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California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

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Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#291

Post by myegorov »

ajross wrote: post #160
jwr wrote: post #88

I think another great move would be to start dealing with excessive energy consumption. Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units, vertical-drum washing machines (!!!), poorly designed gas stoves, oversized cars, monstrous gas-guzzling trucks, energy waste is all over the place. People behave just as if energy we…

> Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units, Are you living in a particularly new region? Every time I've seen this come up, the data actually says the opposite: the median US home is better insulated, more recently built and more efficiently climate-controlled. Which is unsurprising, because they're newer, basic…

What fraction of apartment buildings in California have double-pane windows? What fraction of commercial buildings in SF/East Bay have operable windows to take advantage of natural ventilation?

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#292

Post by function_seven »

Beldin wrote: post #289
function_seven wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wall between the garage and the house is considered an exterior wall, and is insulated the same as the other ones. Wooden construction does not inhibit insulation. Probably the opposite. It's easier to insulate the voids between studs than it is to insulate a masonry structure. Plus, "stick" building is almost a requirement for seismic reasons in California. As far as the windows are concerned, I can't tell from…

Around here, they build a stone wall, then add a layer of insulation against it, then build a brick wall against that. That layer of insulation had been mandatory since at least mid-80s, and requirements for thickness have increased a few times since. It's true that they're are houses with low energy labels, but from mid-80s on houses already have a C level - and that's default, with further improvements possible by…

Having a stone wall on the inside of the insulated barrier is great for adding thermal mass to the inside. Having all that masonry inside probably helps regulate the temperature nicely. I suspect it's more expensive to do it that way than to use wood studs and batting between them. (Of course it depends on the region you're building in. Wood is cheap in North America, maybe not so much in other parts of the world?)

And because earthquakes are also plentiful in California, we don't want our walls to be too heavy. Tensile strength is more important, as well as flexibility.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#293

Post by stephengillie »

jacquesm wrote: post #274
styfle wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has lived in both So Cal and the Midwest, I can confirm this. In So Cal, I didn't have A/C for 10+ years and rarely used the heater (a desktop computer can double as a heater haha). In the midwest, the A/C or heater is on pretty much 24/7 because even when the temperatures look favorable, there is humidity.

> a desktop computer can double as a heater Servers are so much better... http://www.supermicro.com/products/chassis/4U/847/SC847BE1C4...

Indeed, a CPU is a space heater that can perform math, while incidentally also transmitting that math through space as a software-defined radio.

An Athlon XP was my space heater during my gap decade.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#294

Post by stephengillie »

twtw wrote: post #216
washingtub wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vertical-drum washing machines (!!!) There are a number of issues with front-loading washers. While they use less water, they are also worse at cleaning clothes and much worse at sanitizing them. There was a recent post here on HN where a biologist did several experiments in her own washer to show how poorly they sanitized things compared to her older one. They also tend to trap water in the bottom and it gets must…

This sort of thing is why I sort of hate energy star everything. Take dishwashers, for example. You can regulate the energy and water usage all you want, but it long ago got to the point where dishwashers that meet regulations basically fail to clean the dishes. Which is fine, it just causes the consumer to wash the dishes by hand either instead of or in addition to using the dishwasher. So now the dishwasher uses le…

My new AC unit cools very effectively, and is the lowest energy usage of its category.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#295

Post by bitbckt »

stefan_ wrote: post #204
ajross wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units, Are you living in a particularly new region? Every time I've seen this come up, the data actually says the opposite: the median US home is better insulated, more recently built and more efficiently climate-controlled. Which is unsurprising, because they're newer, basic…

I've pulled up a random "YouTube star" "building my dream house in california" video and that looks all the world like a single glazed window, in 2018: https://youtu.be/OWglKkE-0a8?t=2m17s It also seems to be a wooden construction.. so frankly I don't know what to think. I'm sorry if this seems like very unconventional evidence but then going from building codes to what people are actually building out there is a who…

Modern framing includes construction with "California corners" for a reason - it allows for more efficient placement of insulation.

