power prices in europe

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster

Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?



--

Father Brown's figure remained quite dark and still;
but in that instant he had lost his head. His head was
always most valuable when he had lost it.

[Cydrome Leader]

jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
>
> Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?

Well, it was real smart of the germans to drop nuclear and switch back to
coal. Maybe they got a deal on power plants and strip mining equipment
from the chinese.

Like they always say, it's cold winter in europe without russian gas.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

I got the impression that a lot of domestic heating in the UK is
electric, probably resistive. We get most of our heat here from NG.

[Martin Brown]

On 14/09/2021 16:33, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 15:14:59 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
> <pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:
>
>> jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>> https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
>>>
>>> Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?
>>
>> Well, it was real smart of the germans to drop nuclear and switch back to
>> coal. Maybe they got a deal on power plants and strip mining equipment
>>from the chinese.
>>
>> Like they always say, it's cold winter in europe without russian gas.
>
> I got the impression that a lot of domestic heating in the UK is
> electric, probably resistive. We get most of our heat here from NG.

No. Not in the UK. Most of it (space heating) is by mains gas or where
that isn't available like in my village domestic heating oil aka 12s
kerosene. There is a "plan" to convert everyone to electric heating and
electric vehicles to use up all that spare electricity we don't have.

We can heat my home by oil, solid fuel or electricity as a last resort.
The first two can operate with or without a mains electricity supply -
we do sometimes lose power in the worst winter storms so it pays to have
multiple heat sources. Winter oil deliveries can get disrupted too.

Most modern build are completely stuffed if they lose mains electricity.
Gas and oil boilers both require electricity for their control systems
to operate and also for the CH pump.

UK has been so close to losing the grid in harsh winters that they had
to ask heavy industrial users to drop off non critical loads to keep the
lights on in domestic premises. The ageing nuclear plant is well beyond
its use by date now and still running on a wing and a prayer.

It was flat calm last week and they had to bring mothballed coal
generation back online because natural gas has suddenly become very
expensive. Problem is that the dash for gas in electricity generation a
while back means we are doubly dependent on the price of natural gas.

Several energy retailers went bust here last week due to gas and
electricity pricing fluctuations . Their business model was always
flawed to blazes in much the same way as Enron.

As an indication of just how crazy the energy retail market is here our
village hall gets its electricity (no gas available) from British Gas!

A harsh winter or even a normal one with no wind could get interesting.

https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/britain-came-close-blackouts-during-winter-electricity-remains-under-pressure-never-2859637

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Given a couple of long brutal winters, Germany could have trouble
paying the Russians for gas. Maybe they could offer them half of
Poland.

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Tue, 14 Sep 2021 08:09:29 -0700) it happened
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
<cne1kgl8g15daqere...@4ax.com>:

>https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
>
>Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?

Cannot speak for them, but my prices here are
Electricity including tax:
EUR 0,23121 / kWh
Gas including tax:
EUR 0,82045 / cubic m


On top of that I got an Euro 400 refund on gas when I moved house here
Been with that supplier for a very long time, they seem to want to keep me, discounts.

As to Germany, and we may take their gas too:
Much hype from zerohedge, North stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany has just been completed.
Merkel will go. maybe they power up the nuculear plants again.
We need the bombs.

Also here they want to drill for gas in the 'Waddenzee', piece of water between the islands here, next doors so to speak.
of course greenpees and other environmentally disturbed groups object :-)

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

tirsdag den 14. september 2021 kl. 18.30.28 UTC+2 skrev Jan Panteltje:
> On a sunny day (Tue, 14 Sep 2021 08:09:29 -0700) it happened
> jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote in
> <cne1kgl8g15daqere...@4ax.com>:
> >https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
> >
> >Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?
> Cannot speak for them, but my prices here are
> Electricity including tax:
> EUR 0,23121 / kWh
> Gas including tax:
> EUR 0,82045 / cubic m
>

EUR ~0.30/kWh electricity
EUR ~2.75/m^3 district heating (>60'C water)

[Don Y]

On 9/14/2021 9:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
> We can heat my home by oil, solid fuel or electricity as a last resort. The
> first two can operate with or without a mains electricity supply - we do
> sometimes lose power in the worst winter storms so it pays to have multiple
> heat sources. Winter oil deliveries can get disrupted too.

