Germany Scorned Air Conditioning -- Then Came the Heat Wave 575
Germans have always looked down on America's fondness for artificially chilled air as wasteful, unnatural and wimpy. Rather than install climate control in buildings and subways, schools and offices will simply close if it gets too hot. Now, the increasing frequency of triple-digit highs have forced a national reckoning. From a report: Germany's Trade Association for Air Conditioning said that last summer, the second-warmest on record since 1881, yielded a 15% jump in sales to 200,000 units. That figure is expected to climb this summer, as more Germans rebel against the nation')s obsession with energy conservation. High temperatures are known to make people act out of character. Police in the German state of Brandenburg stopped a man riding naked on a motorcycle. He said it was too hot for clothes.
German authorities have even imposed speed limits on stretches of the Autobahn, fearing it could buckle like heated wax. Old-fashioned oscillating fans have always been the preferred way for Germans to keep homes and offices cool. Property leases for apartments implore tenants to open their windows several times a day to help regulate temperature. A video from the German news magazine Focus, keeping to tradition, suggested a cooling method using "a fan, a towel, and a bowl of water." Retailers fear a fan and air conditioner shortage this summer. Annabell Feith, a spokeswoman for the retail group that owns two of Germany's largest electronics stores, MediaMarkt and Saturn, said the chains were bolstering their orders. Last year, some stores sold out by August. "We are advising customers, if they want to buy a fan, to be very quick, because we expect more heat," she said, "and we are almost sold out, especially in Berlin."
German authorities have even imposed speed limits on stretches of the Autobahn, fearing it could buckle like heated wax. Old-fashioned oscillating fans have always been the preferred way for Germans to keep homes and offices cool. Property leases for apartments implore tenants to open their windows several times a day to help regulate temperature. A video from the German news magazine Focus, keeping to tradition, suggested a cooling method using "a fan, a towel, and a bowl of water." Retailers fear a fan and air conditioner shortage this summer. Annabell Feith, a spokeswoman for the retail group that owns two of Germany's largest electronics stores, MediaMarkt and Saturn, said the chains were bolstering their orders. Last year, some stores sold out by August. "We are advising customers, if they want to buy a fan, to be very quick, because we expect more heat," she said, "and we are almost sold out, especially in Berlin."
It didn't make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
It didn't make sense to have air con in Germany. Most of the time it's cold and wet, these heat waves are a relatively new thing and are very short. Most of the time fans and windows are enough for cooling, and it's only a few days a year when air-con would really be of much value.
Air conditioning isn't generally all that popular in most of Europe anyway. The hotter countries have buildings that have better natural cooling and adjusted their lifestyles to handle the mid-day heat.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm Spanish and let me tell you that you are the one that doesn't know. When it's 45C outside no amount of "classical buildings" is going to save you. All modern building and houses (and many restored old ones too) have AC, our summers are painful otherwise.
Re: It didn't make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
In most south Europe countries "classical" is normal.
So, who is the idiot? If people here say "my hotels always had AC", then the best bet is: they where in a concrete fortress at a beach with 1000 guests in a single hotel. So yes, those have AC, and they need it because they are build with "american blue prints". I prefer to be in a stone castle in the city. Perhaps in house build by arabs 1000 years ago. No AC ... and not more expensive to live there.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
It didn't make sense to have air con in Germany. Most of the time it's cold and wet,
...so they're using heating. But heat pumps are more efficient than resistive electric heaters, so they must either be using fuel oil, or just wasting a lot of power on resistive heaters. Heat pumps work in both directions, so if they installed 'em for heating, they'd have them for cooling.
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In germany pellet fuel (made from wood) is quite popular. Also there's natural gas for heating. So "fuel oil" isn't needed for everything.
Additionally heat pumps work most efficient only in certain ranges of external temperature...
Re: (Score:3)
Sorry, meant to edit that to fossil fuel but it looks like I missed it.
Does Germany regularly get temps outside of where heat pumps will work efficiently? Doesn't seem like it.
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Re:It didn't make sense (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, a lot of natural gas is imported from Russia, and people don't like to be dependent on them.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
The only "people" that "don't like it" are those in the US government who are on the feeders of the oil and gas lobby in the US, which is desperate to find another market for its expensive product to Europe. Since the US suppliers can't beat Russia on price or volume, they peddle the narrative of "dependence" and other horror stories in the hope to make the gas politically unacceptable.
