So, uh... the gas prices

[UltraDolphinRevolution]

Remember that pro choice, i.e. Ukraine´s right to choose military alliances, trumps everything. It trumps environmental concerns (Russia is burning the gas it cannot export), famines in the Middle East and Africa and your well-being. A European leader spoke of 5-10 hard years for Europe.

Slava Ukrainini, Slava Slava Slava!

The only way to stop support for Ukraine is if Zelensky knelt on the back/neck of an African for 9 minutes. But even then I´m not so sure.

 

[Xzi]

Remember that pro choice, i.e. Ukraine´s right to choose military alliances, trumps everything.

Oh fuck off with this, everybody's sick of your pro-Putin propaganda. Outdated propaganda at that, since he himself admitted long ago that NATO was not the cause for the invasion, nor would the invasion stop if Ukraine permanently ceased all attempts to join it. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian lives matter in the least to a man that demented, they're just playthings.

We've also already established that the rise in price of natural resources has very little to do with the war. Russia isn't nearly as important as you or Putin would like to believe it is in that regard, and this just further stresses the importance of nations becoming energy independent.

"Just give the mentally unstable imperialist tyrant exactly what he wants and everything will work out fine, promise."

 

[Xzi]

I don't know why it's supposedly so hard to distribute.
It doesn't seem so hard over here.

There are probably very few parts of Brazil that receive too little sunlight for solar power generation. Which means you don't really have to distribute it at all, the panels can be installed right on top of all population centers. That's not possible for a lot of individual states, so we'd have to transfer the energy hundreds, if not thousands of miles from states that do generate enough solar and wind power.

 

[City]

I'm not an expert in solar energy, far from it, but I do know the current efficiency is around 20~25%.
The heat itself could be turned into energy, also helping reduce Earth's temperature.

No idea if this is possible either, but regarding cleaning, why not encase the panels it in hydrophobic treated glass?

As for the environmental impact from production, even the nuclear plant will have it, so it's kinda moot to bring it up.



I don't know why it's supposedly so hard to distribute.
It doesn't seem so hard over here.

The problem isn't water though, it's dirt. Not sure you can do much for it unless the panels are held vertically (but then you're getting even less energy).

As for the distribution, we're talking about transferring the energy from the desert to the city. How are you going to transport it?

 

[RAHelllord]

Modern heat pumps have a heater in the outside unit which keeps it just above freezing when in use.

Yes, it's possible for heat pumps to operate in sub-freezing temperatures. But can you find me the efficiency ratings for the Mitsubishis? The documentation on their site only lists it for down to 14F, while listing running for 5F, 0F, 05F, and -14F.

The point still stands once you get below freezing heat pumps become much less efficient and start up their own internal heaters to work. That's why I originally said the price of heating with them spikes.

Normally a heat pump can pull heat from the outside air, but once it hits freezing, the pump needs the internal heater to kick in for it to function. But there isn't any magic happening. The heat pump is running an electric heater just like a small space heater you could have. But those small space heaters use 1,500W, now scale that up to the heating needs of a house.

In cold climates, you are still looking at needing gas so you can run a hybrid system which would have major cost savings versus electric alone. I shudder thinking about the power needs for the utilities for non-hybrid systems along with charging electric cars. With cooling in the summer there's usually a pullback of demand during the night, in the winter it would get colder and needs more electricity to heat while needing to also charge cars during "off hours".

In the dark parts of the year, these colder climates have the majority of their days as completely overcast with maybe up to eight hours of daylight. So solar panels to help cut down on costs are out, and even if it was a cloudless day, those are normally much colder days and the solar panels will be covered in snow and ice.

In dry warm areas like a desert or California (but I repeat myself), solar panels and heat pumps for cooling make a lot of sense. Even at night when it gets down to the 40s they do an amazing job heating and are very efficient. But they aren't an answer to get away from gas in every scenario. Much like our autonomous cars that are just around the corner, throw them up against a harsh cold climate and they start not working as they should.

Two things, the heater is not permanently running as it's only needed to deice for a few minutes all 3-4 hours depending on the weather and only if the heatpump is not reversible, or if it needs to start up from cold in the winter with solid ice already present on the unit. The heater will turn off once the actual pump moving the fluid/gas around is at operating temperature and will stay off until there is too much ice present to prevent airflow through the heat exchanger.