How do you burn oil without power to run the blower and circulator?
("first two..")

We're gas-fired, here. And, have lost natural gas supply to the city
on at least one occasion. It's even more disturbing than picking up
your (landline) phone and finding it dead!

[We didn't *lose* gas supply, just lost adequate pressure to create
enough BTUs for "smart" furnaces to recognize that they were actually
*lit* and deliberately shut down the gas supply to protect against
unburned gas leaking into the residence!]

> Most modern build are completely stuffed if they lose mains electricity. Gas
> and oil boilers both require electricity for their control systems to operate
> and also for the CH pump.

Yes, but its a relatively small load to "backup". Two of my neighbors
have "all electric" homes (roof mounted, air sourced heat pumps).
They're screwed in summer *or* winter, if an outage.

By contrast, we can keep the furnace running with a small genset -- and,
power a portable ACbrrr (if we're in the humid Monsoon season; a fan suffices
for regular Summer).

> UK has been so close to losing the grid in harsh winters that they had to ask
> heavy industrial users to drop off non critical loads to keep the lights on in
> domestic premises. The ageing nuclear plant is well beyond its use by date now
> and still running on a wing and a prayer.

During our gas shortage (*unusually* cold spell), the "fix" was to shut off
the gas supply for parts of town to allow sufficient pressure in the
remaining parts of town.

I don't think we've ever had a city-wide electric outage. Most outages are
very local and traced to some bit of equipment failure. E.g., the below-grade
cables in our neighborhood tend to "blow" (best way to explain it, if you've
ever seen one failed!) due to age. As ever circuit is fed from two directions,
the outage is usually small (a handful of houses) and short-lived (they
send a crew out to isolate the faulted cable and "replug" the feed from the
other direction to restore power to the isolated segment no longer being fed
from the "original" direction).

> It was flat calm last week and they had to bring mothballed coal generation
> back online because natural gas has suddenly become very expensive. Problem is
> that the dash for gas in electricity generation a while back means we are
> doubly dependent on the price of natural gas.
>
> Several energy retailers went bust here last week due to gas and electricity
> pricing fluctuations . Their business model was always flawed to blazes in
> much the same way as Enron.
>
> As an indication of just how crazy the energy retail market is here our village
> hall gets its electricity (no gas available) from British Gas!
>
> A harsh winter or even a normal one with no wind could get interesting.

In the US, we tend to have bigger geographical regions and generating
capacities to draw on for local shortages. "Big" outages are usually
the fault of some weather event (e.g., ice taking down power lines)
or "accident" (failure of a critical substation or distribution
subsystem -- e.g., the chicago flood in the 90's)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood>
<https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6c/a6/2d/6ca62dc3883a8b07c07a396e7319b6da--the-far-side-opus.jpg>

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 1:34:01 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 15:14:59 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
> <pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:
>
> >jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> >> https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
> >>
> >> Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?
> >
> >Well, it was real smart of the germans to drop nuclear and switch back to
> >coal. Maybe they got a deal on power plants and strip mining equipment
> >from the chinese.
> >
> >Like they always say, it's cold winter in europe without russian gas.
>
> I got the impression that a lot of domestic heating in the UK is
> electric, probably resistive. We get most of our heat here from NG.

When I lived in the UK we heated our houses with natural gas - which came from the North Sea at the time.

I did know one Dutch programmer in Brighton whose husband used an electrically powered heat pump to warm their - very well-insulated - house in winter. It could also have cooled it in summer, if that had ever been necessary.

Our flat in Sydney has reverse cycle air-conditioning which we can - and very occasionally - do use to warm the place in winter.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Anthony William Sloman]

On Wednesday, September 15, 2021 at 1:09:38 AM UTC+10, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
>
> Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?

The obvious point is that Zero Hedge produces this kind of speculation at regular intervals to gratify people like Cursitor Doom and John Larkin.

