As someone living in one of the countries in the North I can't say I am too alarmed by the looming energy crisis (maybe I have lived over too many crisis already and at some point this alarmism loses its meaning).<p>Having said that, I am interested on what measures others are taking to prepare for it? It's not like we can just store energy right? Stocking up on foods if the prices increase too much?<p>Things I've done were just to replace few older bulbs with LEDs and turn of some of the unnecessary appliances (like a second freezer).
Installed solar power last year and an air source heat pump.
My pellet burner is still going to be the main source of heat/hot water though.
Got pellets at the start of the year (with only 80% premium over last year, now the prices are 3x of what they used to be ), have wood to offset use of pellets and even some coal [just in case].
Replaced every bulb with LEDs from IKEA.<p>Set all rooms in the house to 18-19 c.
Going to heat my home office/bedroom to 20-21 c only during the day/while being there.
While Gas heating may be rationed, I doubt electricity as a whole will be so:<p>- Move to more energy efficient dwellings<p>- Get good insulating windows<p>- Get an AC/heat pump<p>- Substitute old appliances with more modern and efficient ones<p>- Get an induction stove, much more efficient than a gas stove<p>- Thermal clothing does wonder.<p>- You can easily sleep in a cold room if your bed is properly insulated, if you are still cold consider heating your bed with an electric heater.<p>- If you take frequent showers/baths, consider doing some of them with cold water (which has a lot of health/cognitive benefits btw), for baths you can easily install a filtering/reflow device like the one used for small pool, insulate the bathtub, for showers simply use less hot water / less water in general.<p>- Almost all EU states should have programs in place to ease these sort of upgrades
It highly depends on the energy mix of your country, but some countries may actually be in for a difficult winter.<p>You can store energy of course and even hoard it which increases the problem. Here in Poland first there were 2 week lines for coal and now there is none. Pellet has gone up in price 3x. Electric price has gone up 2-3x. Gas supply is in question. The government has said to burn anything for heat you can get your hands on which means low quality coal, peat and trash. Even if I have energy, my lungs would pay the price.<p>Some people are running the numbers and realizing that they can temporarily move to a warm country for the price of their heating and electric bills.
Are people actually going to freeze?<p>My understanding so far is that <i>industry</i> will freeze (as needed) so that all the reserves can be used for people. I get a feeling that this crisis is becoming more media-gorging-on-crisis-clicks than it is an objective analysis.
It may be a wise time to discuss consolidating households with family/neighbors so you need to heat fewer structures, you can spread the cost, and you can pool resources. If it’s not necessary, great, but if it’s bad enough you have a plan.
Beyond your personal life space preparations -- build out your literal social network.<p>Who do you know who is old and frail and might need looking in on?
Who do you know who has very young children?
Who do you know who is good at cooking? Who might need food? Who can coordinate getting it to them?
Who do you know who has a big enough house to host a warm potluck meal over the winter every week or so? Do you have enough people to rotate houses?<p>Look for what in the US is sometimes called a mutual aid group. If you don't have one: pick two friends, make one.
In the process of installing roof solar (which I would've done this or next year even if the energy prices didn't spike).<p>Also, expect to allocate larger budget for gas & electricity bill. I do expect the govt. to cushion the blow for consumers tho, so I'd be surprised if my bill ended up 600% up, but it won't break the bank.
Writing from Netherlands that has one of the highest Gas/power/fuel prices in the EU.<p>1. I live in a large three story townhouse. Admittedly too big for my family of 3. I’m going to leave the top floor unheated (I have under floor heating, so I can turn it off on a per room/floor basis).<p>2. Turn off my PC when not in use, and most other appliances.<p>3. Switch to a shower for my little one that enjoys the bathtub and hot water :-( and shorter showers for us adults.<p>4. Generally keep the temps lower than what we used to.<p>5. This summer I already replaced the radiators with under floor heating. I could not get hold of a air to water heat pump yet because eod the supply chain. At some point that will help close off Gas at home. Switched from Gas stove top to induction.<p>6. Solar panels will be installed in December/January(earliest I could get someone to install on the roof)!<p>Not sure what else I can do..
My country (Netherlands) has 80% of it's gas supplies ready to go if I can trust the news. I have just moved into a poorly insulated house but I'm not too worried. We can always move into our caravan which we can heat on 600W if really necessary but you know, perhaps some thermo underwear? I already always had the temp at 19 deg C so 17-18 should be ok with a blanket on the couch? In bed I don't mind 10 deg C.<p>So far, until December gas has gone up for me about 2x (now 1.67 eur/m3 or so? Whereas electricity is at 0.48/kWh, so up about 2.4 fold compared to 2 years ago), meaning about 300 eur/month for gas, ~150 for electricity which is not a real problem for us... yet... I guess for January 2023 the price may go up much higher...
