> but the alternative is to keep throwing money at the power company (and some of that energy will likely be from coal nowadays).
This is Denmark, where a large part of our power grid is based on renewables, and backup power is based on natural gas. There is no coal involved. When we import power it's from Norway/Sweden or Germany, so either renewables or nuclear. We're not at Norwegian CO2 levels (yet), but it's getting better :)
> Since I bought an electric car I've been drooling over the idea of having the car powered by the sun.
Denmark has outlawed sales of new ICE cars from 2030, so at that point solar will make MUCH more sense, as i can charge my car for "free", and the time to ROI will be much shorter.
> But in Scandinavia, I bet most energy goes to heating so improving insulation and adding ground thermal will probably be more efficient.
I thought so to, but currently, in no small part due to the Ukraine situation, lots of people are replacing oil and natural gas heaters with heat pumps or central heating, and the central heating providers are installing large heat pumps as well.
As part as getting a heat pump, my house (built 1970's and renovated 2010's) has a total heat demand of roughly 13000 kWh. Assuming a heat pump with a SCOP of 3.5, that means i will need about 3700 kWh of electricity to heat it, which means that our total electricity consumption ends up around 7500 kWh, so about half the energy (in my case) being used for heating.
This is Denmark, where a large part of our power grid is based on renewables, and backup power is based on natural gas. There is no coal involved. When we import power it's from Norway/Sweden or Germany, so either renewables or nuclear. We're not at Norwegian CO2 levels (yet), but it's getting better :)
You can check for yourself here : https://app.electricitymap.org/map
> Since I bought an electric car I've been drooling over the idea of having the car powered by the sun.
Denmark has outlawed sales of new ICE cars from 2030, so at that point solar will make MUCH more sense, as i can charge my car for "free", and the time to ROI will be much shorter.
> But in Scandinavia, I bet most energy goes to heating so improving insulation and adding ground thermal will probably be more efficient.
I thought so to, but currently, in no small part due to the Ukraine situation, lots of people are replacing oil and natural gas heaters with heat pumps or central heating, and the central heating providers are installing large heat pumps as well.
As part as getting a heat pump, my house (built 1970's and renovated 2010's) has a total heat demand of roughly 13000 kWh. Assuming a heat pump with a SCOP of 3.5, that means i will need about 3700 kWh of electricity to heat it, which means that our total electricity consumption ends up around 7500 kWh, so about half the energy (in my case) being used for heating.