They aren't there to inform the public, but rather to deliver titillating mis-information to people gullible enough to lap it up.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

[Gerhard Hoffmann]

Am 14.09.21 um 18:28 schrieb jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com:

> On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 17:11:41 +0100, Martin Brown
> <'''newspam'''@nonad.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> On 14/09/2021 16:33, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>> On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 15:14:59 -0000 (UTC), Cydrome Leader
>>> <pres...@MUNGEpanix.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
>>>>> https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
>>>>>
>>>>> Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?

>> As an indication of just how crazy the energy retail market is here our
>> village hall gets its electricity (no gas available) from British Gas!
>>
>> A harsh winter or even a normal one with no wind could get interesting.
>>
>> https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/business/britain-came-close-blackouts-during-winter-electricity-remains-under-pressure-never-2859637
>
> Given a couple of long brutal winters, Germany could have trouble
> paying the Russians for gas. Maybe they could offer them half of
> Poland.

No, thanks. We have bought back the GDR, that's more than enough.

And the Russians honored their treaties, even during the cold war.
There was never ever an orange Orang-Utan to declare them invalid
and unfair and cancel them.

The best recipe for peace is forcing everyone to be depend on
the other side.

And the Russians could increase their prices a lot until they come
into the region that America expects for their LNG.
That pretty much describes the American resistance to NorthStream2,
and the attitude against competitors like Iran or Venezuela.
The tubes are finished now, btw.

In heavy wind conditions, we could do a lot of H2 conversion (or at
high noon when the sun shines.)
The efficiency is not very good, but given enough electrical energy
for free it's still a win. Just yesterday, they announced 4 locations
for liquifying H2 to truck fuel. Yes, our electrical power prices are
high (mostly because of taxes) , but over all, we still are a net exporter.

Gerhard

[boB]

Thank you !

Finally an answer to the original question !

boB

[boB]

On Tue, 14 Sep 2021 10:07:21 -0700 (PDT), Lasse Langwadt Christensen
<lang...@fonz.dk> wrote:

Depending on th present switcharoo rate, electricity is quite a bit
cheaper per kWh than it is here in the pacific northwest of the US.

A couple times or maybe 2.5 times at the moment.

[Mikko OH2HVJ]

0.30/kWh day (very high today!), 0.15 night time. We've got hourly spot
pricing and with by charging the car during nights and some trivial our
yearly average is below 0.12€/kWh.

District heating varies between 25-60€ / MWh.

Do they really sell you district heating by cubic meter ?

--
mikko

[Tom Gardner]

On 14/09/21 16:09, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
> https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/europes-soaring-power-prices-ahead-winter-could-spell-disaster
>
> Are there any Brits or Germans here to comment?

I'm not going to bother reading zerohedge, but thanks for
not obfuscating it with a short URL.

In the SW UK a typical price is
- electricity: £0.25/day + £0.23/kWh
- gas: £0.25/day + £0.05/kWh

[Martin Brown]

On 15/09/2021 00:08, Don Y wrote:
> On 9/14/2021 9:11 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>> We can heat my home by oil, solid fuel or electricity as a last
>> resort. The first two can operate with or without a mains electricity
>> supply - we do sometimes lose power in the worst winter storms so it
>> pays to have multiple heat sources. Winter oil deliveries can get
>> disrupted too.
>
> How do you burn oil without power to run the blower and circulator?
> ("first two..")

Electric generator running a part of the house electrics off grid.

> We're gas-fired, here.  And, have lost natural gas supply to the city
> on at least one occasion.  It's even more disturbing than picking up
> your (landline) phone and finding it dead!
>
> [We didn't *lose* gas supply, just lost adequate pressure to create
> enough BTUs for "smart" furnaces to recognize that they were actually
> *lit* and deliberately shut down the gas supply to protect against
> unburned gas leaking into the residence!]

UK hasn't yet had this sort of failure other than at a local level. My
mother in laws garden took a roasting after the Gas Board dug a trench
to look for a leak and one of them was smoking. Think 20' high Bunsen
burner flame and you get the general idea. Fire brigade had to hose down
the house to keep it from burning until they managed to isolate the gas
main and stop the flame. Such incidents are rare but spectacular.