If it is a reversible unit, meaning it can also cool indoors, then the deicing actually just switches to cooling indoors for about 2 minutes, heats up the heat exchanger outside enough that the ice melts enough to fall off (or melts down fully in case it can't fall off), then swaps back to heating indoors again. That takes a few minutes at most and is not noticeable according to the few people I know that already have one of those things in their homes.

As for efficiency at low temperatures, 100% up to 5°F and 75% at -13°F, directly from the spec sheets:

https://resource.gemaire.com/is/con...namhz-u1_article_1604089097122827_en_subs.pdf

Unless you live in the arctic those are feasible solutions for 99.9% of the year, and they double as AC during summer so you only need one of those units for most things.

The problem isn't water though, it's dirt. Not sure you can do much for it unless the panels are held vertically (but then you're getting even less energy).

Just use a sprinkler or some form of brush going over it occasionally.

As for the distribution, we're talking about transferring the energy from the desert to the city. How are you going to transport it?

Sending electricity over long distances is nothing new. Turn it into high voltage AC at high frequencies and you can send it hundreds of miles with barely any losses.

 

[FAST6191]

GTFO here with nuclear power. Haven't you learned your lesson from it already?
Yes, it's the cleanest source, with a huge caveat: only when you can safely dispose of the waste, which is as of now, impossible.

I can't fathom why, with so many freaking huge empty deserts, people haven't invested more in solar power yet, as it's pretty much the second cleanest alternate energy source, safe and pretty much limitless for the duration of the panels.

We should have ditched petrol as a power source for decades as of now.

Interesting. Not had a disposal objection in a while, not to mention barring a few incidents in storage pools over the years then there are vanishingly few scare stories dealing with disposal. I would rate the concrete blocks down very deep (below water table) mines as safe enough for task as well.

As far as disposal it would depend what is going on. Thorium is a whole different game. Equally fire back up the breeder reactors* and concerns also drop considerably.

*various hippies tend to lobby for their closure as breeder reactors whilst also disposing of some of the more fun isotopes into something far easier to handle also make all the nice medical grade stuff (see the shortage of Technetium 99m a few years back, some of the iodine stuff also falls under that but that is a different discussion), however it is but a short hop, skip and jump to enrichment for bombs so in come the hippies.

Edit. Re: heat pumps.
Ground source in suitable location (most of the US west coat -- it is called the ring of fire for a reason) and even in less suitable ones. Wonderful.
Air source... love the things for certain uses but households can be more tricky

 

[RAHelllord]

Edit. Re: heat pumps.
Ground source in suitable location (most of the US west coat -- it is called the ring of fire for a reason) and even in less suitable ones. Wonderful.
Air source... love the things for certain uses but households can be more tricky

There is a lot happening in the space recently making new models more suitable for even more climates, especially colder ones:
Again, Mitsubishi's latest models have 100% efficiency down to 5°F / -15°C.

The problem the new ones have is still mostly price and installation costs, but particularly the latter appears to be vastly overblown by contractors for how little the installation differs from a regular AC install. Especially since the differences in installation are basically an extra valve to allow flipping the direction of the fluid/gas around and some extra sensors to let the unit know when to deice.
But once you have a well insulated home the lower output doesn't matter, almost nobody has to run a gas furnace at 100% load 24/7.

 

[DinohScene]

The house I live in has a heatpump.
I've wanted to get solar panels fitted but housing cooperation refuses.
Bummer.

 

[Jayro]

The gas prices here in the U.S. have come down considerably. Are you guys not getting relief yet?

 

[sombrerosonic]

Im just gonna subscribe to this thread..... gonna see how long untill the based ones pop up

 

[Xzi]

The gas prices here in the U.S. have come down considerably. Are you guys not getting relief yet?

Natural gas (ovens/furnaces) versus gasoline (cars). Though neither is prohibitively expensive at the moment in the US, on that you're correct. The real insanity is in food and rent prices.

 

[Deleted member 114266]

Two things, the heater is not permanently running as it's only needed to deice for a few minutes all 3-4 hours depending on the weather and only if the heatpump is not reversible, or if it needs to start up from cold in the winter with solid ice already present on the unit. The heater will turn off once the actual pump moving the fluid/gas around is at operating temperature and will stay off until there is too much ice present to prevent airflow through the heat exchanger.

If it is a reversible unit, meaning it can also cool indoors, then the deicing actually just switches to cooling indoors for about 2 minutes, heats up the heat exchanger outside enough that the ice melts enough to fall off (or melts down fully in case it can't fall off), then swaps back to heating indoors again. That takes a few minutes at most and is not noticeable according to the few people I know that already have one of those things in their homes.

