ᐅ Gas Prices – Where Is Gas Still Affordable?

sysrun80 schrieb:

Methane contains enough hydrogen that even the "Green Local Chapter" would approve, right?

Then long-chain hydrocarbons are THE new stars on the eco-friendly horizon!

KingJulien schrieb:

Then long-chain hydrocarbons are THE new stars in the eco scene!

If I take the carbon from the air, it’s actually climate neutral 😉

sysrun80 schrieb:

If I just make up the C from thin air, it’s actually climate neutral 😉

Oh, come on, it’s even climate positive! Probably skeptics would then start a new cult warning about the “overfishing of the atmosphere” and the reduction of plant growth 😀

RotorMotor schrieb:

@andimann So, we have "transmission efficiency" for electricity, but not for gas? And when it comes to gas, you calculate with the highest possible efficiency for appliances, but for heat pumps, you consider a rather low average? Interesting...

A coefficient of performance (COP) of 2.5–3 is not a low average for an air-to-water heat pump... Very few people are willing to pay significantly more to install a larger heat pump than what the heat load calculation suggests, then pay even more to reduce the supply temperature to 28°C (82°F) and have the pipes installed less than 10cm (4 inches) apart... Then, the outdoor unit is placed in constant shade on the north side, and you can be happy to even reach a COP of 3 in a mild winter...

And andimann mentioned the most important point at the end. It may be ideal to store gas, convert it to electricity in power plants, and then use it in heat pumps. But this is by far the most complex and expensive technical route. On top of that, numerous new power lines would have to be built or upgraded… The natural gas network is already in place; no upgrades are needed there...

Engineers always have to balance between the technically best and economically viable solution 😉

Take, for example, underfloor heating with a supply temperature of 28°C (82°F) instead of 35°C (95°F)… Thousands of euros are wasted for just a few percent in savings, which won’t pay off even after decades...

andimann schrieb:
The value in my rough calculation above is therefore also rather at the upper end of the assumptions.
But it’s not about 5-10% better or worse efficiency at all. Personal usage patterns are much more important. I always find statements like “The heat pump is easily twice as efficient in the energy chain as a gas boiler” quite nonsensical. That’s simply not true. They’re not that far apart, and you can make both versions look good on paper.
Whereas the heat pump is probably a bit better in reality, and that will likely be the future—rightly so. But only as long as you use a comparatively clean gas power plant as the electricity source. If you do the calculation using electricity from a lignite power plant, your heat pump becomes quite a polluter...

At least in the last sentence, the context of reducing explicit gas consumption for heating versus the electricity mix and supplementary base load supply—which was partly affected by the French maintenance wave—is not clear.
And is this figurative lignite power plant expected to run extra for the next 20 years for this purpose?

A heat pump really only makes sense when I generate the electricity myself, for example through photovoltaic panels, or if it is produced locally from renewable energy sources. This was not possible with conventional fossil fuel heating systems. Unlike a pellet heating system, I am also not dependent on the fluctuating prices of the international wood market, which currently makes them extremely expensive.