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Comment by mperham | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

    Moreover, the country did not simply get lucky with particularly mild winter temperatures, as often alleged. The average winter temperature in the 2022/23 winter of 2.9°C was actually slightly colder than the average temperature over the four previous winters.

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It's possible to have a lower mean temperature and still use less total heat. Stats, right? E.g. if the temperature is warmer at night.

Unless there's some non-linear interactions that I'm unaware of, it seems like the mean temp is the only thing you'd need to know wrt how much energy you need to use to keep it roughly at some other temp thru the season

Heat loss is linear.

Resistance heating is linear. Furnaces using slightly colder outside air are just a tiny bit less efficient, but it’s really close to linear. Heat pumps are non linear and do use electricity from natural gas.

So if I understand you, the only non-linear effect in play is that Heat Pumps are MORE efficient when the temperature differential is higher, is that correct?

Heat pumps are LESS efficient when the temperature differential is higher.

https://learnmetrics.com/heat-pump-efficiency-vs-temperature...

IDK, extremes matter. -5 to +7 has the same average as -20 to +22, but the effects on energy use are widely different (e.g. the former may command a little heating for some time; the latter will command both extreme heating and possibly also cooling).

It's the same as with climate talk in general. "Ooh, the average yearly temperature only rose this much, or even fell down relative to 5/10/20 years ago." - sure, but if the range of temperatures keeps growing, you can end up with both a nice average falling year over year, and uninhabitable land due to all useful vegetation freezing up or drying up.

> the latter will command both extreme heating and possibly also cooling

I fully disagree with your use of "extreme" here, you have no evidence for that. Homes naturally have insulation which would mean the +22 temperatures would heat them, and some of that leftover heat would therefore reduce the need for heating. Indeed, it seems likely to me that the rate of heat leach would keep both these situations identical except for the fact you managed to inject "also using AC" in here like anyone ever does that.

Quite a weak argument.

The overall climate of our planet has nothing to do with the energy cost to heat a home.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/03/09/climate-change-eur...

Not sure how the second warmest winters ever recorded can be cooler than the average of the next 4 warmest winters.

The paper is specific to Germany, and your linked article reported statistics about Europe. Apples to oranges.

There isn't a German expedition energy market, there is a European one.

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