Price of electricity in Finland peaks at 2.35€/kWh today. Keeping my tiny granny cottage warm costs me over 50 euros for a single day. It's negative 25C (-13F) outside.

Critical_Insight@feddit.uk to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 715 points –
i.imgur.com

That massive spike of 50c/kWh at the left looks tiny compared to today even though that's already insanely expensive

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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.

Playing Frostpunk and my PC is literally the generator.

Man, I need to return to that game.

But it's so stressful. Like the main scenario I tried to save everybody, then the game throws 43 children my way... I have to admit, took three minutes to decide what to do.

It's very pretty, and the loop is great, I love management games, but this one just hits differently.

I got it through a giveaway and when I was going to start playing, my cat died and it was just too heavy for me at that frame of mind.

It's been a couple of years now, though. I should give it another go.

That's the beauty: you have to make the tough choices for the greater good and future of the town. I've been playing a dozen hours a week for a few months and finally have somewhat of a feel for how to start building the town at the beginning so it doesn't screw me over later.

I initially didn't like it when I got it for free on Epic, now it's one of my favorite games.

I bought it, because I saw some recommendations. I even played some on my Steam Deck.

But the PC experience is the best, though I moved to OpenTTD after the first scenario.

I upgraded the cooling system on my pc recently and now I can barely even hear my room to half of what it used to

Assuming you meant heat and not hear. Upgrading your cooling should not lower the total heat output of your PC (it's more likely to increase it). The only exception is if you somehow send the heat out of the room, but that would be a crazy complicated setup. Your PC always turn the same amount of electric energy into heat energy and dissipate it in the room. if it's more efficient it will cool down the components more, possibly giving them the opportunity to increase frequency further, which increase the power draw, which is turn into more heat that is dissipated in the room.

I kept the main room of my condo warm for a winter by having two rigs running 24/7 while I didn't have a baseboard because I was doing renovations!

Imagine the OC potential at those low room temps!

50 Euros a day is insane. That's a good portion of what I pay for a whole month.

Part of it was faulty pricing from a Norwegian electricity exporter. Also, they have almost finished the new infrastructure, so they do not have to import as much in crisis situations. I think a new nuclear power plant goes online and lots of renewable stuff. The problem OP is maybe talking about seems to be very well handled by the state and already solved. https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/24708-electricity-prices-in-finland-return-to-normal-levels-in-2023-down-64-from-previous-year.html

Lucky you. 175 square meters, 25cm styrofoam on walls and 30cm rock wool on ceiling and I pay 200€ per month in winter for gas heating in Poland. Solar panels are not economical in current regulations and billing rules have changed so those with heat pumps pay at least twice us much in coldest months.

We are fucked from every angle.

hey, whats the price for gas per cubic meter in Poland?

Invoice from yesterday for December 2023. I used 201 m3 of gas, calculated by provider as being equal to 2224kWh of power for which I paid 682.81 PLN (157 € to be exact) in total including taxes and surcharges. So 3.397 PLN or around 0.78 EUR per m3.

December was one of the coldest months this season. Last year I used maximum of 250 m3 per month which happened to be January/February. This then exceeded 200€

This includes both warm water and heating using low-temperature floor heating. Current thermostat settings give me 22C on the base floor and 20C on the first floor (where most heat escapes, obviously). I also have mechanical ventilation with recuperation.

Shit’s expensive.

With current prices of electricity, the same heating power with perfect constant COP of 3 (not possible with December temps for air heat pump) would cost me 666 PLN. (Nice). How can I offset the cost of installing it in the first place LOL.

wow! i paid 220euros for gas heating and warm water in 78m2 flat in poland for all last year.

Yeah I lived in flats before, it’s a totally different story, unless your flat is on the last floor or on the corner there is not much heat loss assuming your neighbors also use the heating.

not really... my flat is in corner. Gave 3 sides, nirth, east, and south. No other flatsconnected with mine. And to this, flat under mine is empty, nobody is living there.

Then I don’t know why, but I am sure over 30% of heat in my house escapes through the roof.

Get a space heater.

Mine was $15 at Walmart, heats my room like it's Spring, and only adds $5 per month to my electricity bill.

