If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities to reduce prices and or stop the attacks on solar installation.
The price has certainly come down (look at henry hub chart..), but also winter has not been too cold..
They should ban oil exports next.. (for "national security")
Actually export tariffs would be better than outright bans.
IIRC Gas extraction has an extremely high EROI (30x) initially, making it a highly productive extractive resource. But each gas well has a productive lifespan of approx 7 years requiring constant activity to sustain development.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/natural-gas/imports-and-...
In 2022 the US imported 3 trillion CF, exported 6.9 trillion cubic feet, and extracted 43.8 trillion CF.
By comparison in 2015 we only exported 1.8 trillion CF.
If shipping makes it an order of magnitude more expensive, then there is no global price.
Large (not ultra large) oil tankers might carry 200,000 tonnes and consume 25 ton of heavy bunker fuel per day.
LNG gas carriers equally have their own stats.
This is something you can (or at the very least should be able to) back of envelope estimate ...
https://www.planete-energies.com/en/media/article/transporti...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA9...
Now you just need mean trip times, profit margin, etc. and you're away.
Order of magnitude addition to costs, though, sounds a little extreme.
True but it was turned off some time before that happened
Of course there is a global market for all fossil fuels.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-was-top-lng-expor....
As of 2023, Australia is the world's second largest LNG exporter (source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1262074/global-lng-expor...) after the US (take that Russia!) and ahead of Qatar. Great for the gas exporting cartel but not so great for ordinary Australians in eastern states who now pay the same for gas as people in Tokyo. (And Aussies wonder why manufacturers keep leaving...)
Banning domestic gas usage for new homes (which the fools running Victoria, the state I live in, have done) will do nothing for emissions but will mean that the gas cartel can make even more money exporting LNG to Asia. Bravo!
The exception is Western Australia which is also a massive LNG exporter but has stricter domestic reservation requirements than the eastern states.
All of the above has been extensively documented at https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/ (source: https://www.google.com.au/search?q=site%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fwww....).
How can that be?
Direct consumption emissions are eliminated.
Those with solar (a growing percentage) reduce their indirect emissions from grid non-renewable generators.
And there is a growing percentage of green generation on the grid.
Because a reduction of domestic gas usage will just be diverted to less efficient LNG exports.
Given that by far the largest source of Victoria's electricity generation capacity is from dirty brown coal [1] if anything banning domestic gas usage might even make emissions worse since it will force people to use only electricity for cooking and heating.
> Direct consumption emissions are eliminated.
Ah, so burning Aussie natural gas in Asia (after it's been liquified and then turned back into gas) is somehow better for the environment than just burning it in Australia?
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Victoria#Electricity...
The biggest pushers of no domestic gas are the producers and finance guys. They make a lot more money on exports.
It doesn't impact commercial use of LNG, or the extraction or export of LNG.
We are also not talking about ripping out the existing install base of appliances.
It will take at least a decade or two for that switch to reach a critical mass. That's the point when it becomes uneconomic to continue operating the domestic piped LNG network in Victoria.
If it displaces burning coal in Asia, maybe it is? https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14670874
Indeed, if you look at the three Brown Coal generators in Victoria[1], Yallorn is due to shut down in 2028 taking ~30% (1480MW) of that away, followed by Loy Yang A in 2035 which will take another ~40% (2200MW) of that capacity.
So, banning new LNG appliances now, and starting that migration will have a net positive impact.
This is true even if the LNG continues to be burned overseas if it's replacing coal fired generation capacity.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coal-fired_power_stati...
Finance for domestic infra is harder to get because no one wants to be locked into 20 year supply arrangements.
The Japanese were, and that's what paid for Gladstone, and that's why for a period, Australian ng was cheaper in Japan than on-shore.
(Personally, I think all countries, to the extent that they can, ought to both reduce domestic fossil fuel use and at the same time impose strict limits on its export. We're all better off if it just stays in the ground.)
It would only be fair to say it was artifically cheap, say, if the Australian government was imposing tariffs or subsidising production. I don't think it was doing that, and as it was, the producers were sufficiently incentivised by the market to produce and sell gas domestically.