In fact, there is no "dependence" on Russian gas. There is an interdependence, which was one of the major factors contributing to European peace since the 1960s.
Here's a good read on the subject:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-G... [amazon.co.uk]
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Americans who wage war on countries far away may not have realized that Russia is basically a neighbour of German/Europe and hopefully soon an ally.
We are not "dependent" on their gas, there is plenty of gas in the northern sea ... but we happen to have contracts with russia regarding gas. Most gas they sent to Germany is still payment for pipes we sold to them 30 - 40 years ago.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Russia already was an "ally" of about half of Europe.
You're pretty wrong in this idea that they forgot already.
Heat pumps not always useful (Score:2)
While it is true that heat pumps are most efficient in above-freezing temperatures, they do still work in sub-freezing weather.
True, but they really just establish a temperature differential and since I live in Canada increasing the temperature from -40C to -20C isn't really enough to make it very useful which is why we generally tend to use natural gas for heating.
And while natural gas heating may be more efficient in sub-freezing weather, you have to compare those savings versus the additional costs for the rest of the year.
Having your natural gas furnace not being used for a few days in the summer is not much additional cost.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:4, Informative)
Here's an interesting breakdown of fuel import and production in the EU. [europa.eu]
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
Heat pumps have only appeared relatively recently, and heat pump installations are much more expensive than gas-powered central heating, so they aren't popular yet.
In the Netherlands, the recent pressure to reduce reliance on natural gas has opened up the market for heat pumps, but you can see it's not a mature market, with installers having no experience and lots of fuckups.
Re: (Score:3)
A Geothermal heat pump is a similar price but you have to add the price of a well, typically around five- ten thousand Euro's.
And it generates a lot less noise plus no problems during extremely cold weather.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
Gas is a lot less efficient than heatpumps, since gas can't be more than 100% efficient while air/air heatpumps are often over 300%.
Geothermal heatpumps are a lot more efficient.
Not sure if you meant that gas is cheaper, not sure if it is (I would be surprised), but it is not more efficient.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, yeah, cheaper... A lot cheaper for heating. But also in the sense of lower emissions, at least for now.
Re: (Score:2)
if running on a mixed grid of 33% renewable, 33% nuclear and 33% fossil fuel, which is probably close to Germany's production, I still think that heatpumps generate less CO2 emissions than burning fossil fuel for heating
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If you are measuring an efficiency at or over 100% then you've drawn your control volume in the wrong place. Marketing types do this. Engineers don't. Thermodynamically, nothing is ever over 100% efficient.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
They're talking about the COP - the Coefficient of Performance. It's the ratio of useful heating or cooling provided to the work (energy) required.
Direct heating can never be more than 100% "efficient," yes, because you're turning one form of energy (electrical or chemical) into another form of energy (thermal).
Heat pumps instead _move_ thermal energy around. And it turns out, if you push 100W of electricity into a heat pump, and the temperature differential is low enough, you can move 300W of heat from outside the building to inside the building. This gives a COP (or "efficiency" of 300%.
The OP is correct, heat pumps can be much more efficient than direct heating, in terms of power required to warm up your home.
Note that this doesn't break any laws of thermodynamics, it just accesses another source of energy in addition to the electrical input - the thermal energy that is outside the house.
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Gas is a lot less efficient than heatpumps, since gas can't be more than 100% efficient
But if the electricity is generated by gas turbines running at 30% efficiency, it can be an overall win to burn the gas directly in the home,
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it can, but electricity production is more efficient than that on average
Re: It didn't make sense (Score:2)
It is exactly 100% effecient. Ineffeciencies in electric devices comes out as heat. The only Ineffeciency you can have is over complicating the design
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Note that this argument goes both ways - Americans scoffing at Europeans for eschewing air conditioning, and European scoffing at Americans for being reliant on AC, are both wrong. FWIW, when I was house-shopping in Washington state, very few of the homes there had air conditioning too.
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Note that this argument goes both ways - Americans scoffing at Europeans for eschewing air conditioning, and European scoffing at Americans for being reliant on AC, are both wrong.
It's almost like the right answer is to understand that maybe the locals know more than you about the place they live.
What if we all decided that people in other places (or even neighbors nearby) are welcome to have their own customs and traditions? Even Americans and Germans. And instead of being negative and looking down on them for it, we decided it's not our business what others choose?