Come Summer, I'm going to get a dehumidifier and see if I can use it in place of my A/C.

Bruh, a space heater is the least efficient way to heat a space, unless electricity somehow costs less per MWh than gas (that is insanely cheap and only true in a few key places in the world).

Also dehumidifiers... don't do what you think they do? They are basically an A/C unit, that dump the hot air in the room they sit in. Literally worse than nothing.
*Re-*humidifiers have marginal benefits in (very) dry weather as evaporation is endothermic. As soon as the air is even somewhat humid though, they're literally worse than nothing again.

It's not inefficient if it makes you feel warm. Often you don't really need to warm everything in a house to be comfortable. It might make sense to do so in a situation when electricity goes out/grid is unreliable and you don't have a thermal battery to ride on for a few hours, or you want to keep your water pipes warm enough so they don't freeze.

But I know a lot of people who choose to forego so much heating, keeping their space to like <15/59, and have a heated blanket or space heater/fireplace entertainment center.

Feel like this works best in a shared living situation though, like an apartment or town home. For detached situations, maybe it does make sense to keep things relatively warm in case of emergencies.

They were talking about consistently heating a whole room though. I guess there's a case to be made if the thermostat for the central gas heating is in another room and can't be moved... But you should probably organize your heating so that this is a corner case (which is why the thermostat is typically in the living room in detached living. Other rooms don't usually need to be kept particularly warm).

Of course if you have a badly insulated house and no way to properly distribute the central heating or to pay to heat the whole space to 18 °C, use resistive if you must. But that goes against everything that central heating is supposed to be for.

Also you really should not let a building go under 15 °C. It depends on the specifics (insulation, ventilation), but you're liable to get mold or other kinds of water damage due to condensation.

Good points. There are a variety of houses/buildings built during various periods of time according to various codes and standards, but if you're within city limits (US/Canada) then your house was probably built after the 70s/80s and has decent insulation. If there is an issue with the central heating in that kind of home, I 100% agree that there's an issue that you might want a GC to fix. If your house/building is old, or if landlords don't want to fix shit (and complaints are too much of a hassle), then I can also see that space heating can be a reasonable bandaid: at least until you get out of that situation.

Condensation is something I also forgot. That's important for you electrical system too. In my experience in electric distribution/collection, usually we'd want to keep termination points around 20/68, but thermostats could drop to as low as 10/50 before kicking in. Certainly keeping a house colder than 10/50 is a bad idea, but between that and normal 20/68 I'd think would be fine. You also have the risk though that your thermostat is a single point of measurement for the system. Other parts of a house might be cooler/warmer, so I'd agree with the advice to keeping your house warmer than 15/59, unless it supports multi-unit dwellings.

Good convo, cheers

I will never complain about paying 33¢/kWh for 3 hours a day in the summer ever again.

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.

Oh interesting, never knew that's a thing. Sounds mostly like a good development to make people more conscious about their consumption.

Sounds more like an incentive to put up solar panels and battery storage. Even if it isn't enough to go off grid totally, you can at least store on cheap days.

Spot is quite normal in the Nordics. Over all it's the cheapest, but some days suck obviously.

This summer we had days with negative prices. My bill for July was 78 NOK (about $8). Might have been August when I think about it...

Yeah about 30% of Finns have a plan lile that. It's bit of an gamble, but on average it'll be cheaper on the long run.

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.

https://tibber.com/

And on average, you'll pay just as much as everyone else. If prices go through the roof, you'll get screwed. See 2022.

Nope. More than 80% of my usage comes from heating and driving and I've heavily optimized car charging and heat buffering to make use of low cost times.

Heating can only be optimized for about 24h periods, that's why I can supplement my heating with wood from my own forest.

Driving, between April and October pretty much only happens using electricity from my own roof, between May and September the entire house uses less than 100kWh from the grid.

Before I signed at Tibber, I had of course compared my recorded load profiles including simulations for automated usage optimization against EPEX 60min day-ahead prices and I would have been at less than 0.23€/kWh on average since 2020, including the high prices of 2022.

Do most Finnish people pay spot prices for electricity?

About 30% do

Interesting.

At these temperatures, I can't imagine air source heat pumps being very efficient.

