Ask HN: How do I/you prep for the energy crisis in EU?
As someone living in one of the countries in the North I can't say I am too alarmed by the looming energy crisis (maybe I have lived over too many crisis already and at some point this alarmism loses its meaning).
Having said that, I am interested on what measures others are taking to prepare for it? It's not like we can just store energy right? Stocking up on foods if the prices increase too much?
Things I've done were just to replace few older bulbs with LEDs and turn of some of the unnecessary appliances (like a second freezer).
152 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 223 ms ] threadWhere is your outrage when the USA attacks a foreign country with impunity and kills tens of thousands of "collateral damage" civillians in order to gain access to oil and gas resources or strategic trade routes or military positions?
.... all i hear is your silence
But when Russia does something to protect their border, ooooohhh, big bad russia.... must punish with useless sanctions that only hurt EU and the rest of the world.
Like the German Green Party member Annalena Baerbock who does not care if German people freeze and die in winter because a foreign countries conflict is more important than her own people.
" I will put Ukraine first “no matter what my German voters think” or how hard their life gets. "
Zelensky is a puppet for the USA and will never relinquish this failure of a war against Russia, regardless of how many Ukrainians die in the process, because 1) he is receiving essentially and endless supply of arms and military aid from the US and 2) his ego won't allow it.
What i don't like is fake outrage and hypocrisy from Zelesnky zealots who seem "ok" with thousands of civilians dying because one actor/Prime Minister can't understand when he is beaten.
If Russia really wanted to, they have the arsenal to level and completely destroy the Ukraine and its infastructure, but they don't. Instead of understanding this fact, Zelesnky continues to "poke the bear" and continues this useless war with ever more fervor.
Sometimes you have to know when you are beaten for the greater good of your countries citizens.
The Ukrainians are fighting for the very existence of their country and people, the Russians commit genocide regularly in Ukraine and regularly kill and rape civilians.
> If Russia really wanted to, they have the arsenal to level and completely destroy the Ukraine and its infastructure, but they don't. Instead of understanding this fact, Zelesnky continues to "poke the bear" and continues this useless war with ever more fervor.
The bear is not getting poked, it's getting destroyed right now, in this month alone Russias losses have been staggering. Ukraine is clearly winning back large amounts of territory now with the counteroffensive. The Russians have melted in the face of a slight resistance.
Who knew that the Russian army was incapable of taking a cities a mere couple hundreds of kilometres from its border?, they are a joke compared to what the world thought of them prior to the invasion this year.
> Sometimes you have to know when you are beaten for the greater good of your countries citizens.
Should tell Putin this before the Russians roll out the T-55s. I don't think they are far off it.
That’s funny, I didn’t realize that Ukraine was inside of Russia’s borders. I thought it was it’s own sovereign country.
BTW, I wonder if US is paying attention. It's no longer 1940s when the US manufacturing output won WWII, now the US are mainly people sitting in offices, managing production that happens in China. What happens when the tensions between US and China get really serious? If China decides to cut off US's corporations from their manufacturing base, the US is just a bunch of people in offices sending slack messages to each other... That does not win wars.
This also isn’t the 1940s anymore in the sense that, while the world and the US are particularly dependent on China, China is also dependent on the rest of the world. Supply chains are global and span multiple countries for even basic items.
Set all rooms in the house to 18-19 c. Going to heat my home office/bedroom to 20-21 c only during the day/while being there.
Hope that electric heating will still be legal.
Yeah, I can, it turns out. Our bodies can take a loooot more stress than we think.
As result, we need to minimize external stimuli to be able to concentrate. And being uncomfortable due to the cold is one such stimulus.
All the electronics keep the room relatively warm, so most of the heating is actually turned off in that room :)
If you are feeling more adventurous I got through a cold winter where the heating broke when I was a student with a mix of warm clothing, blankets, and doing exercises to keep warm. When you start getting cold, do some press-ups/squats etc.
If you are feeling really adventurous I would recommend going outside wearing less clothes than you want to, just trousers and a shirt/jumper. When you get really cold head back in and it will seem positively warm! Another way of doing this is cold showers.
