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Comment by polycaster | Hacker News Reader

Not sure where this number comes from.

Statistisches Bundesamt says it's 1,958 kwh. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-Environment/Enviro...

Interestingly, for 2 person households they state 3,196 kwh and for 3+ person households 4,919 kwh. Energy consumption scales worse than I expected. I assumed there would be more synergy in shared households.

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I googled it. Your source is much better. But it's in the same ballpark, anyway.

That's pretty crazy. We used to spend 1400 KWh as a family of three. Didn't check the latest numbers as a family of four, but I don't expect a lot more. We even cook / bake a lot. What on earth are people spending electricity on?

How do you heat your appartmen/house? There might be quite some differences between oil, gas or heat-pump. I'm not sure whether these numbers include/exclude that part.

> What on earth are people spending electricity on?

I guess there are just a lot more appliances in use today and we're more lazy.

When I, approaching my 40s, compare our household with my parents household when I was a child there a various notable changes in habits:

- My mother hang the loundry to dry. We seldomly do this anymore, instead we're using a dryer. These things are insanely power-hungry.

- Electronics for entertainment and communication: A landline phone, a TV (for the evening news), a radio + casette player. Now I'm powering/charging at least 10 devices (like mobile, laptop, smart watch, tablet) at any given time.

- When dark outside, about 3 100W light bulbs would illumate the living space for 5 people. Now we have „power-saving” LEDs. But a lot of them. So many, I can't even compare them.

- When it was hot, well, you endure it. Now we have three ventilators (others start to use ACs, which has always been a very awkward thing to do in Germany).

Edit: I come to think, while a lot has to do with being lazy, another lot has to do with being selfish. Things like hanging the loundry. We use the dryer, so we safe time to do more productive things like working on our careers.

I find people’s continued use of tumble dryers pretty surprising.

The air will do it for free!

We have a space-efficient drying rack so we can dry indoors.

Air drying clothes indoor is pretty bad. It is slow, takes space, and leaves textile in a bad state (at least for cotton and wool). Drying outside is good but not possible everywhere and not always. Also things like sheets and towels really should not be left to dry indoor.

I live in a place where it rains all the time and the driest month in terms of humidity is 80%, sometimes if I can’t hang things outside clothes take so long to dry inside that I end up having to wash them again because they start to smell

> Air drying clothes indoor is pretty bad [because it] leaves textile in a bad state (at least for cotton and wool).

> Also things like sheets and towels really should not be left to dry indoor.

Can you elaborate on both statements? I currently leave everything, including sheets and towels, to air dry indoors.

Not the OP, but indoor drying in winter at least where I live has the issue that (a) it tends to be so slow that the wash sometimes starts smelling stale, (b) it's just extracting heat from the house by evaporation, so it's going to raise your heating bills anyhow, perhaps? (c) you might end up having issues with indoor humidity, such as moldy walls.

Heat pump or condensing dryers may well be a better option.

Almost certainly the perfect solution will be situational. I mean, if your house is too dry in the winter, a bit of extra humidity might even be a feature, after all...

> you might end up having issues with indoor humidity

Winter air tends to be much drier than summer air, so much so that my bath towels dry on the rack in the winter overnight, but may stay damp for a whole day in the summer.

That said, water will condense at heat bridges (?)(poorly/not insulated parts of the wall) in the winter, causing mold, if the place is poorly insulated.

> Winter air tends to be much drier than summer air

Where I lived before, that's still 80% (usually 90-95% in summer)

That's relative humidity, not absolute. Absolute humidity has an additional Arrhenius (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrhenius_equation) factor. For instance, 100% relative humidity at 40 C is 51.1 g/cm^3, while at 20 C it's only 17.3 g/cm^3.

It greatly depends on where you live, and season. In my apartment in Bucharest, especially during the summer, clothes dry indoors in ~4h, and a bed sheet takes maybe 6h. In the winter, the time is usually double.

Still, drying clothes indoors has no ill effects, I have no idea where you got this. It's definitely better than exposing them to high temperatures like in most apartment tumble driers.

> during the summer, clothes dry indoors in ~4h, > drying clothes indoors has no ill effects

Maybe the first is why you think the second is always true? Where I live if I just leave laundry on a drying rack it won't dry for days, and once it is dryish it already smells stale and mouldy.

I'm glad that it works for you, but maybe the advice differs based on location, climate, maybe even architectural choices.