I would probably have a spare gas, oil or wood based heater and use that for days like this, or for if the power goes off on days like this.

Older houses definitely have them... but there was this trend at some point to renavate older houses and remove the oil heaters and fireplaces and wood heated saunas, and replace everything with electric ones. Why? No idea, trends are weird.

Electricity is usually less polluting than the various fuels, wood fires especially will fill a valley with smoke, the rest are mostly to avoid the carbon dioxide

Carbon monoxide too... and chimney fires... don't forget about indoor emissions with open stoves... Even if you don't care about the environment, electric wins the health&safety race by a landslide. Forgetting to do the maintenance on a heat pump doesn't exactly carry the same risks as with a wood stove.

Heat pumps are expensive and electricity can vary in price (who in their right mind opts in to spot pricing without on-site power generation tho, what the hell). Still, it's not hard to see why everyone who can afford it is electrifying.

Newer models are actually.
We had negative 30 C the last two days and our air-to-air kept the whole upper floor comfortable. 90 m².

Granted it's a brand new and very well insulated house, but -30 bites well on those too!

Most houses up here have other electric alternatives or a fireplace.
Gas and oil are beyond abnormal to have and I think oil is even illegal in Norway now...
Don't quote me on that though

Wow, air to air even?

But do you know what the COP is at -30?

Here is a link to it

I must make a small correction though: The last night with -30 it struggled a bit. Only managed to keep the upper floor at 19 °C so we had to turn on the cables to get over the peak.
I'm still mightily impressed by it though!
Max consumption was 32 kW/day, so roughly 4-5 € pr/day with our prices.

I’m surprised that those 30% don’t have batteries to shift load times

Those batteries would never pay themselves back.

I'm in the UK on an agile tariff and I'm not quite so sure - it depends on a number of things. Sure my batteries were bought primarily to support my solar panels. but I've been making quite a lot of money this winter.

  1. There are times when it is windy and there is low demand, when prices actually go negative - fill your batteries and make money
  2. The differential between lowest and highest price per kWh is often 30p so filling up when it is 10p and using when it is 45p makes sense.
  3. The grid will sometimes pay you large amounts of money with a few hours notice that they will pay you a premium to discharge your batteries when demand is predicted to be extremely high - to avoid them cranking up coal power stations. In November and December I made £90 just from this - and I only have 5Kwh batteries.

I haven't run the figures on payback times if the batteries were just for shifting and not solar - but they might just pay themselves back.

The math has been done multiple times. The batteries don't pay themselves back, and also need to be replaced from time to time.

Sure. But the math depends on electricity tariffs. And those change and therefore, so does the maths. it sounds like tariffs are pretty extreme currently

Batteries on a plan like that, where they're part of a large virtual battery, do pay for themselves within warranty

Solar batteries never do. To rationally buy a battery one needs to put high value on backup power

Is that actually a widespread practice anywhere? I'm in Switzerland and I don't think I've seen that anywhere (other than in one farm near me which is entirely covered in solar panels)

In the UK domestic solar panels are quite common and new installations usually come with batteries. Agile 30-minute pricing tariffs are still new and fairly experimental, but people are rapidly realising that their batteries can be really useful when used to force charge/discharge based on grid demand. Octopus is probably the leader: https://octopus.energy/blog/agile-pricing-explained/

I live in the northeast US and we looked into batteries. Unless you’re rolling your own and have a very specific home/garage layout installing them is really difficult. They have to be outside the living space, away from flamingo wall coatings and windows. And they need to be relatively climate controlled (not great in direct sunlight or frigid temps).

Until we start designing battery systems that can mount outside (away from the house, like propane tanks) within their own heat pumps to manage temps built in, it’s not going to be popular in climates like ours (which are very similar to Swiss and lower scandawegian climates).

They should probably be bigger metal boxes with sodium flow batteries and heat pumps, like we have now for utility boxes in some places. They could incorporate the smart/net meters required to pump back into the grid too.

It's the first time I hear about final consumers paying spot prices. What's the reason for it? Ecological activism?