That would be wise. It's not for zealots though.
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And pretty much every Canadian I know has air conditioning for their house
Come visit Edmonton sometime then - it's not that common here although more common than in Yorkshire, UK which is at the same latitude.
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I have air conditioning, but most houses don't here (Vancouver). It's actually geothermal, but there's no heatpump on it so it's limited to working fluid temperature. Which I think is around 72F or so. I find it ideal - 72F is fairly warm for me in winter (I leave my house around 67F or so) and I keep it at 77F in the summer.
Most people rely on the "natural air conditioning" system to cool th
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As to trying to use passive cooling, not only does that have a limit in effectiveness, but do you really expect them to tear down all their buildings just to build new ones to accommodate the hotter climate they are in the process of obtaining?
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That is actually not technically correct. I do not mean frequency of heatwaves of which I have no clue. What I mean is this - the regulation in Germany when it comes to energy consumption of a house is so harsh that the ever more thick layers of Styrofoam are needed and the houses need quite good ventilation systems not to have massive problems with dump. This means most of newly built houses have to have air conditioning. This is especially true if the progressive Germans install heat exchange heating in
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The styrofoam is not the actual problem. In fact if you do it right it can help keep the house cool as it can also keep the heat out. The lack of ventilation is the problem. If you ventilate at night (when it's cooler), especially if the house is made of masonry or concrete, it helps to keep the house cool during the day.
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:4, Informative)
As living in neighboring Czechia, insufferable hot weather is here about 4 months a year, for many years as far as remember. Windows does not help, on the contrary, they have to be closed during day so hot air does not get in, and shaded to avoid radiative heating of interior. While thermal mass helps to avoid daily spikes and get interior temperature ~5 degC below exterior midday-afternoon temperatures, it is still too hot to live comfortably (unless one lives in an old house or a ground floor flat).
Re:It didn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
When the heat comes... maybe next month, the people will enjoy the air conditioning at work or in the malls. We can't even legally install an air conditioner in our townhouse and we don't have the right windows for window units.
I more or less lost interest in the article when they were talking about triple digit heat in Germany. I
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Good afternoon, Brits (Score:5, Funny)
Put down the teacup, poofters, and wipe that silly, jagged smile off your faces
Today is the day America celebrates the original Brexit -- kicking your asses to the curb
243 glorious British-free years!
Re:Good afternoon, Brits (Score:5, Funny)
The British celebrate 4th of July too. It's known as Good Riddance Day.
Thanksgiving (Score:2)
The British celebrate 4th of July too. It's known as Good Riddance Day.
I think you mean Thanksgiving.
Re: (Score:3)
guess you parted with the British sense of humor as well.
Re: (Score:3)
243 glorious British-free years!
So why are you guys doing it to Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia?
Husein - dead
Ghadafi - dead
bin laden - dead
How is your "glorious" freedom enhanced by occupying these countries the same way the British did to the US?
Re: (Score:3)
Oh, I forgot to mention.
I suspect the Native Americans who lived in America would have something to say about who is occupying *their* country.
Let's not forget that American Independence was built on the complete subjugation and butchery of the native people, the original wise native Americans. Are they celebrating as well?
Re: (Score:2)
Oh well at least we have BBQ, hot dogs, burgers, sausages, beer, and colorful explosives.
Bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms, explosives AND MEAT.
Yawn (Score:2)
It's an ad to sell more units and fans, it starts every year after the 5th warm day.
Just like the umbrella sellers come out of the ground in Rome after the 5th drop of rain.
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"Just like the umbrella sellers come out of the ground in Rome after the 5th drop of rain."
I just remembered, they also sell them for 5€, no shit!
"Triple-digit highs" (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, this is an American website and we use Fahrenheit. But it's talking about Germany! Could have used better language.
Have you ever been there? (Score:2)
Police in the German state of Brandenburg stopped a man riding naked on a motorcycle. He said it was too hot for clothes.
This is "out of character?" I don't think so.
Was he wearing a helmet? (Score:2)
As long as he was wearing a helmet, the police should just let him be. I thought Germans were less prudish. Don't they have nude public parks in Germany?
Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Germans have always looked down on America's fondness for artificially chilled air as wasteful, unnatural and wimpy.