As for efficiency at low temperatures, 100% up to 5°F and 75% at -13°F, directly from the spec sheets:

https://resource.gemaire.com/is/con...namhz-u1_article_1604089097122827_en_subs.pdf

Unless you live in the arctic those are feasible solutions for 99.9% of the year, and they double as AC during summer so you only need one of those units for most things.


Just use a sprinkler or some form of brush going over it occasionally.

Sending electricity over long distances is nothing new. Turn it into high voltage AC at high frequencies and you can send it hundreds of miles with barely any losses.

The marketing only says 100% capacity which is only saying how much heat the unit can generate.

From that same PDF.

At 47F the max and rated capacity is the same 54,000 BTU at just under 4,000W.

At 17F they split to a max 54,000 BTU with a rated 39,000 BTU with max at 6,300W and rated at 4,200W. So that gives you a 28% heating drop with a slight power increase, or a 50% more power usage to stay at the same heating capacity.

At 5F the PDF only lists the max capacity at 54,000 BTU with just under 8,000W power draw.

There's a reason they don't do ratings at 5F or lower as the number are horrible. And at -5F the max capacity from the marketing falls to 40,500 BTU and lord only knows how much power it's pulling to be able to generate that.

Again I'm not saying heat pumps don't work at those cold temperatures, but they are incredibly inefficient. And for my power usage comparison, an average whole house air conditioner uses 3,000-3,500W. So at 47F, the heat pump is using slightly more power than an AC, at colder temps, it can hit 2-3x the power usage.

Think of the issues utilities across the country on 90F+ days when everyone has their AC cranked. Now double that power draw except you don't get the nighttime where the usage goes down since it gets even colder at night and you could have 2-3x the power draw.

Heat pumps are really cool tech, but I still argue the point we're still a ways off from completely getting rid of using gas due to those colder climates needing hybrid heating solutions to allow the burning of gas for heat when temps get really low.

 

[RAHelllord]

The marketing only says 100% capacity which is only saying how much heat the unit can generate.

From that same PDF.

At 47F the max and rated capacity is the same 54,000 BTU at just under 4,000W.

At 17F they split to a max 54,000 BTU with a rated 39,000 BTU with max at 6,300W and rated at 4,200W. So that gives you a 28% heating drop with a slight power increase, or a 50% more power usage to stay at the same heating capacity.

At 5F the PDF only lists the max capacity at 54,000 BTU with just under 8,000W power draw.

There's a reason they don't do ratings at 5F or lower as the number are horrible. And at -5F the max capacity from the marketing falls to 40,500 BTU and lord only knows how much power it's pulling to be able to generate that.

Again I'm not saying heat pumps don't work at those cold temperatures, but they are incredibly inefficient. And for my power usage comparison, an average whole house air conditioner uses 3,000-3,500W. So at 47F, the heat pump is using slightly more power than an AC, at colder temps, it can hit 2-3x the power usage.

Think of the issues utilities across the country on 90F+ days when everyone has their AC cranked. Now double that power draw except you don't get the nighttime where the usage goes down since it gets even colder at night and you could have 2-3x the power draw.

Heat pumps are really cool tech, but I still argue the point we're still a ways off from completely getting rid of using gas due to those colder climates needing hybrid heating solutions to allow the burning of gas for heat when temps get really low.

You're missing the point that gas burned at home for heat extracts less useable power than using it in a power plant to generate electricity. If nobody burns gas at home for heat that same gas would make enough power in power plants to supply double the amount of homes with enough energy to run these during high demand periods. The power grid falling over during heat waves isn't because there isn't enough power, it's because your power companies in the US don't use any of their profits to actually scale the infrastructure moving the power around the place without blackouts. Upgrading that would be surprisingly simple if a bit costly. But it has to happen one way or another.

Gas powerplants can also be made to do a combination of electricity generation and creating hot water for heating closer homes, it's a pretty popular thing to do here in Germany.

The only exception to this would be Texas and their hilarious attempts at dodging federal regulations and doing their own thing. They can't scale shit up as easily as other places can since they don't have the ability to just import or export power to other states that momentarily need it.

 

[Deleted member 114266]

You're missing the point that gas burned at home for heat extracts less useable power than using it in a power plant to generate electricity. If nobody burns gas at home for heat that same gas would make enough power in power plants to supply double the amount of homes with enough energy to run these during high demand periods. The power grid falling over during heat waves isn't because there isn't enough power, it's because your power companies in the US don't use any of their profits to actually scale the infrastructure moving the power around the place without blackouts. Upgrading that would be surprisingly simple if a bit costly. But it has to happen one way or another.

