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Comment by Epa095 | Hacker News Reader

Unless gas is subsidised I don't really understand how gas can be cheaper. A modern heat pump can give 3-5 kWh of heat using 1 kWh of electricity. And a modern gas generator is roughly 50% effecient at creating electricity (according to the Internet). So by using electric and a heat pump you should be able to get 1.5-2.5 times more heat from the same gas by making electricity of it first compared to burning it directly.

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At least in the US, electricity rates and natural gas prices are highly regulated for retail customers. Thus the wholesale price of gas does not generally correlate to the retail price of electricity. In places like California electricity prices are very high due to renewable generation requirements. You would definitely want to have your own solar installation before converting over to all electricity in that state.

We’re being forced to. After 2030 no more gas water heaters or furnaces can be sold. The cost of heating your house and water here is going to probably triple or more, and will fail every time there’s a blackout.

You used to be able to buy water heaters that would last forever. My house had one from the 1950's with a copper tank. Still going strong. Just don't be convinced b y the repair man to get a new one when you have to replace the thermocouple every 8 years or so. The furnace is from the late 1980's, still fine.

I'm not sure if such well made devices are still available for purchase however.

Modern residential gas furnace is 90% or more efficient.

Makes sense (I would have guessed closer to 99% actually). But 99% is still less than both 150% and 250%:-P

What is the efficiency of the power generation system? The whole system costs matter not just the individual HVAC unit

You seem to assume that energy cost is the same no matter how it's delivered. Here in California, electricity is much more expensive than natural gas for the same amount of potential energy.

Yeah delivery cost might be a factor, maybe it costs more to deliver 1 kWh of electricity through a wire than (the equivalent of) 1 kWh of gas with a truck (that's what you use right?). Gas, if its stored in a big tank under your house, also had the advantage of beeing "locally cached", so you don't have to dimension the system for the max load in the same way.

Many urbanized areas in the US have natural gas distribution pipelines.

Rural areas rely on propane delivery, which is roughly 2x the cost of the piped natural gas (per unit of energy).

> A modern heat pump can give 3-5 kWh of heat using 1 kWh of electricity.

At lower temperatures the modern heat pumps cannot attain this COP, which is why they are working on heat pumps that work at lower temperatures.

I imagine there are more costs in running a power plant than the cost of fuel - hydro, solar and wind power is not free despite not using any fuel.

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