Because at its cheapest it can be even free. For a long time last summer it was only like cents, sometimes even cheaper and at best negative. And the fixed contracts have been expensive for a while now in finland. I'm paying 8cents/kwh with the conract I got last fall. I got it because I was skeptical about prices at winter and I'm so glad I took that contract

And at one point, due to an error, it was tens of cents negative. You were literally getting paid to use electricity. Though, we're paying it back now.

Some people were even running electric heaters outside. Stupid but hilarious.

Making a note to blame Finland when global warming turns Earth into a fireball.

Plans like that started gaining popularity in the recent years as in general they were cheaper than ones with fixed prices. Then because of the Russian invasion the prices skyrocketed with daily averages of even 30 and 40 cents and people were in deep trouble with their electric bills and many of them scrambled to get 20 - 30c/kWh, 1 to 2 year long plans to save their asses. However the spot prices then dropped back to 3 to 4 cents for the spring and summer and now those people were stuck with their fixed price plans and are paying 10x the spot prices. Personally I just decided to gamble with the spot priced plan as my 6c/kWh plan had just ended and the 8 to 12 cent plans are all 1 to 2 years long. Despite freak days like this, on average, I'm still probably paying less than I would have with a fixed price plan.

So not mildly infuriating, but fuckaroundandfindout?

Fixed rates on renewal went crazy after the war started. Now it's possible to choose low-load times for running dishwasher etc. On average the spot price is lower than available fixed rates, although some lucky people locked in long cheap contracts before February 2022. Most of those will expire this or next month at latest. It's certainly easier to have a fixed price contract.

Anti-ecological maybe.

Consumers have chosen the spot deals because of the lowest possible prices with disregard to the high points and consumption.

I think the opposite. Price is usually high when demand is high because of cold temperature. Because of the high price, you're motivated to consume less, and that's a good thing for the grid. It's also a good thing for the carbon footprint because usually this is when the most polluting plants are activated, gas first, then fuel and coal. This is where protecting the consumer too much from the wholesale market volatility can be a problem, a fix price doesn't motivate the end consumer to adapt consumption base on supply/demand which is important to reduce carbon footprint, instead the country pollutes more than it would if people were more aware. The problem is rather the risk for personal finance. That's why I thought mostly ecological activists would be motivated enough to take this risk. But I forgot the possibility of very low prices on average.

I'd see you as an exception to the spot consumers here. Very admirable perspective!

Is there a specific reason the price spiked that much? That's a 950% price hike within four hours.

We've had negative 20 temperatures for over a week which happens about once every 10 years so the demand is extremely high and on top of that few of our powerplants are out of service for maintenance so that electricity has to be bought from abroad too.

Few cold days in a row is not an issue as buildings still have heat stored up in the structures but when it lasts for a long time the demand for more heating goes up drastically.

Scheduling power plant maintenance during winter in a country where it gets that cold seems a tad, uhm, insane?

Sometimes circumstances leave you little choice...

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I'm don't know how energy contracts work in Finland, but in Germany you usually have a fixed price per kw/h. That price may change frequently, but it has to be announced and you have the right to cancel the contract each time.

The graph OP showed looks like the price development on the spot market, that's where energy providers buy energy short-term, apart from their long-term contracts. Spot-market-energy is naturally more expensive than the long-term one. That price may also be very unstable, as for example an unexpectedly cood winter week among several regions/contries can let it hike up pretty drastically.

AFAIK, this short-term price is an option for the private consumer as well. It has the advantage of being much cheaper most of the time when demand is low/normal but the disavantage OP shows here.

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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

Have you looked at anything like this? They are extremely tiny wood stoves that are perfect for little spaces. https://cubicminiwoodstoves.com/

Yeah I have considered it. There's just no good place for the chimney either. It would need to go thru the wall and past the eaves on either of the two sides of the building that the roof is not sloping towards to because else falling snow is going to rip it off in the winter.

I know it's not uncommon for the chimney to go through the eaves for more support, if that's an option for you. I know someone in Alaska with a tiny house that did something like that, with a wall mounted tiny stove and it was pretty impressive!

That's fairly typical. WTF would you do in an outage?

I hear this a lot since we converted to heat pumps. People don't realize basically every heat source these days other than wood needs electricity. We kept our oil system as a backup for very cold days but it also doesn't work with no power.

