Commitment to heat pumps was a prime factor in taking down the Texas grid during the recent cold snap. Heat pumps don't work when the outdoor ambient drops below freezing. So they switch automatically to resistance coils, which draw far more current. Overloading the grid and taking it down.
Shutting down the ONLY viable option to fossil fuels, i.e. nuclear, is so monumentally stupid that I can't even. . . . . .
Hasta la vista Krauts
Conservatives think ahead, and make careful plans. Liberals do what feels good at the moment, consequences be damned.
This applies to the United States, to Germany...to wherever liberals are in power.
And Putin giggles because of Germany’s stupidoty.
Before saying such a thing Americans should look in the mirror... who is in charge here right now? Look at both houses of Congress, the Presidency, and our faux conservative Supreme Court. And this ongoing Covid nonsense! What a mess!
Just for curiosity’s sake, from where will all the required electricity come from?
Catastrophe will befall the politicians who believe the people will allow them to get away with this.
https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/keep-warm-this-winter-inverter-technology-for-any-climate
The Germans....so many of whom are brilliant individually are collectively some of the biggest morons on the planet.
They’ve always been that way.
One of their current fads is Gaia Worship. As always, they are so devoted to their completely irrational ideology that they’re prepared to march off a cliff because the dogma tells them to. Nothing short of freezing in the darkness for an extended period of time...and I mean EXTENDED....will make them even START to wise up.
P.S. My family is of German origin and I grew up with the language and I’ve lived there twice. I know these guys and can recognize their idiocy. Trust me.
Mitsubishi has heat pumps that not only work down to negative 5F they have a COP above 1 that low as well. These same units will stay in primary mode down to negative 13F at which point the COP drops below one and they switch to secondary heating. This means that until negative 13F this heat pump is more efficient than gas or resistive electrics. It’s a function of physics no amount of political BS can.change the second law of thermodynamics heat pumps will always be more efficient than gas which is a first law combustion process ALWAYS. You cannot avoid the loss of energy from the HHV to LHV due to Carnot. Welcome to the 21st century but luddites gonna be luddites. Ground source heat pumps are the most efficient on the planet bar none as the ground world wide is an avg of 55 degrees below the frost line year round.
https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/keep-warm-this-winter-inverter-technology-for-any-climate
The answer is: (drum roll...) Russian gas.
Clean, safe, reliable supplier. /S
Wait until Russia turns off their gas in response to the invasion of Ukraine and subsequent US Sanctions.
Its going to get cold in Germany. Really fast.
“Germans seem to have an uncanny ability to be led by the nose by fools and tyrants. And they never learn”
It’s in their DNA - seriously.
They love authority and following orders. They’re easily led.
Heat pumps don’t work when the outdoor ambient drops below freezing. So, they switch automatically to resistance coils, which draw far more current. Overloading the grid and taking it down.
The question I have is why heat pumps don’t work when ambient temps drop below freezing as you suggested. The ground below ten feet is usually always around 75 F. So, as long as you have electricity to keep the circulating pump going things should be OK. Of course, if electricity fails you may have problems. Here in Illinois, we have many heat pump installations, and they work just fine summer and winter. I appreciate if you can enlighten me.
There will soon be a lot of German popsicles; hypothermia is just around the corner.
I’m in the power industry in Texas I deal with ERCOT on a regular basis. First off Texas grid failed due to 40,000+ megawatts of thermal generation tripping off line due to the record cold. We told ERCOT in 2008 and again in 2011 to.mandate the winterization of generation units. We also told them to winterize the natural gas grid they ignored both. The freeze froze solid the wellheads and surface run HDPE gas gather lines which we told them to bury below the frost line years ago. Texas does not keep natural gas in salt storage domes the gas in the grid is coming directly from the wellness through the clean up plant and pumped to pipeline pressures directly. Those pumps used to be run by the gas they moved the EPA mandated NOx scrubbers on all the engines this means SCR cats and DEF fluid injections. Most of the compressors are so remote that the weekly maintenance is cost prohibitive so the pumps were switched to grid electricity. When the grid started to trip off due to plants freezing equipment from lack of winterizing it a cascading failure mode started. ERCOT and the PUC only forecast at most 10,000 megawatts from renewables during this period and wind still put up 4000 to 6000 of the expected amount contrary to what uniformed and people not even remotely in the industry screamed wind was not the cause AT ALL it was the thermal plants all 40,000 megawatts of them that brought the grid down. A nuclear reactor with 1350 megawatts went down for two days due to its cooling inlet lines sensors freezing solid as did a host of gas turbines which still had access to gas but could not run due to frozen sensors. Texas lost 50% of its gas grid capacity the first night and it went up from there due to frozen surface lines,frozen gas separator towers and compressors run off the grid which collapsed due to lack of gas. Wind actually kept the.lights on to the tune of 4000 to 6000 megawatts of additional energy while the gas grid was crippled. Had ERCOT and the RRC/PUC listened to the industry professionals in 2008&2011 the gas grid and thermal plants would have stayed online with 40,000+ megawatts for the grid there would have been not a single blackout as that 40,000 would have more than covered the record demands at the time. I have real time access to ERCOT and the generation pool. I watched in horror as the grid frequency dropped to 59.2 hz as thermal plant after thermal plant tripped out the call went out at $9000 mwh the max allowed by law for any and every generator to operate at peak power. At those rates everyone who could generate did the economics as so strong you could have burnt diesel at $200 a bbl and turned a profit. There simply wasn’t enough gas in the grid to run the turbines what little there was was reserved by law for residential heating use. Abbot signed 11 laws since February to address the gas grid collapse and reign in ERCOT profit ability. At 59.2 hz Texas came within four minutes of total grid collapse and a black start event. Which would have taken month’s to bring the grid back up. Texas has 17 black start capable plants 13 of them were frozen and off line that February the other 4 were gas turbines or gas piston engines with no on-site back up fuels with the gas grid down they would have been useless Texas would have been dark for at least a month if not 6 in some places. Not a single nuclear power plant has black start in Texas in fact of the grid goes down they scram and then use back up diesels to keep them from melting down their steam turbines are not locally excited they must have grid power for the rotor excition, same for the few growing large thermal coal, and every large gas turbines. The black start plants have large diesels on site that power up brushed AC generators the old school way at 1800 rpm to generate a 60hz sinewave which is feed to the gas turbine rotors and brought online one by one synced off a single black start generator this signal must then be sent down dedicated powerlines to the next plant who uses it to.sync and power it’s rotors then it sends it down the line to the next its a long and detailed process that takes days to do in ideal circumstances it would have been weeks to get the grid back up at best month’s is more realistic.
Germany’s reaction to just about everything is catastrophic.
Everything comes around full circle. This circle will usher in a new stone age.
Heat pumps suck and I live in coastal NC. We replaced one unit with gas heat.
Ant imagine living in Northern Europe and trying to heat with the pumps.
Be difficult to start the Fourth Reich with solar power.