That's literally what they said in their first sentence.

Yes, and no.

They started out right and acknowledged that things can be different in different climates. But then in their second paragraph they made a categorical statement: “Still, drying clothes indoors has no ill effects, I have no idea where you got this.”

That is a general statement. They don’t think drying clothes indoors can have any ill effects. Ever. At any humidity level.

So they realise that the drying time can change quantitatively. What they miss is that there are qualitative effects which can happen too. And in their hurry they dismiss other people’s lived experience.

You're right, I do understand that if it takes days to dry, the dampness has a good chance of allowing mold to form, and that can be extremely harmful.

You can also shower in the rain. I have seen people doing it in the 90s in Hannover on the occupied "Sprengelgelände".

Clothes and bedclothes dried outside are much nicer than the same dried in a tumble dryer.

I don't have space (I live in an apartment), but I regularly did this in England. It takes slightly more time to hang them out vs. stuff them in the dryer, and (in England) you need to keep an eye on the weather, but they end up smelling fresher.

A good dose of UV light probably helps.

UV is also great at making some food stains disappear.

Why are ACs awkward in Germany?

Because they are power-hungry and everyone knows that.

More generally because the climate in central Europe is not like Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, California but hospitable during the summer season without AC.

AC makes it more comfortable during hot days but it is still doable without.

This is only true for private households. Since 10 years ACs are widely used in a business environment.

Meanwhile during the summer momnths offices in the US turn on the AC to such low temperatures that one needs to put on a sweater.

Remember that when you're too hot in an office, there's really nothing you can do about it and you just have to suffer. At least you have the option to do things like put on a sweater when you're too cold. Given that, it seems to make sense to keep the office at the coolest temperature preferred by anyone in it.

I like your logic And like lower temperatures when working. The idea that someone would ask for the whole company to be set at the temperature they want and everyone else wears a jumper quite funny.

My girlfriend strongly believes this comes from "patriarchal society" and specifically a "study" that said office thermostats are set based on an old formula designed in like the 60s and that only looked at how HVAC interacted with men.

I thought the idea that offices set thermostats to an actual standard instead of just whoever cries the loudest or has the most power to be almost laughable, so I looked for the "study" she got it from. Indeed, I don't remember the details, but the governmental bureaucracy involved in recommending HVAC did actually use a formula that was obsolete and didn't consider women. However, there was zero evidence in the study that anyone actually used that formula in consideration of anything.

Are they more power-hungry than heat? A window unit can be used in the room you sleep in, and if you've done a reasonable job at reducing leakage and insulation , and reducing light ingress (external shutters, etc.) can be pretty efficient. Even in San Diego with the sun bearing down on my flat we managed to have a pretty low load factor on our window AC to keep it around 24-25C at night.

Germans should be using heat pumps for their homes anyway, it can't be beaten for efficiency. Every time I mention this there's someone who doesn't know that heat pump systems don't require excavation: they don't.

This gets you air conditioning literally for free, and you get to be the one to frown at your neighbors for continuing to burn something to stay warm.

Only if you get an air-to-air heat pump, commonly called air conditioning.

Air-to-water heat pumps still only change the temperature of water, which is practically only useful for heating.

Except, modern AC is pretty efficient. I have a decent monoblock cooler in our apartment in Berlin. I also have a 1-second sampling power meter. The AC unit uses about 700 watts when active cooling, but of course it cycles so that's not all the time. We also only run it when it's 30+ during the daytime.

Overall, it's only added about 15-20kWh to our monthly usage. (2-person household, about 200kWh/month average)

Which brings us back to the original question:

> What on earth are people spending electricity on?

It's exactly that. An AC, probably one additional appliance among others, adds another 10% to the total and somehow we manage to frame this as efficient and thus the right thing to do.

That seems an entirely reasonable incremental usage. In particular when the using A/C allows you to sleep and not running it means you get too little sleep and of poor quality. When the nights at 30-35C and the humidity high, an A/C can be a blessing.

I don't know if it's what the OP meant but the standard "German window" is a shape that makes an AC a lot more difficult than in e.g. the US. You can't mount it in the window directly and the insulation required is relatively irregular.

https://deine-mobile-klimaanlage.de/abluftschlauch/

Anecdotally, doors within an apartment/house are also far less airtight than in the US.

