By P Gosselin
The energy follies of Germany’s current Socialist/Green government continue to compound unabated. It turns out the coalition partner Greens cannot even get renewable energy to work at their own party headquarters in Berlin.
How can the Greens demand everyone else convert to a heat pump when they can’t even get their own to work?
While the Greens of the Socialist-Green coalition government are pushing to ban fossil fuel furnaces from every home and building in Germany and forcing them to install heat pumps in their place, it has emerged that the Greens themselves cannot even manage to get their own heat pump up and running at their Berlin party headquarters! Oh, the irony.
According to media outlets, the Green Party headquarter in Berlin-Mitte has been a big messy heat pump construction jobsite “for years” – since 2019. Costs have run into the millions!
And still no heat after 5 million euros in costs
“Here at the Green Party headquarters in Berlin, construction has been going on for years. The heat pump is still not running,” reports RTL here.
“The Greens are experiencing first-hand how complicated it is to heat an old building with a heat pump,” RTL continues. “The renovation costs a total of five million euros. The heat pump is there, but does not heat.”
Refuse to learn from their own debacle
“Der Spiegel” reports on the heat pump debacle and how “heating the old building in a renewable way is not that easy”.
Apparently the work is far more complicated than the Greens previously thought as the project entails major renovation works, excavation, permits, expert personnel and special equipment. And now after having endured the construction, installation and cost woes for years, it remains a mystery today why the Green Party would want the rest of the country to experience the same nightmare.
Dragging on for years, costing millions
“In 2019, the Greens, chaired by Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, decided to rebuild their party headquarters in Berlin and modernize it in terms of energy, reports RND news here. “The gas boiler in the party’s old building was to make way for a modern heat pump, among other things. However, the measures were not carried out quickly, and have been dragging on for three and a half years, as the news magazine ‘Spiegel’ reported. So this is not exactly a showcase example for quick and unbureaucratic energy-efficient renovation. Doesn’t the transition to renewable energies and heating demanded by the Greens even work within the party headquarters’ own four walls?”
The Greens have become the country’s number one laughing stock. Little wonder they’ve lost almost half of their supporters over the recent months.
Schadenfreude.
Beat me to it.
Verschlimmbesserung
A German noun word for an attempted improvement that only makes things worse.
I learned this word from a TV commercial recently. Amazing how useful it is yet not in common usage here in the US.
Wow, that is a good one to add for its guaranteed future applicability to nearly all “green” projects.
The Germans also have an excellent word that applies to Green politicians: Backpfeifengesicht
Good word, too many letters though.
‘We are the govt and we are here to help’ … Verschlimmbesserung
Watgawahth is shorter and easier (for me) to say.
Sounds a bit like, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”
(Just like the energy grid.)
So many fantastic words exist in the German language.
I don’t speak nor read French.
It’s sacre bleu for French greenies.
“It’s like those French have a different word for everything!” -Steve Martin
These people always concentrate on the wrong hobgoblins
I love such delicious irony! I bet there are many more examples, but the MSM ignores them.
The Greens everywhere seem to have a reverse Midas effect, where everything they touch turns to crap.
Richard, I don’t think it is so much a bug as a feature.
That’s what the Duck Test says
Crap makes plants grow. Much like CO2.
“Nothing ‘green’ ever works properly”
– Tim Blair.
“I bet there are many more examples, but the MSM ignores them.”
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It’s called Cherry Picking
In the UK the Greens have run exactly 1 local council although they claim to have widespread support all over England and Wales. If you look at the track record of the Greens in Brighton and Hove council, it’s a dismal failure – almost as bad as the SNP in Scotland. They have proven that they can’t run a local council; the environmental service is worse than most other councils, they haven’t been able to finance properly and are continually asking the UK government for more money to bail them out. A disaster for the country if these idiots ever get more power.
And they haven’t built a single ferry either…just like the SNP in Scotland. 🙂
Scotland had the ferry fiasco, Brighton and Hove had the ‘meat-free Monday’ and transgender toilets fiasco. Oh yes, and plans to use flocks of sheep in the town as a traffic calming measure!