Jeesh, could you lay it on even thicker with the victim complex? No Germans haven't 'always looked down on Americans'. This is one of those things like the 'Ibiza towel wars' or their supposed 'football feud' with Britain. Ask a German about this and they'll not know what you are talking about. They just don't see the need for air conditioning most of the time since their threshold for when they consider air conditioning necessary is a quite a bit higher than it is in the US.
German authorities have even imposed speed limits on stretches of the Autobahn, fearing it could buckle like heated wax.
This was and is universally ignored as it always has been by about a third of the drivers in Germany. If you are ever in Germany, just try observing the speed limit on the Autobahn, you will learn several interesting new ways to make your frustration with slow driving known to the guy in front of you without honking (you get hefty fines for excessive honking) and a whole library of new rude finger gestures. There is no better way to send a German driver into fit of shit-throwing-monkey like rage than observing the speed limit. I've been chastised at a traffic light in Germany by a driver who was deeply insulted by my insistence on driving 40 in a 50 km/h zone in total darkness with no street lights and after having almost run over a couple of cyclists dressed completely in black and sporting no lights or reflectors. At best they expect you to drive the maximum speed no matter what the road conditions, at worst they will shout at you at traffic lights for not ignoring the speed limit. They also seem to love tailgating at speeds exceeding 100 kph.
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I met some Germans in new hire training during a heat wave in SoCal. Hottest I've ever been outdoors with a heat index of 115. Go out for five minutes, come in and your clothes feel like they've been in the dryer. Those Germans never once said anything about the AC being wimpy. They didn't even applaud it. They got out of the damn heat like everyone else.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
was deeply insulted by my insistence on driving 40 in a 50 km/h zone in total darkness with no street lights and after having almost run over a couple of cyclists dressed completely in black
The reason he was mad is because if you can't handle driving 20km over the limit on a totally dark road with ninja cyclists, you probably shouldn't be allowed to drive a car to begin with.
They also seem to love tailgating at speeds exceeding 100 kph.
Hey if you are going to go slow enough to draft off of, expect to get d
Re: Huh? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
The threshold for the typical German isn't higher as you don't typically get temperatures that compare with most of the US, let alone the humidity. While I've been traveling around Germany the past two weeks, it's been 35C consistently with 70-80% humidity. You guys get a week or two of that a year, we get 3 months. And I'm in the northern part of the US
That still does not translate into Germans looking down on Americans over their use of air conditioning. I lived there for years and I have heard them poke fun at Americans over all kinds of things, just like Americans poke fun at Germans, but air conditioning never even came up.
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They just don't see the need for air conditioning most of the time since their threshold for when they consider air conditioning necessary is a quite a bit higher than it is in the US.
In most of the southern states, it's not so much that we can't tolerate the heat - it's that the humidity is brutally high. So, unless you like watching mold grow on your walls, you're cranking up that A/C.
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They just don't see the need for air conditioning most of the time since their threshold for when they consider air conditioning necessary is a quite a bit higher than it is in the US.
In most of the southern states, it's not so much that we can't tolerate the heat - it's that the humidity is brutally high. So, unless you like watching mold grow on your walls, you're cranking up that A/C.
It can get very humid in certain parts of Germany too. My point was that German's don't despise Americans over airconditioning (which would be stupid) this is a difference of opinion at best.
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tailgating at speeds exceeding 100 kph
As you know, speed isn't the main problem. It's the speed difference that's dangerous. Tailgating makes sure that everybody drives the same speed, and even if the first car brakes, the collision is almost immediate and at a very low speed difference. A greater distance between the cars would allow the first car to reduce its speed significantly and the following car would run into it at a higher speed difference. Safety comes first for German drivers.
Just keep telling yourself that, the German police recommends dividing your speed by two to get the proper braking distance (That's what those 'Halber Tacho!' signs they have all over the place are all about), at 130 kph, that would be 65 meters, not 65 centimetres. See, I watched the "How to drive on the Autobahn" videos the German rozzers have on their website before I went there the first time years ago. About 70% of German drivers ignore most of the rules including the one that states you should only us
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You know that the cars in a train are right next to each other, don't you. Zero speed difference. You know what is an exceedingly safe mode of transportation? Trains. I rest my case. Don't respond before you have adjusted your humorometer.
You are either an idiot or a troll:
..., well don't quit your day job.