A tech shock doesn't mean the old status quo was inefficient.
E.g., conventional mail wasn't inefficient prior to email
What?
You are missing the point. We're talking about "markets" not the specific "tech/substitutes." It could be any technology disruption. Such disruption doesn't mean the prior status quo IN THE MARKET was inefficient. The tech shock just resets equilibrium.
Further, your explanation is circular, and I propose it has to do with muddling terminology and concepts.
Here's one inconsistency. Either the markets didn't exist (You said they need to be "created."), or they did exist, but a pipeline connecting them was too expensive.
> Technology literally created additional markets
> it would have been possible to pipeline gas from AU to markets across the ocean, but it didn’t make economic sense
Higher gas prices is good for fighting climate change - it makes renewable energy more competitive. Now, is the opposite the case for, say the Japanese, who import gas from Australia? Are they less incentivized to switch away? Probably somewhat, but less so, because of transaction and transportation costs.
Anyway, Australia has no excuse for not using solar energy. Which is exactly what they are doing over there despite conservative governments trying to slow that down for the last decade or so. I doesn't need to depend on fossil fuels.
In the US natural gas is a byproduct of shale oil extraction and we have a limited capacity to move or export it so it's almost priced as a waste product.
It's unlikely that electricity will be any cheaper than gas soon either, since that's where 40% (and growing, as our coal and nuclear fleet are retired) of our electricity comes from.
Does that include transmission? Most population centers already have the pipeline network needed to bring them gas but the getting power from giant solar projects in the desert (where it's sunny) to the eastern interconnection (where most people live) is still an unmet need.
> as battery storage prices drop
Eventually, but at present our grid-scale storage has a capacity of ~30GW on a grid of ~1200GW; it's going to take something like a trillion dollars and a generation to build out grid-scale storage to the point where we can even support a 100% renewable grid.
We'll get there eventually but until grid-scale storage is installed and ready, the gas plants (with their fast start/stop ability) are what's enabling the renewables to come online and replace our older coal and nuke plants.
We're probably going to have to lean even more on gas since the first ~500GW of renewables are replacing existing coal/nuclear we're losing, but once the grid storage tech catches up we can start installing that in lieu of new gas plants and replacing the ones we've already built.
Tl;dr: we'll get there but not in the lifetime of a furnace
I'm sorry, but how does that make any sense, when 47% of the electricity production in Australia comes from coal?? They are banning a system that is actually pretty efficient at making heat, to instead use a low efficiency coal power plant, to produce electricity, to then use in heat pumps to produce heat. Simply, wow.
https://www.energy.gov.au/energy-data/australian-energy-stat...
Pricewise, it's actually a wash. My electric bill went up by about $100 a month, whereas during the winter my gas bill was running about $100 a month to run the furnace (aside from that one random $600 bill one month last year that inspired this change). I've been using the mini split all winter and it's been great.
It's definitely annoying to calculate! Since a heat pump's efficiency can vary with the outside temperature, it takes a bit of work to estimate your potential added electricity cost.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-01-06/get-ready-...
Besides that, a gas power plant easily achieves 33% of efficiency for generating electricity from gas, rather 50% for the new ones. In other words, if the price for electricity is more than 3 times as high as gas, there is a high chance that it's due to tax, regulations, etc. Though, the price for maintaining a stronger power grid comes on top.
I understand a bulk of that cost comes from the aux resistive electric heater. But for really cold places, that’s needed when the heat pump can’t keep up or you need to rapidly warm the house.
As is, we are still quite far from heat pumps being cost efficient as gas for places that get really cold
Check those measures for some example heatpump: https://www.eurovent-certification.com/en/catalog/program/ce...
They are not from the manufacturer but from an independent service that is used by various states that are members of the eu.
As you can see, at -7 degrees celsius, the COP is still almost 4. So even at that temperature, this heatpump is still about twice as afficient as burning gas directly.
Of course, it depends on the correct installation. It's easier to screw up the installation of a heat pump than a gas heating system. But it doesn't invalidate the theoretical bounds.