The framing techniques used in a modern building are far stronger and more energy efficient than you seem to think.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#296

Post by stephengillie »

ancarda wrote: post #120
jwr wrote: post #88

I think another great move would be to start dealing with excessive energy consumption. Compared to what I'm used to in Europe, California is wasting crazy amounts of energy. Poorly insulated homes, old and inefficient AC/heating units, vertical-drum washing machines (!!!), poorly designed gas stoves, oversized cars, monstrous gas-guzzling trucks, energy waste is all over the place. People behave just as if energy we…

On the topic of large cars, what is the solution here? I can imagine forcing people to replace A/C units won’t be so objectionable, especially if it’s free to do so, but there may be some real opposition to requiring people to drive different cars. Nobody gets attached to an A/C. I don’t drive right now - I take public transport everywhere - but I’d love a large car (a Dodge RAM). If I try to buy something small to b…

Hybrid cars are a great answer - you can get a 3500lb car (like the Camry Hybrid) that gets 40 MPG highway, and often 50 MPG in city/country driving. This is because the car usually shuts the engine off below ~46 MPH. Until you've driven a hybrid, you won't realize how often the engine isn't needed, and just 40 horsepower is enough to propel the car. Often, the engine will run for just a few seconds as you accelerate, then will turn off for the next several minutes, as you coast or maintain speed to the next stop light on battery alone.

Another benefit of hybridization is that AC and other power-hungry accessories can be powered during heavy acceleration without putting any more strain on the engine. It's fun to go for a drive during a hot day, use AC the entire time, and still get (for example) 42.3 MPG.

Plus, you get the instant torque of an electric car. Maybe not quite as much as a Tesla, but you'll still beat an F-150 off the line.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#297

Post by aphextron »

village-idiot wrote: post #76
Tuxer wrote: post #6

Once again, making me proud to pay CA taxes. If they do not take large hydro into account when calculating this 100%, I wonder what we'll do with the dams. Destroy them to let the rivers free-flow again? Dams would have been a great store of energy for this project by pumping the water up during the day using solar/wind. Tesla Energy must be salivating at all those batteries that will need to be constructed.

As a fly fisherman, I sure hope we can eliminate some of those dams. They can be useful, but we've also overdone it a bit.

>As a fly fisherman, I sure hope we can eliminate some of those dams.

They're not all bad. Some of the best gold medal sections in the country are tailwaters. It's some of the most challenging, technical fishing you'll ever do as well. Landing a 10lb trout on size 24-28 nymphs and 8X tippet is an art itself.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#298

Post by garmaine »

toyg wrote: post #199
garmaine wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The output of a nuclear reactor isn’t waste, it is fuel for a different kind of reactor. If we built those reactors (called a breeder reactor) then we could safely and economically use that fuel, recycling so much that the actual waste would go from tons of material filling Olympic class swimming pools, to a few barrels. Nuclear power, done properly, is the cleanest source of energy we have. Why don’t we? Politics an…

> the lack of military uses As opposed to all those military uses of dams and wind turbines. Right. And of course, I wonder what the fuss is all about with Iran, then... The reason nuclear is in decline is the track record of spectacular disasters: Three Mile, Chernobyl, and now Fukushima. Get at least a generation without massive failures, and people might be willing to give nuclear a chance; but there have been 3 i…

What I mean is that the fuel reprocessing designs aren’t miniaturizable, so government money wasn’t spent developing them because they couldn’t be used in aircraft carriers or submarines. When civilian power plants were made, it was basically just scaled up military designs. The same contractors built both.

Also the fact that we use uranium instead of the safer and more abundant thorium is because you can’t make thorium bombs.

The reactors that have failed are these military derivative designs that lack safety features because there is no space for them in a submarine. No modern design has had such a failure, or could have such a failure since they have no reliance on active cooling and have safeguards to structurally prevent a core meltdown.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#299

Post by garmaine »

tomnipotent wrote: post #234
garmaine wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should we care about the total? EU and US are different sizes to begin with. Per capita seems to be appropriate here.

Then compare EU against US states individually - I'd wager the US result will drop significantly when you average the per capita results by state.

That is not how averages work.

Re: California Moves to Require 100% Clean Electricity by 2045

#300

Post by yongjik »

garmaine wrote: post #299
tomnipotent wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then compare EU against US states individually - I'd wager the US result will drop significantly when you average the per capita results by state.

That is not how averages work.

Besides, doing that will most certainly inflate the number, considering US has many small rural states with much worse emission (per capita) than large, less carbon-intensive states like NY or CA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_carbon_...

(By the way, what the hell is happening in Wyoming? 111.55 tons per person?)

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