I'm not that worried. My flat is heated by a gas heater, that is supplied by a tank somewhere outside. That thing only has to be filled up occasionally (idk how often, maybe once a year or so?), so i'm usually just paying for the price the landlady paid for it. Also, my flat is properly insulated and loses very little heat.<p>Power might be a bit of a problem. I don't think it's going to go out, of course, because my little corner of Germany is connected to a bunch of hydro and solar power plants and there is the nuclear power plant "Isar" only a 100 km from here, which probably will be running if things go bad. But it's the price i'm worried about. There is some legislation coming up, that may help with that, though.
I stayed in an unheated apartment this weekend in the mountains and it was truly cold. We ended up building a little tent over the bed with blankets. This make me realize that the curtained canopy bed may be making a comeback.
If you plan to use electric heater, switch to AC - regular heater or whatever have efficiency of mere 100%, while AC is a heat pump and can transfer heat at 200-500+% efficiency
I don’t (in Italy). Since I’m a bit forward looking and exactly one years ago (August 2021) I switched my electrical and gas contracts to fixed prices (for 4 years, another 3). So I’m paying the same as one year ago. Obviously I’m always thinking about saving for others, but I don’t necessarily need it!<p>Funny thing is that one year ago always was saying me “a fixed price will cost you more, font do it”. Now I’m laughing, there were all the signals of the rising of energy prices.
Not a lot really. I've arranged so machines I left running 24/7 previously are off a lot of the time and that I can power them on remotely if needed. One of those boxes used to host backups, those have moved to a single SSD (lower power) in the low-power box that acts as my router and the external copies are still on RAIDed drives. One of the things powered off is the media array (its RAIDed volume is where those backups lived, they still do but are only updated when it is on obviously). I've toyed with the idea of moving more out external hosts, but with their prices going up too and announcements that for the next while UK residential fuel prices will be capped I need to find a little time to run some calculations to see if that would save anything and if that anything is enough to be worth the hassle. I might have the heating on less (mainly by setting the thermostat defaults lower, partly by hitting the boost button less) over winter.<p>Maybe I'll finally replace the old oven. Partly because a new one might be more efficient, though mainly because I've been thinking of doing that for ages as it is ancient and possibly on its last legs.<p>Might get the gas fire that hasn't been turned on for years serviced, so I can heat just the living room at times instead of the whole flat via central heating, though without taking time to work out the maths I don't know if that is likely to make much difference to a small place like mine.<p>Though I do really <i>have</i> to do much, having the luxury of being comfortable enough that the extra cost is only an irritation, not a life changing problem that it might be for people who are struggling financially already, and my place is pretty well insulated.
Same as you really. Turned off an extra fridge we could live without. May turn off some other devices over night, but as they're all energy saving they probably won't make much difference.<p>I did get a massively reduced bill last month though. The only thing I can really ascribe that to is only filling the kettle with minimal water, and getting my son to turn his gaming pc off when he's not using it!
I have a fireplace at home. Perhaps I might want to go seek some wood for it. Everything will be fine though, unless there are widespread blackouts, which I doubt (Switzerland’s electric energy balance is sane enough).
You actually can store energy. But it depends on if you have a house or an apartment, but you can get a Goal Zero or Jackery "off grid power station" which is basically a large power bank. That can keep your most essential tools like phones, or small camping coolers cold for days if you have medicin that needs to be kept at a stable temperature (certain proteinbased medicines or like just noraml insuline are temperature dependant).<p>for heating energy, you can just get like i did several camping stove gas cartriges or just go off and buy a Propane tank, which will last very very long.
Central Banks are hiking rates in a panic and that will likely crash economic activity and energy prices will fall again.<p>The current conditions are unlikely to be future conditions in a perfectly straight line.<p>None of the advice in this thread around conservation and solar/etc is bad, though, since reducing your energy bill also helps if you lose your job, but i'd be concerned if you decided to go into large amounts of debt right now.<p>You'll probably get a better deal on that solar conversion in a year or two (provided that you've still got a job and the funds to do it).
I started by nailing up my windows and adding two layers of bubble wrap to the wall. Every family members has 7 liters water per day (drinking included). Eating will be done mostly cold. /s
Scandic Northerner here.
I've made sure I have rice several kilos, a couple of bags of dried legumes like lentils, and beans for proteins, and a few boxes with crushed tomatos.<p>For lights everything is LED, and I have bought 20+ camping gas stove cartridges for my itawani stove. A 100+ of candles for power outages (3-5 boxes of 30 normal Duni long candles) and about 400+ paraffin tea candles.<p>Live in an old thick stone blrick building with insulation, but still buy thermal underwear if you font have it and get used to wearing layers of clothing.
