Just running through some quick numbers here and I want to see if someone can pick apart the reasoning or point out missing aspects of the problem.
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1. 50% of German homes use gas for heating.
2. Nearly 10% of German electricity comes from gas.
3. 40% of gas used by Germany is provided by Russia
4. Russia shut off their gas pipeline for routine maintenance, there are concerns (but just concerns at this point) they might not turn it back on.
5. In the event that germany does not get oil we will have a shortfall of 4% electricity and 20% home heating (40% of 50% of homes, 40% of 10% of electricity).
6. To heat an “average” home there is a requirement of 1500-2500 kWh/yr (let’s pick 2000). 20% of all homes (let’s call it 15m) being heated would require 30 Billion kWh
7. 4% of all german electricity is about 3.6 billion kWh
8. Adding together 6 and 7, gives us \~33 Billion kWh of energy shortfall, this is about 5% of total energy.
5% seems small but all solar panels produce about 8 or 9%, so we would need to increase panels by 50% in the next 4 months to cover the shortfall. This means adding something like 1 million new solar installations across the country.
That same math on wind (20% of all energy, 56 000 wind turbines built over 20 years) is: build 14000 wind turbines before winter.
Best-case for building a new coal plant is 50 months (and the logistic issues of extracting that much coal quickly).
I think the only thing that really helps is that Gas in storage is 89 Billion kWh, (which is about half of what it was last year) but still “enough”, and it looks like the long term forecast for winter is quite mild, with few days below 0 degrees.
I suspect the entire electricity network has “extra capacity” but I couldn’t find any numbers about it, but I suspect it must be quite high to handle the variations in supply from green.
**tl;dr:** **What I think**
In general I think the situation will be “life as usual” without rolling blackouts or brownouts, but I do suspect electricity or gas will get up-to 5% or 10% more expensive. Because electricity costs are mostly made of taxes and other fees here, I think the government might decrease taxes.
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**Sources** for data points:
* [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements)
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity\_sector\_in\_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_sector_in_Germany)
* [https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements](https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/heating-40-million-homes-hurdles-phasing-out-fossil-fuels-german-basements)
* [https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/05/germany-fears-russian-gas-flows-could-be-about-to-stop-for-good.html](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/05/germany-fears-russian-gas-flows-could-be-about-to-stop-for-good.html)
* [https://energyusecalculator.com/electricity\_furnace.htm](https://energyusecalculator.com/electricity_furnace.htm)
* [https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterprises/Energy/Production/Tables/gross-electricity-production.html](https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterprises/Energy/Production/Tables/gross-electricity-production.html)
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar\_power\_in\_Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany)
* [https://www.wind-energie.de/english/statistics/statistics-germany/#:\~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%202021,please%20contact%20Deutsche%20WindGuard%20GmbH](https://www.wind-energie.de/english/statistics/statistics-germany/#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%202021,please%20contact%20Deutsche%20WindGuard%20GmbH).
* [https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/\_Public/42/105/42105221.pdf](https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/42/105/42105221.pdf)
* [https://www.weather25.com/europe/germany?page=month&month=February](https://www.weather25.com/europe/germany?page=month&month=February)