Diesel heater set up properly maybe the way, just not sure how well it would work kept outdoors at those temperatures.

That sauna sounds like a candidate to hook up to the heat pump if you ask me.

How about a small propane heater, like a Mr Buddy type unit? Those can be connected to a extension hose and a 20lb propane tank, and are safe to use indoors with adequate ventilation.

I got one for emergency heat, and it can take 2 of the 1lb propane cylinders directly, or the 20lb tank with a hose. The 20lb tank could provide heat for over 24 hours but IDK how expensive propane is there. It cost me $18 for a 4-pack of the 1lb cylinders, and I think the 20lb ones are about $50 range.

So you're BigDickEnergy in a granny cottage, heating the place with your wood to get off grid. Nice!

wow that is crazy. my bill for December was $77 in the US.

Wouldn't there be a price cap in events that the wholesale market has anomalies like this? That's standard in most jurisdictions. The wholesale price is still "real" because there's some system or market condition reflected in this spike, it's just not normal for ratepayers at the distribution level to not have a price cap protection. It's like the opposite scenario if the price isn't high enough to cover the cost in actually delivering the energy and running the grid, so a Global Adjustment would come in to effect to cover the difference. There can even be surplus conditions where the price is in the negative.

what kind of regulatory distopia do these laws come from?

/s

We have price caps in the UK. They're not perfect but they have stopped us from paying a lot more than we would have this past year. And the UK is definitely no (did you mean to say?) utopia. Or do you think a price cap to protect consumers is something from a distopia?

Big part of the price was that Finland was close to needing rolling blackouts, because there wasn't enough electricity. All transmit lines were fully utilized, and all available power plants on, so only way to get the consumption down was with the price.

It worked, Finland dropped the electricity consumption almost 10% and we got through quite easily.

I guess with my knowledge of energy markets, a situation like that would result in higher prices just by the way the market functions, responding to supply and demand. The graph here appears to be a market clearing price rather than a price after adjustments, where a lot of incentives would be brought in like an intentional price hike.

We were in the opposite situation though where we were running into surplus overnight during a period of energy transition. You'd see these stupid misinformed articles being like, "the government is giving away YOUR electricity to the US!" Was like during the 2003 blackout where we needed to bring large loads online carefully alongside generation, people were freaking out how casinos and industry got power before them. The need for dispatchable loads connected to the high voltage transmission grid in that situation wasn't as headline worthy.

Someone said -45.5 °C

-49.9°F is insane. A couple of years ago in the upper US Midwest, we set our record for around -45°F (-42.7°C) but that was with wind chill, the base temp. was something like -30°F (-34.4°C). People who've never experienced those kinds of temperatures really cannot comprehend how miserably cold it is and just how extremely dangerous it can be. I know there's probably arctic dwellers that are used to those kinds of temps regularly, but it blew my mind when I had to go out into it and still got cold under 3 layers of clothes.

I remember walking to school at -29C when I was young thinking it's really bloody cold only to find out school is closed and walking back. Checked the temperature only when I got home.

Had this happen too. Grew up in Alaska. My sister and I got turned around and told to go home by the cops because the schools were all closed. I have no idea how cold it was but it was cold enough that exposed skin started to burn a few seconds after stepping out the door.

in the upper US Midwest, we set our record for around -45°F (-42.7°C) but that was with wind chill, the base temp. was something like -30°F (-34.4°C).

I really can't imagine how cold that is. I'm from Australia and currently live in California, so 10C (50F) is cold to me lol. I've never lived somewhere where it snows and have never had to winterize anything.

I've been to New York City during winter and felt extremely cold but I think it was 'only' -5C (23F) at the time.

It truly is the definition of hell, in my opinion. I've been in extreme heats in Kuwait during peak summertime when it's 125+ F, and extreme cold is still far worse to me. I know they're both dangerous and deadly, but the cold is just painful whereas the heat makes me feel restless and a sense of malaise, maybe.

I got to -20f with very strong winds last year. Froze half the pipes under the house, even through insulating layers. We had to tape up plastic sheets in some parts of the house like one of those walk-in freezers to try and keep the important places warm..