>> Most modern build are completely stuffed if they lose mains
>> electricity. Gas and oil boilers both require electricity for their
>> control systems to operate and also for the CH pump.
>
> Yes, but its a relatively small load to "backup".  Two of my neighbors
> have "all electric" homes (roof mounted, air sourced heat pumps).
> They're screwed in summer *or* winter, if an outage.
>
> By contrast, we can keep the furnace running with a small genset -- and,
> power a portable ACbrrr (if we're in the humid Monsoon season; a fan
> suffices
> for regular Summer).

Exactly.

>> UK has been so close to losing the grid in harsh winters that they had
>> to ask heavy industrial users to drop off non critical loads to keep
>> the lights on in domestic premises. The ageing nuclear plant is well
>> beyond its use by date now and still running on a wing and a prayer.
>
> During our gas shortage (*unusually* cold spell), the "fix" was to shut off
> the gas supply for parts of town to allow sufficient pressure in the
> remaining parts of town.

That sounds quite alien to me. I can't recall there ever being a gas
shortage in the UK beyond a little local difficulty caused by men with a
JCB hitting a gas main in the street. The change to plastic gas pipes
created a problem in that they have no way of detecting them reliably.
Modern ones have a metal tape on so that can be found again!

> I don't think we've ever had a city-wide electric outage.  Most outages are
> very local and traced to some bit of equipment failure.  E.g., the
> below-grade
> cables in our neighborhood tend to "blow" (best way to explain it, if
> you've
> ever seen one failed!) due to age.  As ever circuit is fed from two
> directions,
> the outage is usually small (a handful of houses) and short-lived (they
> send a crew out to isolate the faulted cable and "replug" the feed from the
> other direction to restore power to the isolated segment no longer being
> fed
> from the "original" direction).

We get little local ones fairly often (rural setting overhead lines). It
only takes a thunderstorm hit somewhere to cause a few seconds to few
hours outage depending on whether or not the surge damages something.

However, due to renewable energy a spectacular cascade failure occurred
when 1.8GW of plant dropped off grid at once. They found all sorts of
serious problems with stranded electric train controllers that assumed
power would never fail and required an engineering reset to restart.

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-ofgem-report-on-the-power-outage-of-9-august-2019/

Various safety systems interacted in a peculiar way causing a massive
outage that took down most of the East coast and London. It doesn't help
that most generation is done up north and consumption down south so the
supergrid lines affected were close to maximum load when they went down.

>
>> It was flat calm last week and they had to bring mothballed coal
>> generation back online because natural gas has suddenly become very
>> expensive. Problem is that the dash for gas in electricity generation
>> a while back means we are doubly dependent on the price of natural gas.
>>
>> Several energy retailers went bust here last week due to gas and
>> electricity pricing  fluctuations . Their business model was always
>> flawed to blazes in much the same way as Enron.
>>
>> As an indication of just how crazy the energy retail market is here
>> our village hall gets its electricity (no gas available) from British
>> Gas!
>>
>> A harsh winter or even a normal one with no wind could get interesting.
>
> In the US, we tend to have bigger geographical regions and generating
> capacities to draw on for local shortages.  "Big" outages are usually
> the fault of some weather event (e.g., ice taking down power lines)
> or "accident" (failure of a critical substation or distribution
> subsystem -- e.g., the chicago flood in the 90's)
>
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_flood>
> <https://i.pinimg.com/736x/6c/a6/2d/6ca62dc3883a8b07c07a396e7319b6da--the-far-side-opus.jpg>

There are interconnects to Europe that broaden the UK network. The snag
occurs when it is simultaneously very cold and becalmed in UK, France
and Germany. No one wants to export *their* power in that situation.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Martin Brown]

I can't actually find my last bill but something around 15p/kWh for
electricity only plus a daily standing charge. I'd be able to get a
discount if could get dual fuel from the same supplier (no gas here).

I'm on a deal with prices locked in for 2 years so my supplier is
probably going to feel some pain if things continue the way they are.