So meat free Mondays can be solved by a little judicious road rage. You can claim you skidded on the sheep poop- as a Welshman I can tell you sheep are not big on using toilets, even gender neutral ones.
Did the Greens not know that we have moved on from “horse” power? Sheep are very good for calming shitish horses.
So are goats. Which is where the phrase “got their goat” came from.
Greens are really communists with a thin disguise. Communism always turns to crap. Always will.
The Gore Effect.
https://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/tracking-the-gore-effect-015931
Here in Germany, we have the real estate concern Vonovia, they installed a lot of heat pumps in new houses.
But they have a problem, a bigger one 😀
Networks too weak: Vonovia cannot put heat pumps into operation
BOCHUM (dpa-AFX) – Germany’s largest real estate group Vonovia cannot start up heat pumps that have already been installed in many cases because they could not yet be connected. One reason is that there is not enough electricity available due to a lack of grid expansion, Vonovia CEO Rolf Buch said Thursday. Around 70 installed devices have not yet been connected, a company spokeswoman said.
Heat pump madness and grid expansion: Vonovia, JinkoSolar, Grid Metals
Vonovia: Heat pump strategy fails on the grid
The fact that the large power lines from north to south can only be part of the solution was shown a few weeks ago in headlines made by the housing company Vonovia: numerous heat pumps for apartment buildings could not be connected because the grid capacity was insufficient. Yet the heat pump targets are ambitious: From 2024, 500,000 new heat pumps are to be connected to the grid every year. Put simply, heat pumps work according to the reverse principle of a refrigerator. A cooling liquid absorbs energy, is compressed accordingly and then rereleases this energy again. The required electrical energy is a worthwhile investment: With standard air-water heat pumps, generating three to five kW of thermal energy from one kW of electrical energy is possible, depending on the building insulation and existing surface heating systems
This does not ring true. The ‘efficiency’ of a heat pump or ‘gain’, is not in question. You can spend a kW to move 2 or 3 kW. It does not depend upon the building insulation at all.
The facts are that most heat pump systems are small/under powered REQUIRING buildings to have excellent insulation.
So, a heat pump of a decent size plus the cost of excellent insulation will break most peoples bank!
Cynical reading implies that the builder knew they’d need help from others but kept quiet to sell units.
Isn’t that the beauty of subsidies?
Maybe this is more of a story tip idea somewhat already touched on. But how are we going to stop AI from creating a population with mush for brains? First we had internet pop culture group think. Now AI removes the “ process” from which I believe some of the learning and critical thinking skills are developed. I am getting just a tiny weeny bit concerned about AI in a number of applications.
“ I am getting just a tiny weeny bit concerned about AI in a number of applications.“
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Wikipedia on the Duck Test says among other things:
“…the concise format of the duck test is a form of intelligence
that machines are not capable of producing.”
I share your concern. Universal basic income, which will come on the heels of AI, is not a solution. Free money is always destructive. I think the solution is replacing free education with paid education so learning becomes the new work. This could start at any age and might go some way to countering the disinformation machine.
Nothing in USA history has ever been free. Any history of anywhere? The debate becomes philosophy.
Nevertheless I paid property taxes to help fund “free” education for other parents while also paying my own kids through a private k-12.
Free money from the government will also be spent freely. In turn, people will “need” more and more money from the government. Where does the money end up? With the rich of course!
Panem et circenses – Juvenal. The Romans found out, to their cost, that once you start giving out free stuff then you have to keep giving more and more, whilst at the same time you erode all sense of duty and responsibility in a society, eventually leading to frequent riots and civic breakdown. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it – George Santayana.
Yes. The quickest way to destroy a culture or society is to give people something for nothing. Destroy dignity first and all else follows.
“I am getting just a tiny weeny bit concerned about AI in a number of applications.” – I agree. BTW I assume by AI that you mean Affirmative Ignorance.
Anyone with a bit of experience knows that even with a large capacity heat source (gas-fired boiler or furnace) it is not easy to make a building comfortably warm. There are always cold places, draughts, etc. A heat-pump installation has more ways to go wrong than an installation with a boiler or furnace.