And it's also true that it's much easier to use a heatpump wrongly compared to e.g. gas heating.
On the other hand it's also not black magic and the more people install and use it, the less mistakes will be made.
The market price of electricity vs gas varies quite a bit through time and various distortions of the market. Currently gas is cheap, but you want to compare historical averages when buying something that lasts 15+ years not simply look at current rates.
Combined cycle is like at most 70% efficient, subtract 10% of distribution, you end up with 60%.
At 50f my 5T heat pump takes 6.6 kWh to generate 50,000 BTU.
6 kWh of energy takes 71cf of gas to make - accounting for transmission and generation losses.
71cf of gas will make 71,000 BTU of heat, assuming an 80% efficiency furnace, that comes out to 56,000 BTU usable.
Yes a heat pump will vastly outperform resistive strip heat - but not even an 80% gas furnace.
50,000 BTU = 5.27528 * 10 ^ 7 J = 14.6 kWh / 6.6 kWh = COP of 2.2 at 50f which is absolutely terrible. Modern heat pumps should have a COP around 4 at those temperatures and 3 near freezing.
Also, “Subtracting 10%” would mean your grid losses are 17%. “annual electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) losses averaged about 5% of the electricity transmitted and distributed in the United States in 2018 through 2022.” So, (70% * (1 - 5%)) = 66.5%, but resistive losses are reduced in the cold. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
4 * 0.665 = 2.66x though obviously what matters here is the annual average COP. (3 * 0.665) = 1.995 aka 2.
Also, should have been 60,000 BTU - its a 15 SEER unit.
PS: 2.7 COP * 0.665 = 180% efficiency which still crushes the 80% heat pump in your example but these numbers should be much higher.
The technology isn’t advancing fast enough to make upgrading every 10 years necessary. You could buy units in 2000 with a significantly higher COP than he was implying.
1 kWh = 3.6 megajoules and 1 BTU = 1055 joules
The 6.6 kWh of the heat pump is 23.76 MJ which is 22,521 BTU of energy. Assuming that the power plant and distribution are 60%, it would take 37,535 BTU of gas to produce (22,521/60%).
Instead, using that 37,535 BTU of gas in an 80% efficient furnace would only produce 30,028 BTU of heat, which is worse than the 50,000 BTU from the heat pump.
I'm pretty sure even a poor heat pump will be more efficient than heating directly with gas. (Of course, they have drawbacks, like they can leak their refrigerant that causes more of a greenhouse effect than CO2.)
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=8
I dont know where EIA gets those numbers, but that was the basis of my calculation. Maybe I shouldn't have multiplied that by the efficiency of the plant, but rather just taken of distribution losses.
However, it’s a misleading number in multiple ways because the fleet is made up of a mix of low and high efficiency turbines. Grid operators use a mix of turbine types as a cost optimization, a far cheaper and far less efficient turbine that’s only used 1% of the time it worth it. The average number of kWh per cf of gas is therefore heavily in favor of high efficiency turbines.
My heat pump contains 2.1 kg of R32 refrigerant. R32 has a GWP of 675, so that 2.1 kg is the equivalent of 1417 kgs of CO2. (older refrigerants were much worse!)
Heat pumps should never leak their refrigerant during their lifetime, and installers will remove and recycle the refrigerant when servicing or decommissioning systems. But of course, accidents happen, so let's pessimistically assume that 50% of systems installed will eventually leak. In the real world it's hopefully far less than that, but that would mean on average 708 kg CO2e in refrigerant is emitted per system over its lifetime.
On the other hand, heating a typical US home with natural gas emits 2900 kgs of CO2 per year.
I think it's safe to say that the climate impact of refrigerant leaks in modern heat pump systems is minuscule compared to that of the CO2 emitted from natural gas heating.
In sane units:
- 2 m^3 of gas generates 6.6 kWh of electricity
- which generates 14.7 kWh of heat (at some temperature differential).
- The same 2 m^3 of gas generates 20.8 kWh of heat
- of which about 16.4 kWh is usable assuming some losses.