These graphs show the UK wholesale energy prices and why some of the
smaller energy retailers with no generation capacity are going bust.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-data-and-research/data-portal/wholesale-market-indicators

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

[Don Y]

On 9/15/2021 1:28 AM, Martin Brown wrote:
>> We're gas-fired, here. And, have lost natural gas supply to the city
>> on at least one occasion. It's even more disturbing than picking up
>> your (landline) phone and finding it dead!
>>
>> [We didn't *lose* gas supply, just lost adequate pressure to create
>> enough BTUs for "smart" furnaces to recognize that they were actually
>> *lit* and deliberately shut down the gas supply to protect against
>> unburned gas leaking into the residence!]
>
> UK hasn't yet had this sort of failure other than at a local level. My mother
> in laws garden took a roasting after the Gas Board dug a trench to look for a
> leak and one of them was smoking. Think 20' high Bunsen burner flame and you
> get the general idea. Fire brigade had to hose down the house to keep it from
> burning until they managed to isolate the gas main and stop the flame. Such
> incidents are rare but spectacular.

Yes, but also short-lived. We had a guy accidentally play tug-of-war with
a gas main while operating a back hoe; the back hoe won.

Aside from the imminent threat of fire, it doesn't take long for the gas
company to come around and isolate that line. And, as they know exactly
where the "problem" lies, it's easy to repair.

But, when the feed to this region of the state can't keep up with
demand, there's nothing they can do -- other than try to shed load.
Of course, no one wants to voluntarily stop heating their home
when it's ~15F outside so someone has to "play god" and decide
winners/losers.

It was distressing as you could see your furnace ignite the gas...
then turn it off when the thermal sensors didn't get hot enough,
fast enough, to convince the furnace that ignition had, in fact
occurred.

[I wasn't keen on trying to coerce the controller to ignore
the safeties]

>>> UK has been so close to losing the grid in harsh winters that they had to
>>> ask heavy industrial users to drop off non critical loads to keep the lights
>>> on in domestic premises. The ageing nuclear plant is well beyond its use by
>>> date now and still running on a wing and a prayer.
>>
>> During our gas shortage (*unusually* cold spell), the "fix" was to shut off
>> the gas supply for parts of town to allow sufficient pressure in the
>> remaining parts of town.
>
> That sounds quite alien to me. I can't recall there ever being a gas shortage
> in the UK beyond a little local difficulty caused by men with a JCB hitting a
> gas main in the street. The change to plastic gas pipes created a problem in
> that they have no way of detecting them reliably. Modern ones have a metal tape
> on so that can be found again!

They replaced all of the gas lines and mains (increased diameter) a year or
so ago -- pretty much city-wide -- as part of routine maintenance. Very
little digging/excavation as they now use horizontal drills for the big stuff
and "pull" a new residential feed through the old feed (using a multisided
knife/pig to shred the old line in the process)

>> I don't think we've ever had a city-wide electric outage. Most outages are
>> very local and traced to some bit of equipment failure. E.g., the below-grade
>> cables in our neighborhood tend to "blow" (best way to explain it, if you've
>> ever seen one failed!) due to age. As ever circuit is fed from two directions,
>> the outage is usually small (a handful of houses) and short-lived (they
>> send a crew out to isolate the faulted cable and "replug" the feed from the
>> other direction to restore power to the isolated segment no longer being fed
>> from the "original" direction).
>
> We get little local ones fairly often (rural setting overhead lines). It only
> takes a thunderstorm hit somewhere to cause a few seconds to few hours outage
> depending on whether or not the surge damages something.

With buried services, there's less risk of a neighborhood outage from
downed lines, drunk drivers hitting poles, etc. Older parts of town
still have overhead service so likely have different reliability
issues. No snow/ice storms that would often raise hell with overhead
lines in other places I've lived (usually, tree limbs falling on lines).

We *do* tend to see a fair number of switching transients -- typically
at the same time, each day. All of my UPSs "belch" when this happens
(which is a disturbingly loud noise when you have dozens of them)
but the lights just barely flicker.

