its electricity is more efficient that burning it yourself. In fact, as of next year (or was is 2024?) any gas furnace must be replace with at minimum a hybrid heat pump here in the Netherlands.

Yes, but if the electricity is made from gas, then 300% efficiency of heat pump is better than 98% efficient heat furnace only if generation efficiency is at least 33%.

Heat pumps are pretty great, but as of today, they are by no means necessarily more efficient than burning gas directly for heat, at least when it comes to GHG emissions. In fact, in very cold climates where air temperature is below freezing most of the time, air-source heat pumps are highly unlikely to be more efficient than just burning gas, unless we move wholesale to nuclear for electricity (solar won’t help you during winter, and wind is too fickle to solely depend on).

> only if generation efficiency is at least 33%.

the efficiency of a combined cycle gas generator is usually 50-60%.

Then it depends on what portion of the electricity mix is CCG instead of simple gas turbines or coal, what’s the actual efficiency of heat pump (you won’t get 300% when it’s subzero temperature) etc. Point is, air source heat pumps are really not much, or even necessarily at all more efficient than just burning gas directly at home, it all depends.

at >50% efficiency, the heat pump heat factor has to drop below 2. On a modern heat pump that's about -25C or so. I don't think it gets that cold in Germany.

If they were heating the same area, then they'd have probably replaced their furnace. Europeans have been buying record numbers of air to air heat pumps this year. Even with transmission and conversion losses, their coefficient of power is high enough to use less natural gas than directly burning it would.

Depends on the generation method. If OP's using solar panels, it's a net positive. If their power is largely generated by nuclear or hydro, also a net positive.

If it's generated by fossil fuels, agreed.

In practice, electrical heating is is often spot heating in one room or even aimed directly at a person - a niche that isn't really served by indoor gas-fueled heating appliances.

I think you’re basically right, but just noting that winter hasn’t started yet and climate change has blessed Europe with an unseasonably warm October.

I imagine you'd be using gas if you were paid to use it. Sadly market prices in the consumers favor seems to rarely make it to actual consumers.

At least in the Netherlands you can get a energy contract with dynamic pricing, where you pay the actual market price (plus tax) at time of use. When energy prices go negative, you'll also get paid.

However, this is a knife that cuts both ways: if the energy market prices rise sharply, you'll also immediately have to pay higher prices and don't benefit from the contracting ahead-of-time and averaging that regular energy companies do. I've spoken to people with such a contract whose energy bills went up by >100x this year, compared to last year.

Seems incredibly risky to take without any storage tanks!

The doom and gloom makes more sense when considering who benefits from pushing that narrative.

If by consumer you mean only residential households then yes I agree. But if you enjoy consuming the products of or enjoy the benefits from the many wonders of German industry and manufacturing then underestimate no more.

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