Of course your implied electricity generation is only around 31% efficient, so I'm not sure what that 60% you mention in the beginning is about. The COP you're using is around 2.2, which together with a 60% efficiency for generating electricity would be greater than 1, outstripping anything that's physically possible to achieve with a furnace.
California's insanely high electricity rates are about $0.15 / kWh, so the energy costs $0.0375 per mile.
Gas has hovered around $4 / gallon or higher for a long time, giving a fuel cost of $0.0666 per mile.
Big energy guzzling EVs get about 2 miles / kWh, for $0.075 per mile, and gas guzzlers easily get below 15 MPG, or $0.26 per mile.
You'd have to go back to the days of $1 / gallon gas (mid 1990's?) and ignore inflation / lower electricity costs back then to conclude large ICE cars have competitive fuel costs. You'd "only" need to go back to $2 gas for the energy efficient hybrids to be competitive.
They’re more like $.30/kWh.
Wholesale rates are .02-.04/kWh, but in a nutshell, retail ratepayers are paying for all the record wildfire lawsuit costs.
I've not heard of any attacks, just reductions in subsidies (tax credits, net metering). Can you share what you're referring to?
I moved to SoCal recently and didn't realize things like net metering even existed, so when people started to rant about these new measures I was very surprised to learn about them, and especially about people presuming these things to be "normal".
I think at first people were (reasonably) scared that net metering might go away with no grandfathering for existing installations. People had a reasonable reliance interest in maintaining at least some of their existing benefits for the payoff period of their panels.
Once it was clear that existing installations would be grandfathered, I didn't hear much ranting anymore — just people who were bummed that a subsidy was going away (or people rushing to get in under the wire).
>…Rooftop solar photovoltaic installations on residential buildings and nuclear power have the highest unsubsidized levelized costs of energy generation in the United States. If not for federal and state subsidies, rooftop solar PV would come with a price tag between 117 and 282 U.S. dollars per megawatt hour.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/493797/estimated-leveliz...
If we want to subsidize a renewable energy source, why should we subsidize rooftop solar when we could subsidize utility grade solar or wind? Money is fungible and not unlimited - a dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind.
Rooftop solar subsidies are also unusual in that much of the subsidy is often paid by less well-off households to subsidize their wealthier neighbors - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme.
If a customer is permitted to buy as much electricity as they want at a fixed price while also being able to sell as much as they can at a different time at a fixed price, it seems like there's an obvious subsidy happening anytime they sell electricity at other than when the wholesale price is the highest or buy other than when the wholesale price is lowest. (In areas with an excess of solar generation capacity, these distortions become quite large.)
(I'm still all for these subsidies on the balance of factors; we just shouldn't pretend that they're not subsidies.)
And if the grid itself is saturated, that means it isn't big enough.
The issues start if too many people do net metering. Imagine everyone has a solar roof and reaches net-zero electricity. You can still maintain the infrastructure with base fees, but the electricity company still has to run power plants in the morning and evening when demand outstrips solar supply, and for baseload in the night. And during the day there's now an oversupply of electricity that they somehow have to sell.
In commercial electricity generation many countries have a kind of spot market for electricity, where prices are determined by demand (down to the minute) and available supply. Prices can go close to zero if lots of solar and wind capacity is available, or far above the price charged to consumer for capacity to cover the evening peak. If we changed consumer prices to more accurately reflected this "true" market price (plus markup for the grid operator), with prices changing by the minute, net metering would be pretty fair. But so far there's little desire to dump all that complexity on regular consumers.
Negative prices aren't uncommon during quiet periods in the summer.
In theory yes, but the grid has not used properly scoped base fees to pay for infrastructure. Delivery costs of power are more than half the total cost; to get to a base+generation model, you'd probably see monthly connection fees for Electricity in the $100+ range for many Americans.