"The advantages of tailgating" (3 hits) https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
"The dangers of tailgating" (6,920 hits) https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
If you are trying to be a comedian,
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It's not as simple as speed kills or speed difference kills. They're both factors, along with braking time, road conditions, lighting etc. Generally I give highest priority to braking distance, but there are times when traffic is heavy and fast where the least unsafe option is to travel at high speed with inadequate.
Proper lane discipline would go a long way to making roads safer and less stressful, and allow some people to travel (for whatever reason) near the speed limit and others to go faster. But enf
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Feel free to climb down off your cross at any time. For being the biggest, most bloodthirsty bullies on the planet, you sure do have thin skins.
Can't speak for all of us (Score:5, Informative)
...but for me looking down on wasteful US air conditioning sure was a fact.
2014 I had a multi split air conditioning installed in our apartment. We're right below the roof. It's the best investment I've ever made.
I mean we don't turn off heat just because we could survive without either.
Although we do hear anecdotes about Americans cooling to 18 degrees C in Las Vegas. THAT would indeed be wasteful and quite stupid.
Re:Can't speak for all of us (Score:4, Interesting)
The efficiency of air conditioning (and heating) improves the more you reduce the surface area to volume ratio. Surface area is what the heat passes through (whether it's escaping the building in cold weather, or invading the building in hot weather). So if you can reduce the ratio of surface area to the interior volume being heated/cooled, then you can heat or cool more without losing as much energy. So yeah, cooling a small house to 18 C in the desert is stupid. But cooling a huge casino/hotel to 18 C doesn't really waste as much energy as you'd think.
As an extreme example, fusion in the sun actually generates very little heat - it's about as much heat per volume as a compost pile [wikipedia.org]. The sun just becomes ridiculously hot because it's got an enormous volume compared to its surface area. If you divide its volume by the surface area, each square meter of its surface is the exit point of the heat generated by more than 300 million tons of interior mass.
Vegas shouldn't exist (Score:3)
Although we do hear anecdotes about Americans cooling to 18 degrees C in Las Vegas. THAT would indeed be wasteful and quite stupid.
The mere existence of Las Vegas is a monument to wastefulness. Neither Vegas nor Phoenix are cities that should exist at anything close to their current populations. There are just some places where you shouldn't build a major city if you don't absolutely have to. The middle of the Sonoran Desert is a terrific example of where not to build.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Can't speak for all of us (Score:4, Interesting)
I live in North Carolina (grew up in France). When I bought my house, the previous owner had the thermostat reset the temperature to 68F every morning at 6am. Apparently, they had an average electricity bill of $300 a month (averaged on the year, heat is gas so on a different bill). Now, that's a ridiculous temperature and expense.
It is common in the US to have houses and businesses cooled to absurdly low temperature. Who needs a casino at 18C in Nevada? 20C is already pretty chill in the middle of the desert, and frankly even 22C would probably be fine for the customers. I have walked in buses with ACs at 20F/30F lower than outside temperature; you walk in there and immediately get chocked by the temperature difference. I used to put a sweater on when getting in my office in summer because it was frigid in there.
AC is useful and vital in most weather conditions in the US and I definitely did not understand that when I was living in France. But most Americans are setting the AC to absurdly low temperatures.
Re: (Score:3)
However, when the monsoons came in and the humidity ratcheted up to the 70%s and higher, that 27 C house felt increasingly uncomfortable, and I'd turn the AC to ~ 25 C / 77 F.
Side note: soon after I moved to Phoenix, I road my motorcycle the 15 minutes to my work, via the highway, on a 119 F / 48 C day. The ai
Wrong (Score:2)
Property leases for apartments implore tenants to open their windows several times a day to help regulate temperature
That's wrong. They contain clauses to open the windows to prevent the growth of mould. This is needed because many houses got fitted with thermal insulation in the last decades. Also newer houses are built so air-tight that they don't have enough natural air exchange to prevent moisture build-up.
In many places it is not needed to open the windows, but they just put it in all contracts anyway, and then make the tennants pay if they got mould behind the furniture.
Germany Scorned Air Conditioning (Score:2)
With energy costs like those, they can't afford AC (Score:2, Informative)
An average A/C unit in Germany costs EUR 2.5/hour to run or about EUR 10-30/day.
Since the German equivalent of the green new deal (shut down all nuclear, coal, oil and gas, only use wind and solar) energy prices have gone up to 35-50c/kWh during peak hours and they have to buy in nuclear power from France and coal/gas/oil power from other neighbors.