This house is a cheap ass 70s prefab. It was not made for 0F, let alone -20 and blizzard conditions.

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

Hydro =/= hydro. The plants in Finland are tiny in comparison.

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.

Canada has 85% of the worlds freshwater. There are a crazy amount of big rivers. Its not really a fait comparison.

This is Québec only. Other provinces that have more water and hills still have less hydro.

I don't think the fact that Finland is north and cold and icy is a factor either. A lot of Québec's power generating stations are in the desolate north, with some of the biggest ones on rivers flowing into the Hudson's Bay, and they were built in the 70s.

However looking at the relief and hydro and topo maps of Finland, while there's plenty of lakes, there's no strong rivers. Couple this with an apparent ban on new hydro, and we got the answer.

I wonder how they'd fare with geothermal.

i keep a pile of coal in the cellar for the extra cold days

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.

Your thinking of charcoal, which are chunks of wood converted into almost pure carbon by heating them above their combustion temperature in a low oxygen environment. He was talking about coal that was mined out of the ground. Plants from an ancient swamps that didn't decompose, but were converted into almost pure carbon from millions of years of heat and pressure from being buried.

No.

I don't think any type of coal heating has existed for homes in quite a long time in my country.

I honestly thought it was phased out decades ago in pretty much the entire western world.

I have electric! The coal stove is backup, some people use wood as a backup. It's not uncommon

And then you just burn them in a pot on your table and breathe the exhaust?

Is heating with electricity common in Finland? That seems like it would cost a fortune even in good times.

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.

Geothermal is expensive and not worth it financially in many countries but when you are looking at 2.35€/kWh it seems like a great investment.

He doesn't mean geothermal in large scale but home level geothermal. It is actually very cheap and efficient technology.

Over half of the new houses in Finland are build with geothermal. It costs roughly 18 000€ to construct.

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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.)

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.

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).

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What was the price before the Ukrainian war?

You could get fixed price plans for around 5c/kwh. However take into account that yesterday was an anomaly. The average price for the last 28 days is 12.65c/kWh. During the summer time it was around 1 to 3c/kWh.

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?

It's an easy conversion - 1 kWh is equal to 3412 Btus. In Germany, both electricity and natural gas are charged in kWh. I know a fair bit about energy measurement if you have any questions.

This is fascinating to me. How does it factor efficiency, since gas needs to be burned?

To turn gas to electricity assume 50% efficiency. 2MWh of gas = 1MWh of electricity.

So given that most gas furnaces (at least in the US) operate at 90-95% efficiency, does that mean 20 kWh of resistive electric heat (as measured on the bill) provides similar heat to ~11 kWh of gas?

Ah. 50% efficency to turn gas into electricity.

If you are just making heat then burning gas directly is much better.

How does it factor efficiency, since gas needs to be burned?

Energy is energy regardless of what unit is used to show it. so 3412 BTUs always equals 1kWh.

You do an efficiency calculation after, average gas blower is about 90% so you'd end up with 3070 BTUs or 0.9kWh of heat energy.

Great question. When it comes to utility billing, efficiency doesn't factor at all. Just like with electric billing, the utility company gives zero shits about what you do with your energy. They just bill you for everything you use.

Utility companies keep track of the volume used in cubic meters and convert it to kWh using the formula...

Volume (in cubic meters) • Calorific value (usually around 37-42) • 1.02264 (correction factor) ÷ 3.6 (conversion factor to kWh) = kWh

The calorific value accounts for the varying energy density of natural gas caused by its inconsistent composition. The correction factor accounts for the effects of the average temperature and pressure at the property on gas volume measurement. 1.02264 is standard for most locations but would be different if the location is extreme, like the high elevation of Machu Picchu.

What sucks about gas heating is some of the heat energy released leaves with the exhaust. The heating efficiency varies depending on the unit but is generally 90-95% for newer units but as low as 50% for older units. While 90-95% doesn't seem bad, electric heat pumps achieve efficiencies that exceed 100%, even as high as 300+%.

It does not factor efficiency at all.

The bill does not care about efficiency.