I always laughed about the pricing structure of the business ISP that I worked at. We charged $1000 to install your service, then $1000 per month (without a contract). This was a financial game; we would lose money if you cancelled after your first month. I always thought the pricing should be $15,000 to install, and then $5 per month. That's closer to what the actual costs are. But instead of you going to the bank to get a loan to pay the $15,000, we hid that for you. It made more people sign up, and we had a better source of funding than bank loans. But, at the end of the day, we would have been out of business if a bunch of people signed up and didn't pay. If that happened, I imagine the pricing would have changed to reflect actual costs.
That pole is carrying the power for, say, 100 people.
Half of them use a below-average amount of electricity. If you stick them with a $100/month fixed fee, they don't need a large solar/battery system to get off the grid entirely, so you've made that economical and that's what they do.
Now you have the same number of poles and half as many customers, so the fixed fee rises to $200/month, and more customers do the same thing. This is not going to a great place.
Meanwhile there is a rural road somewhere that only has two things on it. One is a large commercial operation and the other is somebody's house. Putting up poles along that road is going to cost $100,000, but the commercial operation is content to pay the entire amount because their alternative is buying land somewhere that it costs significantly more than $100,000 more. The house on the same road is not content to pay half of that and will just use their $50,000 to install a solar/battery system and have quite a bit left over, even though a model where they only pay for usage would get them to sign up, and the power company is installing the poles either way.
The problem we're looking at is that if you charge a fixed fee for a grid connection, low users opt out of the grid, and then the fixed fee goes up and creates a new set of low users. But if you charge for distribution per kWh, everybody installs local solar generation because it's cheaper than any generation method that has a significant distribution fee as part of the cost per kWh, which in turn raises the distribution component of the price per kWh even more. Under the first option, a large proportion of rural and suburban customers aren't going to want a grid connection at all. Under the second option, they'll take the grid connection but then only use it if local generation isn't available (i.e. it's cloudy) and the grid price per kWh at those times will be quite high. But that's plausibly the better of the two alternatives, because a grid connection with a high price per kWh will generally be better than losing power at those times, or having enough local storage/generation to prevent that from ever happening even in rare circumstances.
A third option is to charge everyone the fixed fee for the power grid and force them to take a grid connection even if that isn't economical, but that's even worse. You've essentially created a head tax with no way to avoid it even if you can't afford it, because you can't cancel your service and you can't pay less by reducing consumption.
Meanwhile if four of the eight people near your house decide to disconnect from the grid because the fixed fee is too high, you still have to cover the cost of that pole with half as many people, some of whom might then decide that the higher fixed fee is too much and disconnect too, etc.
I understand that all kinds of energy production methods are subsidized, but if net metering lets residential solar owners get paid more for the energy they produce than solar farms would be paid, I don't see how that's anything but a subsidy.
> if net metering lets residential solar owners get paid more for the energy they produce than solar farms would be paid, I don't see how that's anything but a subsidy.
Paying them nothing would be even more unfair (and that's the only option available where I am at least - net metering or no household generation)
I wasn't suggesting this. The phased rollback of net metering in California (the state mentioned in my original parent comment as "attacking" solar installation) means that solar owners will still get paid, just not as much as before. I'm sorry that you live somewhere that this middle option isn't available — the two extremes are indeed less fair!
[1] https://www.cbs8.com/article/news/local/working-for-you/sdge...
1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-progressive-california-epipha...
Thank you for this clarification - I thought the discussion about changes to net metering was general, not California specific. Reading [1] about the changes to net metering in California, it seems reasonable, especially as it has high solar penetration. Hopefully it will (like many things) lead the way so that load shifting becomes simpler/more economical throughout North America.
[1] https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/18/decoding-the-changes-to...
Those power purchase agreements then makes it really easy to get loans.
> I've not heard of any attacks, just reductions in subsidies. Can you share what you're referring to?
I do appreciate a softball.
https://duckduckgo.com/?va=c&t=he&q=political+attacks+on+sol...
1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-progressive-california-epipha...
An analogy: your kid's preschool has an option where you can volunteer once a month and save $50/month. One day, they announce that they are going to institute a new fee that ranges from $10-100, depending on your income.
How does that new fee cause fewer people to decide to volunteer?
Break even would then be much further in to the future.
Solar is a large capital expenditure, and this change reduces the return on that investment.
