71–80 of 156 posts
Until that happens, I'll hang onto my gas furnace and water heaters.
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>And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof. Yep, that's…
7 hours of sun in a month? How do you survive? I think I'd go crazy.
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>And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof. Yep, that's…
The idea would be to sell excess power in summer to offset the cost of buying power in winter. For sure this won't work equally well everywhere, and I'm not sure if this would still work once practically everyone has solar; but right now it's plausible.
In reality, we have no realistic mechanism for long-term energy storage on a grid scale - we barely start to breach scale where storage can handle daily fluctuations - like in California. And it's not free - it's being costly affair.
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> while electricity is also normally expensive, if you have electrical heating you're excempt from paying taxes on electricity usage above 4000 kWh per year :) So it can be done with state subsidies, but worldwide even the one time bonuses for EVs are being canceled. States aren't likely to give up on even more revenue.
It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. It’s usually in these country’s national security interests, let alone environmental interest, to push away from gas and oil given that they are often imported from hostile nations. America doesn’t really have that same problem, but Denmark and China do.
I like pedantry as much as the next person but that feels like a pointless distinction here.
Transparency is great, but let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables. We only have one nice planet to live on, and there are others who want to keep being able to live comfortably on it, I've heard. Oil/gas is a potent drug that is difficult to vane off of. (Arguably solar/battery has the same problem as oil: let's dig and refine stuff from the ground, and not care ab…
That argument won't work in practice though. You have to make it make financial sense to each and every individual to encourage them to switch, "Do it because it's the right thing to do" is a tall order when people are already on a tight budget.
I'm sure the new US president will assist in this matter.
Def not making an account on whatever random website heatpumped.org is. Owner of the site needs to stop pretending their the WSJ. Anyways the phrasing of the non-blocked article seems to imply the title is a red herring, and their bill actually went down. I'll never know though.
Hi there. Author of this post. The content gate is on by default for all of my newsletter content, but I figured out a way to turn it off. You should be able to read the full article now without putting in an email.
Def not making an account on whatever random website heatpumped.org is. Owner of the site needs to stop pretending their the WSJ. Anyways the phrasing of the non-blocked article seems to imply the title is a red herring, and their bill actually went down. I'll never know though.
Yet another example of a paywall that can be defeated by disabling JS or using a text mode browser. Those are my second favorite. The most entertaining are the ones that pack the article text into some JSON, and then use JS to generate the readable version. At least then I get a minor puzzle to solve.
Transparency is great, but let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables. We only have one nice planet to live on, and there are others who want to keep being able to live comfortably on it, I've heard. Oil/gas is a potent drug that is difficult to vane off of. (Arguably solar/battery has the same problem as oil: let's dig and refine stuff from the ground, and not care ab…
> let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables Here in the UK, natural gas is used to provide electricity[1], so switching to a heat pump right now isn't likely to help with the environment and (because gas is vastly cheaper per unit energy) nor the utility bill. You might as well spend the capex on the insulation upgrades required for a heat pump anyway, but then stay o…
Efficiency of a typical combi boiler is 90%. The notional efficiency of a heat pump in UK climate will be around 300-400% (or rather 3-4 COP). Even accounting for transmission losses etc. a heat pump powered from gas turbines is better for the environment than a combi boiler.
And that's assuming the grid doesn't become more green over time. It's not exactly uncommon for cold snaps to be windy too, so it could be 80% renewables. Put it this way, a gas boiler is never going to become more green, a heat pump is going to become more green over it's lifespan (especially in the UK which has very aggressive grid decarbonisation plans).
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You can energy model it if you have the time.
if you do fresh manual J calculation, with updated design temperature (which in reference manual is still incorrect) and blower door test, than maybe. And it still very theoretical but realistically, very few people do it when they update hvac system. in fact, most (all?) of hvac installers simply refuse to do it.