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

Cubic meters (or another similar measure of volume) is what I'd expect. It's the conversion to an unrelated and theoretical (since it's not actually being converted to electricity) unit that confuses me. I presume it's to make it easier to compare electric vs gas heat, but the variable efficiency of burning gas and the existence of heat pumps ruin that.

kWh is a unit of energy. Regardless of whether it is in the form of electricity or from burning fuel. So it is actually very related, and much more useful than a measurement of volume I'd argue. The measurement is of course done in m³, but then a conversion factor based on several factors is used to convert to an actually useful unit.

A m³ of gas really could be anything depending on pressure, temperature and constituents.

(Brace yourself for Much 'Merica) Several gas utilities I've had in the USA measure natural gas CCF, which is 100 cubic feet (at some standard temperature/pressure), which happens to be almost exactly the same as a Therm, or 100,000 BTU.

Yeah, even firewood can be (and not uncommonly is) measured in kWh

My meter measures it in m^3^ and my supplier, knowing the exact caloric value of the product they're selling, tells me in kWh on my bill.

edit: m^3^ of course not ^2^ lol

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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.

I’ve got a small 1200w heater that kicks on in the morning to bring the living room space up to 69. I live in a 40 year old house that’s insulated fairly well (I just had the attic redone last year to r-49) and it’s 45f outside right now. That little heater has used 6kWh since kicking on this morning getting the house up from 63f to the near 69 it is now.

On a day below freezing that heater will got for a lot longer through the day to keep temps up.

Space heaters are the way to go.

It's the difference between paying $70 and $5 more per month.

Space heaters are one of the most expensive methods. Check the power consumption, they are hungry things.

My electric bill says otherwise.

As always, I encourage people to see for themselves rather than trusting strangers on the internet.

The only time space heaters work well is when you avoid heating the whole house, and instead heat only a room

You don't exactly understand heat pumps, do you?

A space heater has an efficiency of close to 100%, heat pumps have at worst 100% and at best somewhere between 300 and 500%. Granted, in -35C environments, it's probably very close to 100%, but that's the absolute worst case, and an anomaly even in Finland.

What are you smoking? Space heaters gulp down electricity with the smallest ones running at hundreds of watts and standard ones around 1-2 kilowatts. The only ways a space heater is more efficient is if either you're spending a shitton of energy heating rooms you aren't in or if your homes heating system is in bad need of repair/replacement

Well, my electric bill went up a negligible amount and I keep the space heater running pretty much all the time.

Maybe you bought a shitty one or you're getting a shitty deal for your electricity.

All space heaters operate at the same efficiency since they convert electricity to heat via resistance. You may have a small one and low electricity rates in your area to see a negligible change. Or maybe other uses went down and masked the increase from the space heater usage.

Almost. Some are better at heating people, others are better at heating air

Bruh I don't think you understand how electricity consumption works.

A space heater will pull a given wattage, say 1000 watts for a pretty common one. Electric heaters are 100% efficient meaning 100% of the energy going in is converted to heat, so running that 1000 watt space heater for 1 hour will consume 1000 watt-hours (or 1 kilowatt hour) and heat the space by exactly 1000 watts or 1 kilowatt (kilo meaning thousand)

Plugging this into a electric bill calculator, at a common $0.15/kWh running that 1000 watt space heater 24/7 will cost about $100 per month

If your space heater is so insanely awesome, please do tell me, what's your electric rate and the wattage of the heater?

Bruh, I don't think you understand that heating a room is cheaper than heating your whole house. If I ran my space heater 24/7, I'd be sweating all day. If I run my central heater 24/7, my house barely reaches the temperature my room does before I turn my space heater off.

My electric bill is ~$160 when running the central heater. It's ~$80 when I run my space heater.

As always, I encourage people to see for themselves rather than trusting strangers on the internet.

Experience is better than theory, every time. I feel sorry for the people who will avoid saving money because of comments like yours.

To quote my earlier comment with emphasis this time:

The only ways a space heater is more efficient is if either you’re spending a shitton of energy heating rooms you aren’t in or if your homes heating system is in bad need of repair/replacement

So you've already agreed with my original point, because you reduced power consumption by turning your HVAC down and using a space heater to heat just the room you're in. Running a 4 kilowatt central heater will use more electricity as it runs than a 1 kilowatt space heater. But a 1 kilowatt space heater is still pulling down a kilowatt to run (which is a lot!)

