That massive spike of 50c/kWh at the left looks tiny compared to today even though that’s already insanely expensive
If you’re in a granny cottage then just burn wood instead? Doing this rn and am very happy to go off-grid for ca. 48 hours
I unfortunelately don’t have a fireplace in my house. It was removed when the house was renovated in the 80’s
In a place where it’s regularly cold? Whose brilliant idea was that?!
When I said my house is tiny I truly mean that. I don’t even have space for a medium size house plant let alone a fireplace. The attic was converted into living space and I believe the fireplace used to be where the stairs are now.
I have a wood burning sauna on a separate building though
Is heating with electricity common in Finland? That seems like it would cost a fortune even in good times.
Overall electricity is relatively cheap in Finland. Historically they were oil heated, which is not very cheap either.
We do not have gas lines in Finland, so we cannot use that like other parts of Europe. This is now of course better because we are not depending on Russian gas.
Previously we got parts of electricity from Russia, but that shutdown after the Ukraine war.
Pretty common here in France and it’s cheap enough. Why would you think it would be expensive? And expensive compared to what?
When you say it’s common, are you talking about heat pumps or old-fashioned resistive heating? I’m not very familiar with heat pumps since they weren’t common at all when and where I bought a house, but at least where I lived it was normal to have either an oil or a gas furnace for heating. Resistive electric heating cost a lot more to operate and so it was generally used only where it would be too difficult or expensive to install a furnace and hot water pipes or hot air ducts. For example, some friends of mine lived in a 19th century house which was meant to be heated by a wood fireplace and they also had electric heaters in the bedrooms, whereas my own house was built in 1980 so it had an oil tank, a furnace in the basement, and hot-water radiators.
(My own house also had a modern wood stove in the living room and buying firewood was even cheaper than buying heating oil, but the problem was that the wood stove took a lot of work and it only heated the living room since it wasn’t connected to any mechanism for spreading the heat to the rest of the house.)
I was talking about the old-fashion one. It’s really common across France even though modern housing have heat pumps. Oil furnaces have almost completely disappeared and the gas one are in the process of being replaced as well. Electricity is cheaper here than in most countries (thanks to nuclear power plants).
Heat pumps have been commonplace outside North America for a long time. We call them “reverse cycle air conditioners” in Australia and they’ve been around for at least 20 years.
It’s not new technology. Your fridge is also a heat pump for example.
Older houses burn oil for heating the house and water but even most of them have heatpumps installed. New houses usually also have heatpumps or geothermal so direct electric heating is more and more uncommon. Apartment buildings generally all have district heating and even some private homes do.
Yes it’s expensive but so is everything else too. Our houses are way better insulated than in most places though so that helps a little.
You need to seriously need to rethink your home. First off, consider getting a radiator heater. These heaters have no fan and are filled with oil to passively heat the air. They are pretty efficient and can heat a small space.
Next make sure you have blinds covering all windows. Windows loss a lot of heat even if they are double paned.
In the spring time it may be worth getting some insulation blown in.
My heatpump is about 3x more efficient than electric radiator.
Someone said -45.5 °C
How are you using 21kWh/day heating a small home? Do you have any insulation at all?
Probably because it’s about -35C outside.
Dude is basically living on the set of The Thing at this point.
That’s a perfectly normal number for any home that isn’t very new and perfectly insulated.
My 37sqm appartment needs approximately 5000 kWh in natural gas per year, 876 kWh last December, so 28 kWh per day on average. The building is admittedly old and not perfectly insulated but it’s also not a log cabin out in the open in Finland, but instead a flat enclosed within 3 other flats in the middle of cosy, never below -8C Germany.
21 kWh in a log cabin in Finnland actually seemed pretty low to me. It’s sort of obvious OP is using a heat pump and the cabin must really be absolutely tiny.
Why are you measuring natural gas in kWh? How do you even measure that as such?
Very common in countries that use the metric system (ie literally everywhere except the USA). It’s measured either in kWh or in m^3
My meter measures it in m3 and my supplier, knowing the exact caloric value of the product they’re selling, tells me in kWh on my bill.
edit: m3 of course not 2 lol
A tiny heater running all day would do that.
1kw is a small heater. 0.8kw is a tiny one. 0.8x24 is 19.2. Assuming they have other basic appliances, that’s already more than enough to account for their usage.
50kWh and closer to 90kWh on days like this. It’s a log cabin and I’m keeping my root cellar and insulated shed above freezing aswell. Even running a 1kW heater all day would result in a consumption more than 21kWh and that wouldn’t keep any house warm.
Calls on Foam and Mineral Wool?
Polyurethane is better insulator, doesn’t absorb moisture and doesn’t require a vapor barrier but is also much more expensive. It’s what I insulated my shed with so that I can let it get cold if need be and will not have moisture problems later.