Gas powerplants can also be made to do a combination of electricity generation and creating hot water for heating closer homes, it's a pretty popular thing to do here in Germany.

The only exception to this would be Texas and their hilarious attempts at dodging federal regulations and doing their own thing. They can't scale shit up as easily as other places can since they don't have the ability to just import or export power to other states that momentarily need it.

I don't have the data to try comparing heating via hot water as it isn't done here and the US is larger and more spread out.

But 1 cubic foot of natural gas is just over 1,000 BTU when burned. However, natural gas power plants only have a 45-57% efficiency rating. Yes, electricity to heat is pretty much 100% efficient. But you transmitting electricity large distances also isn't without some cost.

Going off the assumption that burning natural gas produces the same BTU at -15F as it does at 47F. Using it instead for electricity generation and transmission is roughly 50% efficient. Then there's the large increase to generate heat as it gets colder and you still say heat pumps alone are the way to go?

Just look at tri-fuel generators that run off gas, propane, and natural gas. Their generation ratings are based on gas, and natural gas normally only produces 50% of what it's rated at.

Burning gas at a power plant also doesn't solve trying to go to "green" solutions. That's why I still say nuclear is the way to go until we magically find something better. Your argument about heated water warming nearby homes can and is done with nuclear plants. And while you do have nuclear waste to deal with, the plants vent steam that just vapor H2O rather than all of the CO2 natural gas plants emit.

Natural Gas is CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O -- So yes, burning it does give you water, but it also gives you CO2.

 

[RAHelllord]

I don't have the data to try comparing heating via hot water as it isn't done here and the US is larger and more spread out.

But 1 cubic foot of natural gas is just over 1,000 BTU when burned. However, natural gas power plants only have a 45-57% efficiency rating. Yes, electricity to heat is pretty much 100% efficient. But you transmitting electricity large distances also isn't without some cost.

Going off the assumption that burning natural gas produces the same BTU at -15F as it does at 47F. Using it instead for electricity generation and transmission is roughly 50% efficient. Then there's the large increase to generate heat as it gets colder and you still say heat pumps alone are the way to go?

Just look at tri-fuel generators that run off gas, propane, and natural gas. Their generation ratings are based on gas, and natural gas normally only produces 50% of what it's rated at.

Burning gas at a power plant also doesn't solve trying to go to "green" solutions. That's why I still say nuclear is the way to go until we magically find something better. Your argument about heated water warming nearby homes can and is done with nuclear plants. And while you do have nuclear waste to deal with, the plants vent steam that just vapor H2O rather than all of the CO2 natural gas plants emit.

Natural Gas is CH4 + 2 O2 -> CO2 + 2 H2O -- So yes, burning it does give you water, but it also gives you CO2.

In the document I linked the COP (Coefficient of Performance) at 5°F is 2.1 for non-ducted, which is the closest directly comparable case. This means for every watt of energy in the heat pump supplies 2.1w of effective heating.
Assuming your cubic foot of gas for some quick math. One of those when burned equals 1,037 BTU which is the equivalent of 0.3039kWh of electrical power. Gas at a plant produces an average of 0.14 kWh/cubic foot.
At 5°F that equals 0,294kWh of heating, a 96.7% performance rating compared to natural gas. And that assumes it's actually possible to get 100% efficiency out of the furnace at home which is often not the case.
However the real magic happens at the other breaking points that are more likely to appear often, the COP at 17°F is 2.5 which means you now get 0,35 kWh of heating for every cubic foot of gas, 115,2% the performance of gas. At 47°F the COP is 4.0, equaling 0,56 kWh and 184,3% of the energy output of burning gas at home.

This means even at 5°F you only need to add 3.3% of additional heating to break even to gas, and if it's any warmer than that you will always outperform gas directly.

I do know that natural gas isn't perfectly clean even at a natural gas plant, but it is easier to properly clean it from byproducts more thoroughly, as well as that the CO2 could be captured for other applications.
And yeah, heating water to use nearby would only be feasible for a close by city, or the industrial area around it. If they have a gas plant in an industry area it might be quite useful to supply nearby businesses with warm water that way to waste less energy.

 

[Jayro]

Natural gas (ovens/furnaces) versus gasoline (cars). Though neither is prohibitively expensive at the moment in the US, on that you're correct. The real insanity is in food and rent prices.