The article here suggests that the problems are technical. In most places if you speak about a heat-pump to an HVAC contractor they may not even know what you are talking about. These devices are not at all a common piece of HVAC equipment — becoming moreso? Possibly.
First, the measure of efficiency for a refrigerator or heat-pump is the coefficient of performance (COP) for a heat pump it is defined as
they are slightly different considerations and a person must think about both.
Second, the COP is a function of the working temperature difference between the condenser and evaporator. Most units have a COP of 3 to 4. But they won’t achieve this figure if:
1)The source of heat is so cold that there is not a large temperature difference with the cold working fluid in the evaporator. Too small a difference and heat transfer rate is very low.
2)Same as #1 but on the condenser side.
Third, unlike a furnace, the major source of heat involved is some ambient material, soil, water in the mains, or local air. If you don’t allow free access to enough of this material then there is inadequate heat to pump.
Fourth, as transfer occurs, the place you transfer from becomes colder and colder. It has to be replaced somehow. The evaporator coils may become covered with ice; so you are mining the available heat to pump to exhaustion or interfering with heat transfer rate. Both are bad.
Fifth, an air-sourced heat-pump uses a non-constant temperature source. As outside air temperature declines, so does the COP and eventually the heat pump is transfering so little heat that auxillary electrical resistance coils begin to spully heat — costs to heat now rise proportionally.
Sixth, so-called geothermal heat pumps use the ground as a source of heat, which is a better source of heat in most instances than the ambient air, but as one withdraws heat then this heat has to be drawn from increasing distant soil. Soil is a poor conductor of heat.
Finally, a forced-air system creates draughts by design as the vents stir the room air, and unless the draughty air is quite a bit warmer than room temperature then a person will feel cold. Also, delivering heat to remote parts of a room depends on delivering heat at higher than room set-point as this increases heat transfer rate through the room.
Heat-pumps depend on all the mysteries of heat transfer in addition to the complexities of the mechanical contraption itself. Lots of ways to go wrong.
Many good points Kevin. My ground source heat pump only works because there is a lot of flowing water underground beneath my house, which is an excellent way to replenish extracted heat (or flush away excess heat in air conditioning season). Soil, as you say, will not do the trick by itself. If there is insufficient water in the ground, the GSHP installation requires a supply of water that can be used to irrigate the heat transfer loop wells on demand, and my GSHP controller has a relay to turn that on or off as necessary. (My installation does not need this though, fortunately, because running city water into the wells could get expensive pretty quickly)
So, yours is a vertical(s) system?
Yes, four boreholes, 100 feet deep.
Yes, all of those issues you have cited point to the stupidity of using heat pumps for heating in any but the mildest winter climates. Using a heat pump in any part of the world that gets snow in the winter (and winter temps normally fall below freezing) is like using a horse to traverse a desert (instead of using a camel, which is far more suited to hot places that lack water). In other words, you are asking for trouble. And then you end up having to bring a camel along with the horse, for when it gets really hot and no oasis is nearby, and the poor horse can’t go on….so why not just opt for the camel to make the journey and not even bring the horse?
But sadly, we have people who are under the delusion that the “camel” is bad for the environment and are trying to force the use of horses….
And what really turns all this into a smack-my-head moment is at the same time they’re trying to push “electrification of everything,” they’re working overtime to make the electric grid as unreliable and expensive as they can make it.
The end result of which, if it doesn’t quite make it to anarchy, mass dependence on “whole house generators” powered by…diesel fuel, natural gas or propane.
What will “they” do if the AI keeps telling them it won’t work?
What will I do if the AI tells me it will work perfectly?
Someone’s going to have to say words they don’t want to hear themselves say.
The example from the headquarter of the green party uses geothermal heat source, and water distribution of the heat within the building.
Drilling the holes for the geothermal heat source in the middle of the densely populated Berlin was certainly expensive. There are reports that they had to use a crane to lift the drilling equipment over the roofs of the houses into the yards in the back.