I always underestimate oil biproducts in the market, but maybe that is the play.
Finland has more than 330 hydro power plants, with total capacity of over 3,100 megawatts in 2022. Hydro accounted for 18% of Finland’s total installed power generation capacity and 22% of total power generation in 2021.
WTFINLAND
Hydro-Québec Production main power plants (2020) Total Others (49 hydro, 1 therma) - 13302 MW
Finland is flat, no possiblity in hydro if you don’t have the mountains with water in them. Norway gets all the hydro, and Finland buys it there.
Hydro =/= hydro. The plants in Finland are tiny in comparison.
Tomorrow is back to normal. Even the 37c/kWh spike hardly registers on the graph compared to today even though that’s still pretty expensive.
Are you actually paying the daily spot price? Not a flat amount with the utility provider taking the hit? That’s how I know it from any other country, unless you have a specific contract where the user made an informed decision to opt for market rates.
Mainly the reason is that many countries do not have hourly capable meters, so calculating the price for each hour is not possible. Flat rate is needed when you just have the cumulative read once a month.
In Finland the meters communicate automatically once a day, and send the 24h values to grid company. The next generation meters which are now installed can communicate once a hour.
30% of Finns are on spot.
40c/kWh is a pretty normal price here in Germany…
Ironically, prices are high, because of too much extremely cheap renewables.
Bullshit. Check the prices around Christmas last year, Germany was running only on renewables on the 24th and I paid .19€/kWh all day long then.
Do you really think, that’s what anyone pays? Because that’s not how consumer contracts work. You’re paying whatever you agreed upon when signing the contract.
Source: https://www.stromauskunft.de/strompreise/
This was literally 10s of google. Is that so hard?
Yes, that’s what I pay. That’s what my contract works like.
And on average, you’ll pay just as much as everyone else. If prices go through the roof, you’ll get screwed. See 2022.
How’s the heat pump gang doing in that kind of temperature?
They should be using supplement heat sources at that temperature.
Since it’s a cold area, they’re likely using a geothermal heat pump, which isn’t affected by air temperature. It uses the ground for heat exchange rather than the air.
Some of the modern air-source heat pumps can operate down to those temperatures. https://carbonswitch.com/best-cold-climate-heat-pump/
You’re right though, geothermal would be more likely currently and if that’s the case then the heat pump gang is doing just fine.
It’s what I exclusively heat my house with
i keep a pile of coal in the cellar for the extra cold days
And then you just burn them in a pot on your table and breathe the exhaust?
To do what with? Light a coal fire in the living room?
It doesn’t sound safe even in a proper fireplace.
found one whose never felt the heat of a coal stove
it’s handy to have backup heat source when the power goes out so pipes don’t freeze
Nope, I am far too young for that.
I have never heard of anyone that currently has a coal-heated house. I thought it was entirely dead in the developed world. Here these heating options are common district heating, geothermal, direct electric heating, some other kind of heat pump, biofuel (like pellets), and a tiny bit of oil and gas.
The most popular by far is district heating, after that comes electric heating (which includes electricity used for geothermal heat pumps and other kinds) and then biofuel. Gas and oil are barely visible on a graph.
I just tried to find a place in my country which sells coal for heating but alas I didn’t succeed. You can of course buy coal but its intended purpose is always grilling or smithing.
RIP to those running a 4090 on their rig.
I get the joke, but in contrast to heating, you can easily just… not run demanding games while the electricity is insanely expensive for a day.
It would literally not matter since it all ends up as heat in the end which is what you’re looking for anyway
Minus 5 watts on the three fans or something
My Pc is a good 500W heater with an attached entertainment generator.
what the fuck?
Ouch.
Meanwhile, in Portugal, my peak energy price will be around €.10, with the minimum at around €.06
To what degree is your house insulated already?
-40 is eye buggingly cold. You could have a styrofoam house and I would still worry about being cold in it, plus y’know, the giant fire hazard.
Well after lighting the styrofoam you won’t feel cold anymore
But I like feeling vijif!
Saves a pretty penny on refrigerating stuff but makes for a hard time to have a decent night of sleep.
And your remark on styrofoam hits hard with me.
I have an old house, nearly 100 years old, with a very poor score in thermal efficiency, that really needs some improvement but the idea of glueing highly combustible materials to the walls does not go well with me.
At least you can quick chill a beer!
I can’t drink…
At least you can quick chill a soda!
It’s a log cabin with 5cm added fibreglass insulation on the inside.
If you voted Liberal, you voted for this. #Leopardsatemyface
That is an insane price, and it feels like it should be illegal.
Further integration at an EU level would allow energy supply to be less influenced by local issues.
