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Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#101

Post by danans »

ramenmeal wrote: post #37
danans wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck getting natural gas service after an earthquake severe enough to knock out power. Natural gas lines are far more at risk of breaking during such an event, and the gas utility will usually shut off gas supply until they are sure there aren't major leaks. After an earthquake, you are supposed to shut off your own supply at your meter with a gas wrench.

We had gas service after the 6.4 in northern california in December, but power was out.

They don't call these things "Earthquake Survival Tool" for no reason:

https://www.amazon.com/Ready-America-3333-Earthquake-Emergen...

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#102

Post by AdamJacobMuller »

reissbaker wrote: post #69
AdamJacobMuller wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even with a load shedding system? That's absurd, there is absolutely no local (your house) technical reason why this is unsafe and no grid-level reason why it's a bad idea and no generation-level reason why it's a bad idea.

By doing this you shift loads off peak and flatten the demand curve for power, this is an absolute win for transmission/grid capacity (they are most efficient at 100% utilization) and a huge win on generation capacity!

That is absolutely insane if you're correct, but, not unexpected from CA.

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#103

Post by readthenotes1 »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #94
readthenotes1 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as long as the insanity doesn't come to my city, I fully agree with you. What was that "n-gate" phrase "a city at war with it's citizens"?

what happened to n-gate by the way??

I wish i knew. I miss their take on the forum.

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#104

Post by dang »

notinfuriated wrote: post #67
jliptzin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Posting like that will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#105

Post by notinfuriated »

dang wrote: post #104
notinfuriated wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Posting like that will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

And you didn't bother posting a comment like this in response to the guy bringing up Fox News. My comment was exactly correct. Here I am getting threatened with a ban after posting a second, angrier comment in response to the first getting flagged almost immediately.

You've set up a community here that feels free to post lawyerly, I'm-not-hitting-you level bullshit comments where people attempt to troll the discussion and get nothing remotely close to a penalty. That dude probably even got actual upvotes, so he can continue to be a little dickhead with his occasional "durrr fox news" comments and use his downvote privileges on this site.

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#106

Post by notinfuriated »

dang wrote: post #104
notinfuriated wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Posting like that will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Also reminds me of this thread where I get another ban threat:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34016817

Meanwhile you basically allow someone to call me gay and let that slide without any threat of a ban:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34014963

This site should probably burn. Fuck your moderation, go ahead and ban me, I'm changing my password to something I'll never remember anyway.

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#107

Post by fragmede »

notinfuriated wrote: post #106
dang wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Posting like that will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Also reminds me of this thread where I get another ban threat: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34016817 Meanwhile you basically allow someone to call me gay and let that slide without any threat of a ban: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34014963 This site should probably burn. Fuck your moderation, go ahead and ban me, I'm changing my password to something I'll never remember anyway.

Your second link is empty, it looks like that comment was flagged and removed.

Perhaps it makes more sense for you to flag such incindiary comments and move on?

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#108

Post by heleninboodler »

Thorrez wrote: post #22
noahtallen wrote: post #9

Earlier 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.

You also need to compare:

  * natural gas -> home furnace -> fire -> warm air
   vs
  * natural gas -> fire -> heat -> electricity in massive generator -> home -> heat pump -> warm air
The latter is, surprisingly, something like 2x the efficiency because while large scale electricity generation from gas is only about 40% efficient, you can get a COP in the neighborhood of 5x on the heat pump.

The part that isn't obvious is that the fantastical-sounding "5x" isn't really about energy efficiency but rather about changing the problem from "generating heat" to "moving heat from one place to another".

Re: Bay Area plan to ban natural gas

#109

Post by icedistilled »

jhatax wrote: post #53
jhatax wrote: post #49

As a Bay Area resident with no gas connection, here are points to ponder: 1) PG&E electricity costs are among the highest in the country per KWH. They have received approvals to increase these astronomical costs by 10% in the near future. Gas is cheaper, by a lot. 2) Any time we have winds or hot weather or cold weather, the grid is under pressure and we are asked to curb our electricity usage. 3) In the winter and s…

Before someone chimes in with the obvious suggestions: a) Water heater is a heat pump set to high efficiency. b) Construction is 2016, so relatively new. c) We have done a lot to insulate the home. Net-net, this is an electricity cost issue; we are paying $0.42/KWH on average. This despite having some solar. This is not a profligate usage issue.

Missing some important data pieces: is it a giant house or small house? Is it heating/cooling the entire house including the spare bedroom(s) or zone ac/heating.
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