Last winter, I used it a lot when WFH to avoid the temptation of using the boost on the central heating. With two batteries, one can be charging while the other is in use. According to my meter plug it was economical to charge.
I found it worked best with a thin base layer underneath the heated vest, and a good fleece over it. There are several heating areas on the front and back, and I found that the battery lasted best by starting at the highest heat setting and then stepping down through the levels as I warmed up. Very useful when sitting still long periods at your computer. And of course the advantage over a blanket or electric fan is that you can walk around with it on.
[1] https://www.arrislife.com/products/arris-heated-vest-size-ad...
I agree, but OP seemed a bit reluctant to try that so I suggested the next best thing.
Thanks for the heated vest suggestion.
I find the warmth lasts about an hour and has the side effect of also warming my office a degree or so.
Air source heat pump (split AC unit) is the way to go. Those things have efficiencies of 200-600%.
1. https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-...
* Not wearing socks and slippers indoor
* Having draft indoors, even when it's +30C outside
* Going outside after shower with wet hair
* Air conditioner
I'm not. The lower limit of my comfort zone is 19c, anything colder and I can't work.
I’m just gonna ask now because I’ve seen it so often. Is this an idiom or is there some kind of expectation people can do push ups? Personally I can do a bunch of pull ups but I don’t think I’ve ever done a single proper push up. Judging from obesity stats I’d expect like half the populace to not be able to do either.
My combined water boiler is set to turn on/off on schedule. When running off electricity it only heats water during the night.
Some other appliances are also set to work on schedule. Washing machine, dish washer etc... usually run overnight.
All computers are set to sleep after 10 min of inactivity. The only things that are on 24/7 are APs, a few cameras and a NAS.
I also have a garden. I grow/pickle my own tomatoes, cucumbers, pumpkins, apples, prunes, mushrooms, nuts, berries. But not potatoes, since those are cheap to buy.
I think in total, it would be enough to last for 3-4 months.
My understanding so far is that industry will freeze (as needed) so that all the reserves can be used for people. I get a feeling that this crisis is becoming more media-gorging-on-crisis-clicks than it is an objective analysis.
When industry dies the social safety net dies, it will happen when the Euro looses its value, in which case money printing will no longer be possible without hyperinflation. And a devalued Euro is only useful if there is still an industry left to export things.
Once that happens people will actually freeze.
https://www.ft.com/content/46d3c3fb-e79a-464c-afe1-7079d3e4f...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-17/energy-cr...
France has the capability to selectively cut off some neighborhood from the grid and they plan to do 2 hours rotations if need arises.
I don't know if they are going so far as moving people out of their house to gather them in a larger building that is easier to heat.
Quite frankly, I don't expect to hear about the real plans before mid-october.
I know the government reached some industrials which were usually left off energy offset plans (basically processing factories), so this might be serious, but honestly, people heating with electricity should be fine.
Slovakian ministers are talking about people having to go into the woods secretly to cut down wood to set on fire. There are countries where they are fully expecting people who work for a living not being able to afford to heat their homes.
People are going to die over this.
You are most likely talking older and poorer people. Some will maybe get sick due to insufficient money to heat, some will die from monoxide poisoning from using unfamiliar and improper stoves.
Just to get people's attention.
Shit will be fine.
For highly payed ivory tower folks, yes. For everyone else, it's going to be difficult. Energy is everything in modern society.
Not sure what others are doing.
Depends on what you mean by "fine", too.
Yes.
An average of 9,700 deaths each year are believed to be caused by living in a cold house, according to research by National Energy Action (NEA) (UK).
Why do you think that with less heating, or the same heating cost 4x the amount, the situation would be better?
If I had to guess, I'd say much more than usual, but not a calamitous amount like millions or anything. Every winter, elderly who can't take good care of themselves succumb to cold or illness. For one winter, I'd say that most average people will be able to survive, albeit uncomfortably doing things like burning through their remaining savings or getting deeper into debt, huddling in bed together or wearing thick layers indoors, and finding trees to chop down for wood if desperate.