If they are increasing demand at this rate, and as France's government shuts down more nuclear they'll have rolling brownouts and energy will peak above a whole
Re:With energy costs like those, they can't afford (Score:5, Interesting)
An average A/C unit in Germany costs EUR 2.5/hour to run
energy prices have gone up to 35-50c/kWh during peak hours
These two statements don't add up.
You are saying 50c/kWh at peak. So even at peak your AC would have be consuming 5000W to cost you â2.50/hour. A super crappy portable 12,000 BTU unit will only draw about 1.3kW. In fact a 5000W unit would need a special connection and breaker because a domestic socket can't supply that much.
Even your â10/day would require a good 16 hours of usage at the "peak" rate of 50c/kWh. And even if it was â10/day, it would be for a few days a year max in Germany. Most people can't be bothered to spend hundreds of Euros on a portable unit or a window unit+installation for the sake of a few days once a decade.
Re: (Score:3)
An average A/C unit in Germany costs EUR 2.5/hour to run
What the hell? What kind of "average" AC unit are you talking about that it uses almost 10 kW of power? What would you be cooling with it, an aircraft hangar?
Re: (Score:3)
have gone up to 35-50c/kWh during peak hours and they have to buy in nuclear power from France
Also, that's BS, too. When there's the need to cool anything, it's because it's sunny, and when it's sunny, Germany's ~45 GW PV solar capacity (~65% of average German electricity consumption) is more than adequate to cover for the AC-increased needs. You might even expect exports rather than imports. Hell, even *to* France, depending on conditions.
If they are increasing demand at this rate, and as France's government shuts down more nuclear they'll have rolling brownouts and energy will peak above a whole Euro.
How cute. But no, that's not going to happen.
It's Cool (Score:2)
call to action, news at eleven (Score:2)
No shit, Sherlock. And if she wasn't—even in Germany—she might soon be replaced by someone else.
If the supply chain can't shift more units into Germany (whose share was small to begin with, if I'm to believe what I just read) it's only because Germans have extremely particular standards/expectations about the design of these units, so
Different local climates have different needs (Score:2)
Germans have always looked down on America's fondness for artificially chilled air as wasteful, unnatural and wimpy.
That's much easier to do when your latitude is approximately that of Nova Scotia. I live in the US midwest and have lived both with and without air conditioning and once you are far enough north it's not too hard to do. But almost anywhere in the US south of around Virginia gets hot enough on a routine basis to make living without air conditioning deeply unpleasant or even dangerous for substantial portions of the year. For those of you in Europe, that is approximately the latitude of Southern Spain and
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Jesus, 32-36c is dangerous, what a pussy!
God knows how I am surviving now in Spain, or those other years where the temps were over 40c, all without aircon.
God knows how I survived in my old house in Brazil with no air con at all....
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Power costs? (Score:2)
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So Europe is finally becoming livable (Score:2, Flamebait)
It was too freaking cold earlier. People had to evolve weird mutations like 6 ft heights and albino skin to survive the cold.
Was in Germany in the late 80's (Score:2)
I don't think we even had a fan. But, the days weren't crazy hot and humid like we see in the States on a regular basis. We just opened the windows and let some breeze come through. It only seemed like we had two weeks of Summer though. I'm sure it was longer than that, but it seemed abbreviated compared to what we're used to in the US. In MD, our projected cooling cost for the Summer is $309 according to my BGE bill. That would be a few weeks in Germany. Ouch.
Total bullshit (Score:3)
Triple digit temperatures? (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't really make sense to reference triple digit temperatures in an article about Germany. They (and pretty much the entire world) use Celcius.
I think Europe is going to see more and more AC as time goes on. Too many people are dying in these big heat waves. It seems senseless when it can be prevented. Of course, energy costs are much higher, so even if AC becomes more common, it'd be used more sparingly.
The Secret History of Aircon and Nukes in the US (Score:3)
Okay, it is not secret, but nobody seems to know it.
About 100 nuclear power plant units were built in the U.S. from the 1960s to about 1980, then construction on plants - even plants that were quite far along - stopped dead.
All-powerful hippies crushing corporations across America? Government red-tape bringing it to its knees?
No, it is the story of air conditioning.
