Not trying to stir any panic but the federal government has recently [commenced PR](https://www.admin.ch/gov/de/start/dokumentation/energie.html) regarding this issue. I find the communications to be somewhat cryptic when it comes to concrete forecasts and advise.
What is your take: How bad will it get and are you doing anything other than just hoping for the best?
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I have no idea and at this point I’m to afraid to ask!
I don’t personally think it will touch personal homes directly.
I also kinda hope that yeah, we’ll stop having stupid advertisement lights on the whole night when nearly noone is there to see it anyway (well it being off during the day would also be nice but eh)
But for it to touch homes, it would also mean that nearly the whole industry is shutdown as well. Which I find it hard to believe.
i doubt it will concern private households, but nevertheless anyone should be prepared for outages at all times anyways. that means – have enough candles on hand. maybe even a small gascooker for camping, other than that enough conserves, but that anyone should have a stock of at all times if they can.
biggest problem would be heating, but i doubt it will become a big problem here in switzerland. but there are lots of good tips and tricks on how to retain heat in your home, like foil you stick on your windows for further insulation.
but even in the worst case scenario, we will have blocks of planned outages and not complete and constant outages, so not even a gas cooker is really necessesary.
It depends entirely on how cold and rainy this winter will be, and on what your personnal housing situation. Electricity-wise, if you can’t invest in solar panels and a home battery, there’s not much you can do about it. You can install plug-in solar panels on an appartment balcony, but that’s not going to save you from a black-out, just reduce your electricity consumption.
IMHO it’s all really going to come down to heating. That’s the biggest energy consumer in winter times and it relies on each type of energy source bar coal. So make sure to stock up on the most comfortable winter socks, christmas pull-overs and coziest blankets, and get ready to turn the heat way down. If you own your own mazut boiler, maybe try to make sure you have enough to last the entire winter before it starts.
In the event of a complete shutoff of Russian gas this winter, Europe as a whole would need to reduce its gas consumption by 15%: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022/07/26/member-states-commit-to-reducing-gas-demand-by-15-next-winter/
This is of course the EU, but Switzerland is tightly coupled on all sides with the EU: all Swiss natural gas used for heating and power generation is supplied through the European grid, and Switzerland has no (significant) gas storage inside the country, its companies have storage capacity in France/Germany but not enough for a cold winter. In addition, Switzerland is an exporter of electricity in summer, but an importer in the winter, and the current super low water levels do not look good for our hydro levels next winter, we need a lot of rain the coming months.
In short, if it gets cold, Swiss energy companies (and hence, their customers) will have to compete with everyone else and pay up crazy prices abroad for additional gas and power, which of course they’d rather avoid.
So if the current high power and gas prices are not sufficient incentive to bring consumption down, governments including the Swiss will force lower energy consumption by various means – mandating industry to shut down, tell public buildings & private offices to lower heating by a few degrees, etc. They can’t know yet how severe the measures should be since there’s so many unknowns: what does Russia do, how much will it rain the coming months, how much is consumption already going down, will we have an early/late, or warm/cold winter, so they keep a an escalating list of measures on the shelf, that will one by one be communicated if things get worse. This is the list of measures you see published.
Nobody is going to freeze with a 15% energy reduction, but it will hit Swiss companies financially and may (?) lead to shortages in products that need a lot of energy to produce (think fertilizer, but potentially also mundane things like beer or coffee – but this is speculation) and lowered thermostats means less comfort.
Isn’t like 90% of the electricity produced in the country renewable (hydro and nuclear)? in the event of a gas shortage can’t people just switch to electric heaters?
im talking a bit out of my ass on this, but somethin in my gut tells me this is just exaggerating by media. people who tend to panic (remember toilet paper?) will throw money out of the window for useless crap and the issue will be solved before it gets too hairy.
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from my understanding the biggest issue is that france doesnt have like 50% of its nuclear power plants on line for maintenance. not sure how this will play out.
I will wear sweatpants more
i’d say that at most they’ll force all non-essential power consuming elements off the grid such as christmas lights, cable cars and resorts, billboards, fancy shop lights and other such things. Individual homes arent gonna be affected too much.
Really… People freaking out since they have to put 19C on the thermostat… We keep our art 15 the entire winter and live perfectly… We deserve extinction
It will not be bad! That is why Russia is shutting down Nordstream 1 now already. They try hard. But they needed the gas money.
Great ways to save energy (and money) at home: start now! If everyone makes a small effort, a few won’t have to go without entirely.
Don’t have a nice hot bath, take a hot shower. Turn the water off when you are lathering your hair or washing your body. Heating water is very energy intensive, and showers use less!
If you use a kettle to heat water, don’t automatically fill it to the top to boil it, leaving the remaining hot water unused. If you need two cups, use the cups to measure water into the kettle.
Increase the efficiency of your cooking: f boiling something on the stove (e.g. Potatoes), can you use a steamer to steam other vegetables above the boiling water at the same time?
Turn down the thermostat in your house. Put on a jumper, warm socks and trousers and then adjust the temperature to be comfortable without having to open windows etc. If you have individually regulated rooms, consider turning off heating to rooms you do not use (e.g. spare room). Turning heating off while you are out for more than an hour and then switching it on again to heat up when you return will save more energy than keeping the heating on for an empty house through the day.
Reduce the frequency of airing out the house when it’s cold outside. You lose the heat when the cold air come in.
Minimise the time you have the refrigerator or freezer open. Open, take what you need, close the door, use it, and reopen to return the item, rather than leaving the door open for 20+ seconds.
Turn the lights off whenever you leave a room at night.
Replace any remaining incandescent (unlikely) or halogen (more likely) light bulbs with LED equivalents.
Invest in a smart socket which can switch off the dvd player, sound system and TV all together when not in use, rather than maintaining standby.
Shut down computers and consoles when not in use, rather than simply placing in standby mode.
Take charging sockets out of the wall plugs. They are AC/DC transformers, and simply having them plugged in uses energy to magnetize the transformer.
Don’t beat yourself up if you forget, or can’t do things every time. Anything helps, even doing it once!