To be clear, I think the income-based fee is a bad idea, but I just don't think it changes the calculus on installing solar. I have also had conversations about this specific question with a friend who has a PhD in urban planning, lives in CA, and is in the process of installing solar panels. It's possible she's wrong, but everything she says lines up with what I have read.
It sounds like you're referring to the net metering changes, which are separate from the income-based fee. That does change the calculus, obviously (which is why they grandfathered existing installs for 20 years).
The upfront cost of doing that with a propane generator is about a half that of a battery + solar system (it's about a third if you go with battery + solar + generator, which is more comparable to a grid connection).
However, the maintenance and fuel costs of the generator mean that the solar will be much cheaper (and quieter!) to operate.
If the income based pricing is $100 / month, and the net energy / base connection cost is $0 / month (assuming an exactly sized solar system), then it'll take about 200 months for the generator to pay itself off. That's 16 years, which is a bit longer than the system will last, though replacing a generator costs about half what I've assumed above.
So, there's a pretty low upper limit to the amount they can screw with these fees before it's economically (though not necessarily environmentally) rational thing for individuals to just cut the cord and let the power grid death spiral.
That's not quite right. Existing installs are grandfathered for 20 years, right? [1]
1: https://www.ecowatch.com/solar/net-metering/net-metering-3-0
Happy to have that conversation. I was replying to this language, which was not talking about new installs, or at least did not indicate so in any way:
> means that folks with solar will get socked with high monthly fees
"folks with solar" makes it sound like you're talking about people who have solar, not people who are considering putting in solar. Anyway, now that you've limited your comment to new installs, we are in agreement. There is a lower incentive for new solar installs, but IMO "lower incentives" do not amount to attacks. If other people think that it's an attack to give less free money to the purchasers of a product, they are welcome to do so (not saying you are, but others seem to think this).
The classic thing is cogeneration. It's a thermodynamic sin to create a large temperature difference (say, furnace combustion chamber vs. house) without running that heat through a heat engine. In the Nordic countries, in parts of Russia, and on some university campuses in the US, that's done with a "neighborhood power plant" and district heating (steam pipes). Heat engines get less efficient as they get smaller, but possibly a house-scale cogeneration setup could still make sense?
But I'm also now curious about something more interesting: In the same way that you can have, say, a propane powered refrigerator, is it also possible to have a natural gas powered heat pump? Suppose it's a cold winter day, and you're burning natural gas in a combustion chamber in an appliance in your basement. There are three temperature reservoirs: The outdoors, the house, and the combustion chamber, at temperatures T1 < T2 < T3, respectively. By harnessing heat flow (Q32) from the combustion chamber into the house, can additional heat (Q12) be pumped from the outdoors into the house? Then the house will get a total flow Q = Q32 + Q12.
From Q32, work
W = (1 - T2/T3) * Q32
is available. That can then be used to pump
Q12 = 1 / (1 - T1/T2) * W
= ((1 - T2/T3) / (1 - T1/T2)) * Q32
additional heat. And thus
Q = Q32 + Q12
= (1 + (1 - T2/T3) / (1 - T1/T2)) * Q32
= B(T1, T2, T3) * Q32 .
Here, B (a function of T1, T2, T3) is the coefficient by which the natural gas' energy is effectively multiplied, for heating purposes.
T1 = -9.4 F = -23 C = 250.15 K (Outdoor temperature in winter on cold day.)
T2 = 71.6 F = 22 C = 295.15 K (Indoor room temperature.)
T3 = 2236 K (Adiabatic flame temperature of methane at constant volume.)
Then we have B(T1, T2, T3) = 6.69.
That's very substantial!
Of course, this assumes Carnot efficiencies for everything, so it's an upper bound.
Also, my assumption of T3 being the adiabatic flame temperature may be too optimistic. Google says
> Today's commercial jet engines can reach temperatures as high as 1,700 degrees Celsius (that's 3,092 degrees Fahrenheit)
https://engineering.virginia.edu/news/2018/11/generating-cur....
so letting T3 = 1,700 C = 1973.15 K, we get the slightly lower B(T1, T2, T3) = 6.58.