This prediction is just for 1 winter. If this situation lasts until the next winter, people/governments will be even more screwed financially by then and the outcome will likely be calamitous then.
> My understanding so far is that industry will freeze (as needed) so that all the reserves can be used for people.
Real economies aren't video games that have a pause button. We learned during Covid that shutdowns that are labeled as temporary are not so. Supply chains get ruined: machines and spare parts and needed chemicals get harder and harder to find. Businesses can't afford to pay rent and wages for months with no income and have to shut down. Truly skilled employees with real domain knowledge use the shutdown to retire early or change careers and their knowledge of processes is lost. Etc.
And this isn't a normal time where the governments of the world can really go further and extend themselves to really help and minimize the impact: they blew themselves out financially overreacting to Covid and are insisting on blowing out whatever remaining financial resources they might have to endlessly signal their virtue against Putin.
You can store energy of course and even hoard it which increases the problem. Here in Poland first there were 2 week lines for coal and now there is none. Pellet has gone up in price 3x. Electric price has gone up 2-3x. Gas supply is in question. The government has said to burn anything for heat you can get your hands on which means low quality coal, peat and trash. Even if I have energy, my lungs would pay the price.
Some people are running the numbers and realizing that they can temporarily move to a warm country for the price of their heating and electric bills.
I did get a massively reduced bill last month though. The only thing I can really ascribe that to is only filling the kettle with minimal water, and getting my son to turn his gaming pc off when he's not using it!
Can set a "Hibernate if idle after X minutes" instead.
That was based on comments from the outgoing UK PM. I don't drink the stuff myself, but “epic amounts of tea” is not an unusual concept amongst many of my friends over here.
But I'm sure it really isn't responsible for the vast majority of my energy usage. Its the only real change I made though over the last month, so not sure why my usage has dropped...
I've seen some iffy advice for adding smart plugs to everything (in at least one case in an article sponsored by a smart device manufacturer, go figure, though that fact was not exactly clear in the headline or main text). It is one of those things where the maths often doesn't work out: will that media player or microwave on standby really consume significantly more power than the smart-plug with built-in wireless (and the alexa/google/other hub to control it if needed)? And would it not be just as easy to flick the switch yourself given you won't need to use it remotely?
I am adding smart plugs to some things, but for convenience (that “being to lazy to physically go to the switch and press it” factor) more than power saving.
More on this, I grew potatoes recently in my garden and stocked them in my garage. A tote of potatoes can last a couple people for months. It requires potatoes, some sand and a cool, dark place to keep it all.
I do want a solar installation for myself though.
Who do you know who is old and frail and might need looking in on? Who do you know who has very young children? Who do you know who is good at cooking? Who might need food? Who can coordinate getting it to them? Who do you know who has a big enough house to host a warm potluck meal over the winter every week or so? Do you have enough people to rotate houses?
Look for what in the US is sometimes called a mutual aid group. If you don't have one: pick two friends, make one.
So far, until December gas has gone up for me about 2x (now 1.67 eur/m3 or so? Whereas electricity is at 0.48/kWh, so up about 2.4 fold compared to 2 years ago), meaning about 300 eur/month for gas, ~150 for electricity which is not a real problem for us... yet... I guess for January 2023 the price may go up much higher...
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groningen_gas_field
I have a free-standing air-conditioner that I got because temperatures hit records this year, are you saying I should put the cold side of it outside and pipe the tube into my home?
Split A/C units (like ceiling mounted ones) are uncommon in most of Northern Europe residential buildings..
Also, expect to allocate larger budget for gas & electricity bill. I do expect the govt. to cushion the blow for consumers tho, so I'd be surprised if my bill ended up 600% up, but it won't break the bank.
Power might be a bit of a problem. I don't think it's going to go out, of course, because my little corner of Germany is connected to a bunch of hydro and solar power plants and there is the nuclear power plant "Isar" only a 100 km from here, which probably will be running if things go bad. But it's the price i'm worried about. There is some legislation coming up, that may help with that, though.