ArbitraryValue@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Is heating with electricity common in Finland? That seems like it would cost a fortune even in good times.
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).
Critical_Insight@feddit.uk 9 months ago
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.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz 9 months ago
He doesn’t mean geothermal in large scale but home level geothermal. It is actually very cheap and efficient technology.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I understand, but it’s not cheap when compared to solar