This is still fantastic.
This is also assuming a very cold day, which is when the system will have lower efficiency. If we instead assume T1 = 0 C = 273.15 K, and use the more conservative T3 = 1973.15 K assumption, then we get B(T1, T2, T3) = 12.4. That's huge.
So, assuming my math/modeling is right, a hypothetical heat-pump furnace could (using Carnot bounds) use around 1/6th - 1/12th the natural gas as a conventional one, even in a very cold place, if you keep all the other properties of the house (insulation, air exchange) constant.
I don't think that's right: look at micro-CHP (Combined Heat and Power) systems: they run an engine to generate electricity, and then capture the heat for heating. I don't think you can get them for residential in the US though.
Well I found this, they used the heat for hot water:
Except it's not legal to do this, and even if it were there'd be a lot of hassle.
If you plumb the radiator to your home you get >100% efficiency
[1] https://www.ehs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/emergency_ge...
[2] https://www.mass.gov/doc/310-cmr-700-air-pollution-control-r...
1) exhaust out air initially drawn from the house which must be replaced by cold outdoor air coming into the house (this requires more heating of the house) 2) take in fresh cold air for combustion and exhaust that (which requires extra energy to heat up the cold air)
20 years ago quite common.
The efficiency rating of a gas furnace assumes the incoming air temperature is close to the desired temperature of the house- that's why it is negligible in the artificial efficiency ratings. If the incoming air is below freezing the efficiency must be different. I wish I could find a study that properly quantified this.
Where I live at 7000 feet, we have so much sunshine, even in winter, solar is a very viable option. Legislation removing people's ability to recoup the costs is the only reason it's not in every house in the city. The only option left is a much more costly battery setup.
Which mostly goes to show the value and necessity for serious insulation and air-sealing, which this house does not have. Nevertheless, the point about batteries remains.
It requires a minimal amount of "smarts" and is all standard plumbing.
Why would they reign in one of the best ways to ensure that Calpers remains solvent?
For example Silicon Valley Power which serves Santa Clara (or something like that) has rates that are literally half as much as PG&E.
In Minnesota I’m paying for Xcel Energy’s mistakes in Texas.
If someone remote wants power, they should secure power and pay for it at a market clearing rate, given the cost and risk to deliver it.
California has wildfires, and climate change has made them worse. Then the people who built their houses in a silly place prone to wildfires watch them burn down. This is becoming a problem as the frequency which with it happens increases, because it can bankrupt fire insurance companies (who then can't pay claims), or make fire insurance there unaffordable and then people don't buy it, their house burns down, and you have angry constituents.
The political solution to this is to put the liability on the power company whenever possible, even though it isn't really their fault. The fire is caused by dry conditions and that wood is going up the first time there is any kind of flame anywhere near it. If it wasn't PG&E it would have been a lightning strike or something else. Having the fires less often can actually make them worse.
But the power company is a deep pocket, so if there is any way to pin the fire on them, that's what everybody wants to do, so that the uninsured people in the fire zone can collect from someone and the currently insured people who are still there don't become unable to afford fire insurance.
Then the power company raises rates on everybody in their service area, including people who don't live in high fire risk areas, because the government has them acting as the fire insurance company, but now you can't cancel your "fire insurance" without turning off your electricity and it also has to be paid by people who didn't build their house in a silly place.
There is some liability on the state and voters for anti burn policy. However, there is more liability on the PG&E for failure to adequately mitigate risk, and failure to asses and frontload charges for probable payment.
If homes are uninsurable, then they shouldn't be. That should only be an issue for an insurer and home owner to work out.
If people want to live somewhere uninsurable, or with more expensive power, I have no issue whatsoever, and won't call them silly. That is their perogitive and values. I view it the same way as if someone wants to base jump, or eat a $500 steak. I fully support them doing whatever makes them happy, as long as they don't expect me to pay for it
Mitigating the risk is pointless. Wildfires are a natural occurrence in California. The ignition source is irrelevant. The fire is happening, you can't stop it.