[Tom Gardner]

Yesterday...
About half a million households will be moved to a new energy supplier
after Utility Point and People’s Energy became the latest energy
companies to go bust amid record energy market prices.

The latest casualties bring the total number of failed energy suppliers to
seven in the past year, including five within the past five weeks, as the
market price for gas and electricity has reached new all-time highs.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/14/half-a-million-homes-to-be-given-new-energy-supplier-after-two-more-go-bust

[Don Y]

On 9/15/2021 12:13 AM, Tom Gardner wrote:
> I'm not going to bother reading zerohedge, but thanks for
> not obfuscating it with a short URL.

Likewise; I'm not keen on Pravda, either!

> In the SW UK a typical price is
> - electricity: £0.25/day + £0.23/kWh
> - gas: £0.25/day + £0.05/kWh

Most of our utilities are not so "simply" billed.

For example, re: electric:
- a "basic service charge" for *having* service (~$13)
(this is considered part of the DELIVERY charges... not to
be confused with the POWER charges!)
- a three-tiered delivery charge (7-10c/KWHr)
- power charge (~3c/KWHr)
- a fixed tariff for renewable energy (~$7)
- consumption-based surcharges (~1c/KWHr)
- consumption-based cost recovery charges (too difficult to normalize)
- taxes (4 different entities with their hands out)
- "assessments" and fees

To get a feel for the relative costs of power vs transmission vs
fees/etc., ~1600KWHr ran $270. Of that, the "power" was ~$57
while delivery was ~$160.

[The utilities could see the writing on the wall wrt solar
and moved to separate generation and delivery charges many
years ago.]

Gas is a bit less complicated. $21 for 6 therms. Of that,
about $8 for the actual "fuel" with the balance being similar
"charges" (though different names/agencies).

Domestic water is similarly "encumbered"; your water
consumption also affects your *sewer* charges, etc.

There are all sorts of these little niggling charges in
EVERY bill, here. For example, when our annual car
registration is mailed to us, there's a line item on
the fee schedule where the cost of mailing the registration
to you is spelled out! (I'm surprised they don't itemize
the cost of the paper on which it is printed!)

[Yes, I know you have to incur costs to mail it. Itemizing
that cost doesn't make it easier to swallow!]

[Tom Gardner]

Tonight the wholesale price will be up from the baseload
£40/MWh to £2500/MWh.

There's been a substantial fire in a taking out one of
the cables to France. Coal is coming online again, and
will probably stay there over winter.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/15/fire-shuts-one-of-uk-most-important-power-cables-in-midst-of-supply-crunch

Oh, the wonders of privatisation cutting things to the
bone, and successive governments not having the balls to
hold their feet to the fire.

[jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com]

Our old iron gas pipes were rusting so PG&E threaded small plastic
pipes inside them, ran high pressure, and put a regulator at each
house. The gas was out for a few hours and they didn't dig up the
streets. Otherwise, gas is very reliable.

We'll have an electric outage a few times a year, usually for seconds
or minutes. Sometimes we get a notice in advance. Overall, things are
good.

In our climate, we can get along fine without heat for a while, and we
don't have a/c. Cold showers would be the major problem.

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

yes, it might be one of the few places that still do it, and they
are working on switching to kWh eventually

[Clifford Heath]

How do they work out how many kWh you extract from the water? Do they
meter the outbound temperature?

CH

[Mikko OH2HVJ]

Clifford Heath <no....@please.net> writes:

>>> Lasse Langwadt Christensen <lang...@fonz.dk> writes:
>> yes, it might be one of the few places that still do it, and they
>> are working on switching to kWh eventually
>
> How do they work out how many kWh you extract from the water? Do they
> meter the outbound temperature?

Incoming+return temperatures and flow are measured to calculate energy.

Since the source is often combined heat+electricity production or
increasingly heat pumps, there are typically some limits on how much you
must cool the flow (or pay extra).

--
mikko

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

sending hot water back to the source it just wasted energy in extra transmission loss

here the cooling must be at least ~30'C average over a year
some places have bonuses for cooling more than ~35'C paid by those who cool less than ~25'C

The source in this district is a coal fired power station, a cement factory, and trash incineration