How is your insulation? If you want to live with something slightly dangerous, one candle is about 80 watts of heat, and enough of them will heat a room. Moist air heats better than dry air, so be mindful of the humidity and maybe add a humidifier. Not one of the ultrasonic ones, they are garbage -- especially if you have hard water. You want an evaporative one with a wick and fan(s).<p>With that being said, it's easier to heat yourself than it is to heat the living space, so bundle up!
I no longer live in the EU, but one of the habits that I've taken with me is canning. Pickles, tomatoes, green beans, etc. It just requires salt, vinegar, the veggies, and some jars (and space, obviously). Solid addition to any meal.<p>More on this, I grew potatoes recently in my garden and stocked them in my garage. A tote of potatoes can last a couple people for months. It requires potatoes, some sand and a cool, dark place to keep it all.
Layering. I live in Canada, where it gets quite cold. I live in an old, drafty house. Like, the wind literally whistles through it. The temperature is kept at 18°C during the day. We wear our wool socks, fleece-lined pants, and several layers of shirts.<p>It absolutely <i>sucks</i> — but it isn’t the end of the world.<p>Edit: TIL that 18°C is positively balmy compared to how some run their houses!
If you can get access to a consumer grade FLIR camera (I have an old Cat s60 phone, but there are standalone devices you can connect to phones available), you can find areas in your house or apartment that are leaking heat and then apply additional insulation material to those areas with some heat reflecting material on them.
Last winter we switched from gas to wood for heating - average temperature in flat was around 20°C. And we stay with wood this year and next. It's fun, kids love it. And it's relaxing to stare at fireplace with crackling. And that's it. We are used to be economical with energy.
Awesome website I discovered on HN a while back. Here's the link to the heating tag to checkout various articles that could help you.<p><a href="https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/tag/heating-and-cooling.html" rel="nofollow">https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/tag/heating-and-cooling.ht...</a>
I'll probably be playing <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostpunk" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frostpunk</a>.
> It's not like we can just store energy right?<p>Yes, you can purchase lithium-ion-phosphate batteries, charger/inverters, and high-gauge conductors readily on Amazon and Aliexpress.<p>> Stocking up on foods if the prices increase too much?<p>I mean, you should already have a chest freezer stocked with meats, 500 gallons of water, and 400lbs of dry rice/wheat/beans, as a bare minimum, right?<p>Or are you one of those people who considered preppers "crazy", and deserve exactly what's coming for not procuring basic insurance whilst denigrating the people who did for their "insanity"?
Disclaimer: not in the EU, but have lived through some natural disasters that involved power loss for extended periods of time. So this is some kind of general advice.<p>If you own your home and you haven't already, do an energy audit [0]. Pay especially close attention to window and door seals. These wear out over time. You can lose a surprising amount of heat through these, and they are <i>very</i> inexpensive to fix. If you have ducted HVAC, check the ducts for leaks as well. Adding additional insulation if possible will also help.<p>Figure out what your biggest energy sinks are. In most homes the HVAC is the biggest power draw. After that you're looking at major appliances like stoves, washers and dryers, refrigerators, water heater and the like. If you can replace these with more energy efficient versions, it <i>may</i> be worth considering. For ones you can't, figure out ways to use them less.<p>Close off areas you aren't using. If you have rooms in your home/apartment that are largely unoccupied or only occasionally occupied (like a home office), close them off and consolidate into fewer rooms. If it gets especially cold, close the vents if you have ducted HVAC, seal the doors with tape and put a blanket at the bottom of the door. This will help further seal the heat into the occupied areas. But be careful that you don't cause pipes to freeze by doing this.<p>Stock up on foods you don't need power to cook. Shelf-stable canned goods are a good bet. It won't be gourmet, but it will keep you alive. If you are in an area that stays suitably cold throughout the winter you could use a cooler outside for food storage instead of a refrigerator.<p>If you have alternative means of heating (like a fireplace) go ahead and prepare to start using that a lot more. Get supplies like firewood or pellets now and, if possible, be sure you have enough to last you through the winter with increased usage. Find the lowest temperature you can tolerate at home, even if that means you may have to wear a light coat inside.<p>Monitor your usage regularly. If your utility provides realtime or near realtime usage information, find that now and get in the habit of checking it often. If not, figure out how to read your meter and check it at least daily.<p>And finally, just try to find ways to <i>not</i> be at home. If you can go work in an office or even a coffee shop, that's a few hours you won't have to keep your home as warm. Try to make your home just for sleeping and adjust the temperature in the home when you are away accordingly. Having a programmable/remote thermostat helps here.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/do-it-yourself-home-energy-assessments" rel="nofollow">https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/do-it-yourself-home-energ...</a>
It's not too late to invest in mining and energy extraction equities - many are still highly underpriced before the major funds roll into the sector