(Germans take airflow in homes extremely seriously; es zieht / frische Luft! is perhaps the fundamental contradiction in the German culture.)

Also, traditional landline phones (no hands free short range radio etc) draw power from the telecom central office. They aren't on your standard grid so you are effectively paying for that electricity on your phone bill.

The numbers cited here included electricity for warm water and heating. Both are outrageously energy-intensive. The figured for electric appliances only are roughly in line with yours.

Home server PC at around 100W. That adds a surprising amount, on it's own that's getting close to 1000KWh to run for a year.

And then there's the main PC setup, running maybe 12hrs a day (inc. WFH). And that was build for gaming, so it's quite power-hungry, especially when the GPU is kept busy, working on Unity projects.

But on average? Does the average person have a home server? A desktop PC?

I don't know any non-techy person who isn't using a laptop exclusively, and then pretty rarely, as most things nowadays happen on the smart phone. AC is non-existent in Germany. So I'm really curious. I have a 24/7 Homeserver and laptop, and am at ~1200kwh a year.

I'd agree normal people don't have those things, but also add that things not mentioned — e.g. TVs, ovens, and fridge/freezers — will add up. At such a low average, even lighting will contribute non-negligibly.

Two questions though: how common are TVs in Germany? And how common is electric hot water for showers/baths? My sample size is pretty small (and mostly limited to Berlin).

I'd say TVs are still the norm, my social circle is 30~50 and o think everyone got one, for streaming mostly. As for the older generation it's also still a thing you just need to have. As for sizes, I think they've also increased over the last decade or two, but at least in the cities if you're limited to a smaller place I think people go for 40 rather than 50 inches. Can't really speak for the younger generations, but I feel they're more comfortable watching stuff on their phones, college students probably also due to financial or space reasons.

Hot water mostly comes from central heating with gas, some homes in my city have district heating. At least up until now, electric heating, be it for water or the whole apartment was way to expensive so that you'd only consider that if you really have no other choice, for example, an old building from 100+ years ago with retrofitted central heating might have an electric water heater for the kitchens as they only did the bathrooms.

'3+' covers 3, but also 4, 5, 6 and 7. That average really doesn't tell you much on how it scales.

My household has seen 1800 kWh of electricity consumption in 2021, a year in which I worked a full-time job on a computer and two displays at home. So did my wife. We have two little children.

While we might not be close to the average consumption in Germany, because our house is quite new, I'm regularly wondering what other households are doing with that much energy.

Interesting that the equivalent in the US is about 10,000 kWh p.a. The delta is so large I thought there might have been a monthly/annual confusion.

I have lived in both countries and it didn't feel like there was much of a difference in electricity consumption.

2 person household without much saving is ~1500kWh in my experience.

LEDs and laptop instead of desktop computers lowered these stats quite a lot for me. I'm sure if I bought a newer fridge it would also help.

1500... per year?

I use more than that by myself per month. Granted, I have all electrical appliances, heat, and a car, but even without those I have to imagine I'd still use significantly more.

Thank god for being on hydro I guess.

That's got to be your car, otherwise the number is insane for one person. Maybe check if something is drawing more power than it should.

I have electric appliances, but heat and hot water is gas. I also have a ICE car.

It definitely can scale much better, we are using around 1800 kWh (2 parents, 1 small child) and I think it’s safe to say going below 1300 for one of us would be hard, especially when working from home. But we live in a flat and there are many 2 or three persons households in a whole house, probably with several computers and may be even tvs and certainly more lights. May be you do save a bit on cooking and the fridge, but cleaning things should roughly scale linearily.

Kids will make your washing machine run constantly; and the dryer...

Your source includes "Electricity for heating, hot water". Maybe this includes households using heat pumps for heating, so this could explain the difference?

Not just heat pumps, but also electric water heaters, which are standard issue for older apartment buildings (those without central hot water).

And also probably the single least efficient source of heat for a home. An apartment using resistive heat instead of a heat pump should not be allowed anymore.

Wait, what? How could electric resistive heating with its 100% efficiency possibly be less efficient than gas or oil, which are the main alternatives in use at this point?

Heat pumps have >100% efficiency, which makes them stand way out at the top, but they're an exception rather than the rule.

If the electricity for resistive heating is coming from a combustion process, it would be more efficient to burn that substance directly in the home to produce heat directly. Otherwise a lot of heat energy is lost being converted to electricity and traveling through the power lines.

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