> I fully support them doing whatever makes them happy, as long as they don't expect me to pay for it
But that's exactly what they expect you to do. Their houses are in a tinder box. There is some absurdly high probability that they'll burn. And then they're going to want to play the sympathetic victim who has just lost everything in a fire and go to the government and try to get someone else (i.e. you, via PG&E) to pay for the consequences of their choices.
The traditional way of doing this is to make the insurance pay, but they didn't have insurance because the high risk was known in advance which made the insurance unaffordable. When that's not available, the lawyers have to find someone else to sue, and in this case it's the power company.
>But that's exactly what they expect you to do. Their houses are in a tinder box. There is some absurdly high probability that they'll burn.
I dont know what you think is "high probability", but it doesnt really matter. The point is that it should be between them and the power company.
I think you have a pretty distorted view of reality. PGE didnt and doesn't get sued for natural wildfires, only what they cause.
But more frequent, smaller fires are actually better. Otherwise dead wood accumulates and then the next fire spreads faster and is harder to contain.
> Take the camp fire. If not for PG&E, 85 people would be alive, and 16 billion in damages would be averted.
And then an even worse fire would have happened later.
> The point is that it should be between them and the power company.
But the power company isn't raising rates for customers in high fire risk areas, they're raising rates for everyone. Otherwise the people in high risk areas would all cancel their electrical service because they couldn't afford it, but the power company would still have to maintain lines there because it's in their service area.
> PGE didnt and doesn't get sued for natural wildfires, only what they cause.
They're all natural wildfires. They're caused by dead wood and dry conditions.
PG&E's liability for wildfire-related damages, blowing up San Bruno, etc., is not a political decision of where to place blame for climate-change effects, it is regular civil liability (and in some cases criminal) for damage provably attributable to acts or culpable omissions by the firm.
I don't know if the experience of a Brit with a roof covered in solar panels applies in California, but: during months when you want to run the heat pump, your solar won't be producing shit.
It will have a lower price but not a lower cost. At this point we can't wait for price efficiency we have to pay whatever dollar amount to avoid the catastrophic human costs of burning fossil fuels.
Why do you think electricity prices are high?
Why do you think electricity prices are high?
Why should the rates be 4x the rest of the country?
you can see, for instance san diego's rates [1] which are $0.38/kWh in the winter and $0.48/kWh in the summer. for context, this means if i pay 11 dollars in electricity generation (because i'm part of a municipal electric generation coop), i'm still paying $36 for distribution/transmission/etc, which is $47 for 106kWh used or ~$.44/kWh which is roughly what electrify america charges ($.48/kWh) when i go to 'fill up my car.' as far as i can tell from talking to people, this is is more than most people anywhere in the country (including hawaii) pay for their electricity.
[0]: https://www.publicadvocates.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cal-advocate... [1]: https://www.sdge.com/sites/default/files/regulatory/1-1-24%2...
Peak is $0.51536 (delivery) - $0.10556 (baseline credit) + $0.16225 (generation via East Bay Community Energy / Ava) or just over of $0.57 per kWh.
Off-peak is $0.48701 - $0.10556 - $0.13772 or just shy of $0.52/kWh.
Add that baseline credit back in for when you reach tier 2 (currently 12.9 kWh/day for my apartment which factors in winter usage and electric heat). I have about 3.5 kW of baseboard heaters (and use 2.75 kW at most). Whatever the duty cycle is to keep the apartment at 60°F 24x7 is well more than 12.9 kWh so obviously I don't do that anymore. Rates are set to go up again in March or April.
Gas is $2.43888/therm with tier 2 kicking in at 6.72 therms/month and minimum charge of $0.13151/day.
Why do you think electricity prices are high?
* spent billions over the past few decades on stock buybacks
* spent billions on fines and restitution for malfeasance like falsifying call-before-you-dig records
* spends tens of millions annually on stock dividends (down from billions annually pre-bankruptcy)
* used their safety budget to pay executive bonuses
* stacked the CPUC in their favor
* rakes in billions in profit (roughly $1/share EPS) annually