Gabor Steingart wrote a excellent piece for Focus today, which I'd recommend. Topic? Natural gas and what Germans ought to worry about.
Five key things that people ought to grasp:
1. What this reserve amount held by the government amounts to? About two to three months of normal use by the public. So, once they crank up this reserve, you can start counting the days before chaos occurs.
2. Blackouts will only occur, if worst-case scenarios play out. If you had an average winter, without massive artic storms.....then the odds of a blackout are much less.
3. These three nuke plants kept running? They really don't amount to much, if you consider the entire grid. Basically, one-percent of what you'd need for a year....will be what the three combined, will produce for the whole grid. As he says....it's all symbolic in nature.....to reassure people.
4. When a natural gas shortage shows up....people, not companies, get the higher priority.
5. The only way to avoid chaos....is for every single individual to save and use LESS (than any point in their life).
2 comments:
I have natural gas heating and have yet to turn it on. The solar water heater, up to this point, has produced enough to sustain us. We recently built our house with all the modern insulation, so, it may be a few more weeks before we turn on the heating system. Which, btw, is a floor heating system.
Other than hot water for the bathroom/kitchen, my system is still in a off-position as well. I have a Dyson fan/heater in the living room, and use it for 15 to 20 minutes in the evenings. To be truthful....it's still 'cold' for me.
I had the floor heating in a previous house. My negative with it...it takes time to react to outside temp changes. If you had a 7-degree drop over four hours...it might be five to eight hours before the floor heat caught up to where it should be. I always felt it was a crappy pump behind the issue.
I will say...ultra modern windows/doors...probably saves 20 percent of your heating bill. My place here is air-tight. We even switched out the basement door/windows, and with zero heat produced for it....just having the controlled atmosphere and the furnace sitting there working....is enough to keep the whole basement comfortable.
Post a Comment