From the late 1950s to about 1980 per capita electricity demand in the U.S. grew steadily, something like 5% a year. This increase can be almost entirely accounted for by the near-universal adoption of air conditioning which was almost unknown in homes in 1950, but standard everywhere by 1980. Anyone familiar with the U.S. housing market is aware that homes built before the late 1960s did not have central air conditioning. By that latter date the year-after-year per capita electricity demand suddenly flat-lined, actually dropped slightly. And it was because we had reached "peak air conditioning" - full deployment of the relatively inefficient units of the day.
The nuclear power units then under construction were never completed simply because the expected demand they were to serve was not there and the projects went bankrupt in the early 1980s (most famously the WPPSS project, of which on one of five units was completed). Electrical grid growth since 1980 in the U.S. has remained comparatively slow,. In 1985 per capita electricity demand only rose back to the 1980 level, and whereas this demand had increased 250% from 1960 to 1980 (20 years) it only grew to its final (so far) peak around 2000 by another 35% (another 20 years), and 20 years after that it is only 30% higher than the 1980 level.
As climates get hotter electricity demand is going to increase because of air conditioning demand. It is not just for comfort, exposure to excessive heat kills people.
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Finland says hi.
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Well, that's certainly a great way to celebrate the birth of the greatest nation on earth - a metric lecture from a European metrosexual or his USA "pajama boy" equivelent.
That's a you problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Fahrenheit is a superior scale to centigrade for use by humans on a day-to-day basis
You being used to Fahrenheit does not make it superior. 95% of the world uses Celsius without problems and for very good reasons. Your inability to deal with it says more about you than it does about the rest of humanity.
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Lenght to volume to mass to energy is easy in metric.
Even volume to volume is easy in metric. 1L = 1000cc. 1 gallon = how many cubic inches?
Re:That's a you problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Fahrenheit is a superior scale to centigrade for use by humans on a day-to-day basis
You being used to Fahrenheit does not make it superior. 95% of the world uses Celsius without problems and for very good reasons. Your inability to deal with it says more about you than it does about the rest of humanity.
No, Fahrenheit is arguably better for day-to-day use in describing weather and climate. One reason is that the typical weather in most temperate climates ranges roughly between 0 and 100 Fahrenheit. Certainly in most parts of North America, 0 degrees Fahrenheit would be a very, very cold day and 100 degrees would be a very, very hot day. (There are exceptions, such as some of the desert regions of California.) 0 and 100 Celsius were chosen as the freezing and boiling points of water, respectively, and in many inhabited parts of the world, the temperature routinely drops below the freezing point of water (hence snow) and certainly never reaches anywhere near the boiling point. So Fahrenheit makes a convenient scale for reporting weather. Negative numbers are rarely needed. Also, humans can detect about a 1 degree difference in the Fahrenheit scale, which is why digital thermostats typically have 1 degree increments while in Fahrenheit mode, while they have 0.5 degree increments while in Celsius mode. For both these reasons, I think Fahrenheit is the most convenient scale for reporting weather and climate, and setting your thermostat.
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Woodworking and other crafts in particular benefit from a system that promotes multiple ways to cleanly divide a base unit (divide a foot by two, three, four, or six and you still get integers), and the use of fractions versus decimals.
No it does not. Why the funk would it?
You have a ruler, the ruler has marks. And for funk sake: that is it.
For any construction stuff it does not really matter what marks you have on the ruler as long as everyone uses he same ruler.
Metric system or more precisely SI system in
If you can feel a 1C change in temp.. (Score:3)
... then you've got a far better sense of temperature than most people.
I can feel a 2F change in temp (Score:2)
Which is about what most people can feel, actually. Learned me that in auto HVAC class. 1F, however, is below most people's ability to detect.
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Re:Three-digit temperatures!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fahrenheit is a superior scale
Bollocks.
0 = ice/snow
10 = cold
20 = nice
30 = hot
60 = coffee
80 = burns
100 = steam
Celsius is far better for human temperatures (Score:2)
20 is room temperature. For water 15 C is the coldest you can swim at, 20 is good for laps and 25 is good for the kids playing. 40 is a hot tub temperature.
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30 = Very hot, possible heatstroke.
Round here (Australia), that's a mild summer day.
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Re: Yes, those fucking Prussians from Poland! (Score:2)
Human mtDNA is not Neanderthal. We are all matrilineally homo sapien.