For some reason my German countrymen fear drafts like the plague and avoid forced-air systems whenever possible. So in most places heat is distributed with water. however heat-pumps are not suitable for providing hot water efficiently, so the operate with rather “cool” water (around 45°C). This requires good insulation of the hot water lines on the one hand, and huge radiators on the other hand. Therefore, they are almost exclusively used with floor heating systems. Retrofitting an old office building with floor heating, which used to have most of their electricity and data lines and plumbing in the floors, is a nightmare.
I live in a cold climate in the Colorado mountains. My home is heated by a hot water system using very efficient but older natural gas boiler. I’ve been quoted 15-20 thousand dollars to replace that aging gas boiler. If I replace the boiler now will I then be forced to tear out my new gas boiler and convert to a heat pump in a few years? I cannot imagine the expense of converting to a heat pump, both the installation cost but also the expense of operating the heat pump in a climate that will have it constantly supplementing its output with resistance wire heating. Up here multi hour electricity outages also occur, often during severe snowstorms.
This story does nothing to allay my fears.
I was thinking the same thing. If it’s bad enough in Western Europe, which has a mostly mild maritime climate, then what are we supposed to do in landlocked North America with the huge temperature swings? Here in Colorado it can be 80⁰+ and then be below freezing a day later. Plus, just as with electric vehicles, not everyone has $30,000 lying around to spend on green energy fantasies.
“not everyone has $30,000 lying around to spend on green energy fantasies” and another $50,000 on an EV! Fixed it for you.
I just bought a house in Germany. It is a small house with only 65m² living area + cellar. I asked for quotes for a new compliant heating system. Most Heating Installation companies are too busy and did not provide any quote, so I got only 3 quotes:
“€ 35 000 or more”,
“€ 35 000 or more”,
“around €40 000”
The new laws not only make expensive heating systems obligatory, they also massively increased the workload for a shrinking population of licensed heating installation technicians. So they can charge what ever they want.
Just refuse. Can’t see Colorado sending you to prison. It would get into the newspapers
New rules usually hit new construction. Reliable heating would probably add to your home’s resale.
There was a study of the impact of the new laws by the current government (including the green party) on the costs of renovating a house for meeting the new standards.
There are energy efficiency classes for the insulation of houses with A being the best H being the worst.
buying a house with a fossil fuel heating system leads to the obligation to renovate. Also, if you need to replace a fossil fuel heating system in a house that you already own will also lead to this obligation.
The resulting costs are between 15% of the value of the house (including land value) for class A houses up to 55% of the value for class H houses.
This means that any houses with class F or worse are worth less than the value of the land that they are standing on, leading to complete demolition and rebuilding of the houses. In the USA and many parts of the world this might be normal, but in Germany houses are usually built to a very high standard and are supposed to last centuries.
Some people have noted, that the Green Party laws caused more destruction of the German real-estate values than World War II (in purely financial terms).
Crikey, having spent €5million it would have been cheaper to buy everyone a hot water bottle and a kettle and asked them to warm themselves up when the need arises…
What a sick joke the Green political class are?
How do we call someone who is incapable of reasoning and learning?
Stupid? Anything else?
Green
Stupid is too mild. Idiots, I think.
Communist
Woke
They will blame the WuFlu
How much heat would a heat pump pump…
you know the rest.
Compared to non-operative heat pumps, people would certainly be warmer in their homes by just burning the amount of wood that a woodchuck chucked!
The Germans are smart people, good engineers and technicians. So how were they so easily bamboozled by the green loonies?
They became the green loonies.
Take it as proven they are just not smart at all. 😀
Like in most countries, Germans have good engineers etc, but, but, many people are swayed by emotion rather than cold, hard logic. Group think and the desire to be in/join/ or remain within a group (engineers/scientists/any other select group you care to think of) and the emotions rule.
How else can we explain the fact that professional bodies worldwide have ‘forgotten’ the laws physics and thermodynamics.
They have apparently lost the ability to look at raw data from the original source.
I think we need hard hitting emotional messages, probably short videos that shock these people to their senses.
The message needs to be really really hard to smash through the years of indoctrination.
Did they get a long-delayed permit to do the work and does everyone leave for a month on holiday? They need a vacation from themselves.