Experience is better than theory, every time. I feel sorry for the people who will avoid saving money because of comments like yours.

YOU CAN LITERALLY CALCULATE THIS! Watts consumed by the heating source multiplied by number of hours per month it runs gives you the watt hours for power consumption, bigger number means bigger bill. In fact it's important to calculate it first because electric bills will naturally fluctuate and be difficult to identify the changes in consumption due to being an aggregate of everything in your home combined with outside temperature fluctuations.

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.

Outer walls in new homes in the Nordic countries are often 25-30 inches thick filled with insulation. They will keep out some cold (and some heat).

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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.

Spot rate pricing for electricity is uncommon among households for exactly this reason. The price is most likely the result of energy market conditions, rather than nefarious actors in the market intentionally manipulating market conditions.

Usually there's a company that would be absorbing that risk of price fluctuations by charging slightly more than the baseline normal so that they can afford to charge households at a loss for the short periods where the price spikes as insanely as this.

What’s the renewable energy like in a Finland during the winter? Solar, wind, or geothermal common and working?

Finland is too much north to hope for efficient solar energy.

In winter yeah but we have long ass days in the summer and even in early spring they work surprisingly well as solar panels are more efficient in cold temperatures.

I'm summer Finland gets same amount of solar radiation as German

Last 12 months Finland had electricity 87% with low carbon sources and 43% with renewables (source: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/FI )

During winter it stays pretty similar, because nuclear is 45%, wind 17%, hydro 17%, biomass 8% and solar is only 0.03%.

Coal is only 8%, but produces 58% of all CO2, which shows how bad it is.

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?

Normal energy price in Finland around 0,04€ - 0,10€/kWh. Last year average was 0,068€/kWh

That's extremely cheap, compared to 0,35€ in Germany.

-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!

Lol I don't know how that got autocorrected. Dutch is a funny language, but that isn't a word...

It's crazy. I've been doing all my insulation calculations based on a delta of 20 (20 inside, 0 outside).

To hit the same heating requirement, I'd need to triple the amount of insulation for -40.

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.

Get her a space heater, you won't even notice the difference in your bill.

I recommend getting one that blows air instead of one that just heats oil. I've used both types, and the one that blows air is way more effective.

Staying warm is not the issue. It's the price for that comfort. Running a 1kW space heater for 24 hours at yesterday's prices would have cost a little over 26 euros.

Crazy how it is with dynamic electricity price. Must be extremely inconvenient to monitor and react!

Here a border away in Saint Petersburg, Russia, we have electricity at a fixed rate of 4,9c/kWh in daytime and 2,7c/kWh in the night. There aren't any variable price tariffs in here, so the bill is always about the same.

We also have central heating (part coal/gas, part nuclear) that goes for 21€/Gcal (1,8с/kWh), so there is no need to expend electricity.

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.

Definitely. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area where it doesn't get too hot nor too cold, but I do still need heating during winter, and occasionally air conditioning during summer (maybe for 3 weeks or so, sporadically turning on during the day).

I bought the cheapest heat pump I could find that would work with my existing Ecobee thermostat (a Gree Flexx), and even that one says it'll work down to -22F with a 1.25 COP

I've got solar panels, which made a heat pump a better choice than a new gas furnace.

What's the average price during normal times? In Germany we are usually paying a fixed price, so fluctuations on the market do not reach the customers. However, this price is somewhere between 30 and 40c/kWh.

On average winter days it's around 10 to 15c/kWh and in summer like 5 cents or less. Some days in the summer the price literally goes negative.

I'm sorry. At least when it gets to negative 40 you won't have to translate it from C to F.

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.

If available in your area, Wood fibre is often a better option than mineral wool.

Wouldn't that be a fire hazard?

Wood fiber will burn slowly without any toxic fume. Its not perfect but better than most oil derived products.

I honestly don't understand. Isn't Finland one of the countries who should have figured out how to heat a home efficiently a long time ago?

If you voted Liberal, you voted for this. #Leopardsatemyface

Honestly doesn’t seem that bad if it’s just for one day. Maybe invest in something more sustainable in the future?

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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.