Oh don't I know it... Obama still had an entire YEAR left in his last term do do something about the housing crisis in 2008, and he didn't do a damn thing.and of course, things just got worse from there. Why won't anybody put rent caps on landlords? This shit is the #1 reason why we're struggling so hard right now.

 

[Deleted member 114266]

In the document I linked the COP (Coefficient of Performance) at 5°F is 2.1 for non-ducted, which is the closest directly comparable case. This means for every watt of energy in the heat pump supplies 2.1w of effective heating.
Assuming your cubic foot of gas for some quick math. One of those when burned equals 1,037 BTU which is the equivalent of 0.3039kWh of electrical power. Gas at a plant produces an average of 0.14 kWh/cubic foot.
At 5°F that equals 0,294kWh of heating, a 96.7% performance rating compared to natural gas. And that assumes it's actually possible to get 100% efficiency out of the furnace at home which is often not the case.
However the real magic happens at the other breaking points that are more likely to appear often, the COP at 17°F is 2.5 which means you now get 0,35 kWh of heating for every cubic foot of gas, 115,2% the performance of gas. At 47°F the COP is 4.0, equaling 0,56 kWh and 184,3% of the energy output of burning gas at home.

This means even at 5°F you only need to add 3.3% of additional heating to break even to gas, and if it's any warmer than that you will always outperform gas directly.

I do know that natural gas isn't perfectly clean even at a natural gas plant, but it is easier to properly clean it from byproducts more thoroughly, as well as that the CO2 could be captured for other applications.
And yeah, heating water to use nearby would only be feasible for a close by city, or the industrial area around it. If they have a gas plant in an industry area it might be quite useful to supply nearby businesses with warm water that way to waste less energy.

The gas vs electric prices aren't lining up for me.

Both gas and electricity come from the same company for me and the price is fairly stable throughout the year.

12/22/21 - 1/20/22 for heating last year was 131 CCF (100 CF per CCF) and is rated at ~$1/CCF. I have a gas dryer, water heater, and oven/stove so not all of it was heating. But that means $0.01 USD per cubic foot of natural gas. Which if burned you say gives ~0.30kWh. So 13,100 * 0.3 = 3,930 kWh.

Let's go with a 2.5 COP. 3,930 kWh / 2.5 * $0.19 (cost of 1 kWh of electricity for me) = $298.86 vs $114 that I was charged which includes $13 just have service, delivery surcharges, and sales tax which the electricity number doesn't include.

My math is possibly bad but would the needed COP calculation be COP = 3930 / (114 / .19)? Because that says I'd need a COP of 6.55 to break even.

 

[Deleted member 608654]

we'll just wait then.

 

[RAHelllord]

The gas vs electric prices aren't lining up for me.

Both gas and electricity come from the same company for me and the price is fairly stable throughout the year.

12/22/21 - 1/20/22 for heating last year was 131 CCF (100 CF per CCF) and is rated at ~$1/CCF. I have a gas dryer, water heater, and oven/stove so not all of it was heating. But that means $0.01 USD per cubic foot of natural gas. Which if burned you say gives ~0.30kWh. So 13,100 * 0.3 = 3,930 kWh.

Let's go with a 2.5 COP. 3,930 kWh / 2.5 * $0.19 (cost of 1 kWh of electricity for me) = $298.86 vs $114 that I was charged which includes $13 just have service, delivery surcharges, and sales tax which the electricity number doesn't include.

My math is possibly bad but would the needed COP calculation be COP = 3930 / (114 / .19)? Because that says I'd need a COP of 6.55 to break even.

The way prices at the supplier are calculated are mostly just based on how much they think they can get away with charging the customer. They have huge profit margins in the US on both and on top of that fossil fuels, including natural gas of course, has up to 80% subsidy applied to it, and is thus cheaper for the customer because every tax payer is helping fund it via their taxes.

Using less gas for heating should mean more gas for power creation, thus a drop in price for electricity as the supply now increases. So assuming the free market principles are real, and not just smoke capitalists blow up the asses of everyone else, electricity should become more affordable as more people switch to heat pumps.

 

[Taleweaver]

Unless the government will do something about it

What, the government? As in... The USA government? That third world country with their rightwing politics and their nutcases that make said rightwings seem like lefties? Fat chance. News outlets have an allergy towards socialism, and as a result the people as well. So no... Don't expect the government to do something they're fundamentally against doing.

Sorry... Guess they've got to move to a more civilized country.