Throw some more EVs on the grid with the heat pumps so we can all watch the chaos unfold before it hits our own area. Let’s also see how it works out during a German/EU recession–oh wait.
“it remains a mystery today why the Green Party would want the rest of the country to experience the same nightmare.”
No, it is not a mystery. The “greens” hate people. They do not care about the environment. The more pain they inflict on other people, the happier they are.
The whole “green” movement is shoot, ready, aim.
I live in NE Scotland . Beautiful part of the world – but cold in winter and never gets hot in summer.
The house was built in 1850 (ish) – solid granite block walls, no cavity, and no realistic possibility of insulation. Like most of the UK housing stock, completely inappropriate for an ASHP……
Just hope we have enough technicians around to keep the gas boiler working until I become plant food in a few years….
Does Amazon same-day firewood from Brazil?
If it’s socialist it’s not good, if it’s good it’s not socialist. Same for green.
In recent days, evenings in particular Germany has been importing up to 9GW from most of Europe.
https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/power/chart.htm?l=en&c=DE&source=cbpf_saldo&stacking=stacked_absolute
It will be hilarious if an argument can be made “and then France won”.
‘it remains a mystery today why the Green Party would want the rest of the country to experience the same nightmare’
Hmm, in the UK (and over there?), we have a saying: Misery loves company!
Q.E.D.
If I’m not mistaken heat pumps rely on a gas that performs the same function as Freon once did.
What happens when someone finds a problem the replacement to Freon and then its replacement and then …
There is more than a ‘little’ problem with the replacement refrigerants – the HFC’s and HFO’s are greenhouse gases, toxic and flammable. There have been cases of fridges catching fire and, iirc, the Grenfell Tower fire started when someone’s fridge caught fire in one of the upper flats.
Billy Preston – Nothing From Nothing (1974) • TopPop – YouTube
I have a feeling there is a widespread mistaken perception that heat pumps are superior to gas boilers?
I put this point to our (U.K.) Department for Energy and Net Zero. As part of the answer, they stated that air source heat pumps are 280% efficient. Now as any student of physics knows, you cannot achieve 100% efficiency, that is get out more work than that energy applied to do the work. Therefore, they said, heat pumps are far more efficient than gas boilers which are approximately 85 to 90% efficient.
What they seem to forget is that electricity (which is what they use to calculate efficiency) is not energy and needs to be generated, transmitted and distributed to the consumer before it can do any work. I replied that the heat pump industry claim a factor of five for ground source heat pumps, i.e. superior to the air source quoted and that as no device can achieve 100% efficiency it must require the generation of at least five times that of what the heat pump consumes. Therefore their air source pump must be less than 60% efficient (2.8 / 5 = 56%)
And as, broadly speaking, extra demand on the grid from heat pumps increases gas generation as that is what does the balancing on the U.K. grid, i.e. more demand more gas generation (Nuclear and renewables cannot respond to an increase in demand) and that is back to my original point to them that widespread adoption of heat pumps compounded by the increase in evs will increase CO2 emissions not decrease as they expect?
.
Hmm. Now look at the buildings the heat pumps are connected to. The modern, sealed and insulated systems in offices and some new builds could work with heat pumps. However the vast majority of buildings in the UK and Europe, especially houses, are older and designed to work with coal and gas fires, providing ventilation and good airflow – these would drop the ‘efficiency’ of a heat pump to 0% and the cost to seal them would be prohibitive, if it even worked. There will be no widespread adoption of heat pumps.
In the UK over 22m of the 28m homes are connected to the gas grid. In most of those the gas boiler provides both heating and hot water. An air source heat pump will not heat water to the required temperature to kill legionnaires so people will have to also install a new hot water system as well, increasing the cost even further
The UK government have a target of installing 600,000 heat pumps a year from 2028. The industry is already telling them this target is unrealistic so the government is now threatening it with quotas for production and fines of £5000 for each heat pump they miss the quota by.
Even if they could reach the 2028 target it would take almost 40 years to replace all those gas boilers.
Insanity!
Can’t get his heat pump to work? He can’t even get his razor to work!