NIST study suggests that gas is the most eco-friendly home energy option.
Source: https://www.earth.com/news/gas-electric-eco-friendly-home/
Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
61–70 of 109 posts
Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#62Why are people so attached to gas stoves when we have induction anyways? I love to cook and have a gas stove, but I bought my parents an induction unit a while back. Sure it can't provide an open flame, but the ludicrous speed at which it heats things up vastly outweighs that drawback. And not having to worry about ventilation nearly as much as just a bonus. My range hood needs to be on full tilt when I cook over lon…
when the power went out for 5 days two weeks ago, I could run the entire house on a $1200 generator. The gas furnace (600 watts), gas stove, gas dryer, and gas water heater used very little electricity. At some point Ill connect the generator to the natural gas line too. My friend with a brand new heat pump could not run the heatpump off his generator (6kw). I do like induction and use an induction hotplate for a few…
I'm surprised your gas furnace uses that much power, is that forced hot air or baseboard?
My hot water heater circulation pumps use around 200W for both, and the air circulators for my central air only use 300W (the actual cooling of course uses way more).
Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#63> The rules would not apply to gas stoves. I assumed furnaces and water heaters are better ventilated, so this surprised me. Yes, those two emit more nitrogen oxides, but we should be more worried about them indoors than out.
Gas cooking has an extremely low duty cycle, its an emissions rounding error.
Cooking is a major source of indoor air pollution but not due to using gas but due to the polution from cooking itself.
Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#64Given that heat pumps and other technologies have proven themselves quite well at this point it is not a bad idea for SF to lead the country on this one and shows that one can electrify most stuff (if not all stuff)
I hate my heat pump. Load as hell, makes the basement freezing in the winter, 50 gallon is really 45 gallon, time to reheat sucks, doesn't pair well with recirculating pumps, electric usage is more expensive than gas. Basically, get a size up compared to whatever you used for gas and you'll be good.
This is the opposite of my existence. I love my rheem heat pump water heater. Costs me less than old gas water heater. I heat to 140 and use a mixing valve to have safe temp at 120. I’ve never run out of hot water.
Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#65> The rules would essentially require all new residential construction to have electric water heaters by 2027 and heat pumps instead of furnaces by 2029. Not to be overly snide, but does the Bay Area even do any “new residential construction”?
actually, this probably isn't what you had in mind, but there are quite a few single story houses that are torn down and replaced with McMansions.
Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
This code would be about home appliances. But it turns out that massive generators are pretty efficient since they can operate at a huge scale. So even if the electricity replacing the gas stove was generated with gas, it'd still be better for the environment (and human health)
How does the efficiency of * natural gas -> fire -> heat -> electricity in massive generator -> home -> induction stove -> pan compare to * natural gas -> fire -> heat -> pan ? And resistive is worse than induction.
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Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#67Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#68> The rules would essentially require all new residential construction to have electric water heaters by 2027 and heat pumps instead of furnaces by 2029. Not to be overly snide, but does the Bay Area even do any “new residential construction”?
Knock down and rebuild.
Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#69My house is already maxed out on electric capacity because I have an electric car. I've investigated increasing the current coming into the house, but changes in code mean that making that upgrade would cost $20K. So if my hot water breaks, it will cost me $20K+ to fix it. That's not reasonable.
I'm not remotely in favor of this kind of forced conversion described in the article, but, if you actually want to install electric appliances (stove/heater) you can actually do so relatively cheaply without a service upgrade. Basically need to consider that while all of your combined appliances may use far more than your service can supply, they will rarely to never need to all run at the same time. You can interloc…
Many jurisdictions in CA have made what you're describing illegal. E.g. in Berkeley, where I live, I'd need enough service for everything to run at the same time to make it past the permitting and inspections folks.
Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because cooking with gas provides more, and better, temperature control than even very expensive induction setups. If you stir fry, there is no comparison. Also, low temp induction sucks. Even good units do low-frequency PWM to approximate low heat settings that come naturally with gas. Induction is a big step forward compared to the older, resistive-style electric elements, and there's a lot to like about it. But wh…
Haven’t tried stir frying yet (and I’ve read claims that any home and even restaurant wok burner can’t match the flavour from the very high-power outdoor gas burners used on the streets of Asia) but low temp induction works just fine, thanks. My $50 Ikea hotplate does a better job at very low heat than our gas burners, on-off cycling and all. Indeed, if you’re keen, you can buy specialist induction hotplates with con…
Wok cooking at home doesn't require anything crazy, just a wok ring/burner setup, like millions of folks already have.
A rough BTU breakdown for familiar comparison is ~7-10k BTU max for an average American home-cooking gas cooktop, ~15-20k BTU for an average Chinese one. Restaurants are in the 100k+ category because of volume as much as anything.
Speaking from personal preference, A ~50-75k BTU burner/ring setup is just fine; I don't need to cook larger volumes. When doing single-serving-sized batches, the indoor 20k is ok, too.
Now, can I cook in general using electric? Of course. Can I cook and achieve the flavors and composition I want with it? Not entirely, and yes, that matters to me. Outside of BTU discussions, I toast a lot of veggies over an open flame to get that nice, flavorful char. You can also dry heat them on a comal or the like, but it isn't the same.
[edit] FWIW, I would still love to try one of the commercial, 3-phase induction woks some day.