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I wish my condo didn't have gas. Every now and then I hear about a house blowing up because of a faulty gas connection or leak. I'm actually paranoid of gas.
You can't live scared, what sort of life is that?
The incidence of nat gas explosions is minuscule. By that logic we should ban cars, ban kitchen knives, ban everything so you're 100% safe to live a, well, not much of a life
Why are you so hung up on heat pumps? They're great devices but not for applications where it actually gets cold and the only choice is between electricity or Nat gas. This isn't Sweden where we can supplement electric heating with geothermal energy.
While Nat gas may be "less efficient" at the source, it takes far more in electricity use to heat up your home. What's the fuel source for virtually all power plants that deliver electricity to NYC?
Northern Europe has been transitioning to more electric based heating over the last few decades and now they're in a **** pickle and have to constantly felate Putin's dong whenever there's a forecast of an unusually cold or long winter. Why do you think?
You're a perfect example of people.getting tidbits of info from the internet but not comprehending the larger, more nuanced picture.
I'm being pretty direct with how you seem to completely have no idea what you're talking about. If this weren't a public forum with the potential people would be mislead by you, then it wouldn't even be worth responding.
The places where it gets too cold for air source heat pumps are something like Fairbanks Alaska where you'll see -40F temperatures at some point most years and -60F on record cold snaps. That's not NYC. Our all-time record known cold snap gets down to about -20Fs which is still within operable temperature band for modern, even air source, heat pumps. This has nothing to do with geothermal or ground source which can be done in the city, but wouldn't be necessary anyhow. It's not like Sweden is in a geologically active region with volcanoes, hot spots, and hot springs. Your mentioning geothermal heating for Sweden is probably more that you don't actually know what ground source heat pumps are and you've mistaken that kind of geothermal resource as something more like active geothermal resources near the surface. The geothermal heating in Sweden is generally ground-source heat pumps and heat reservoirs--something that can done here as well. It's not the naturally occurring subterranean heated water sources like Iceland or parts of Japan gets. However, that's not even necessary as NYC is squarely in the temperature band where modern air-source heat pumps operate well which is also why much of Scandinavia in recent years has turned to such as have tropical paradises like coastal Maine and northern Japan.
It does not take far more energy to heat up your home with electricity-that's the whole point of why a system that has a high COP above can be more efficient. Guess what that is? Oh right, heat pumps. Guess what they run on? Electricity. What's likely happening here is that you're thinking about electric resistance heaters which have a theoretical COP of 1, but that COP of 1 is much worse than that of natural gas because electricity prices are higher which makes sense since we generate some of our electricity used in NYC via natural gas and those generators have something like 60% efficiency, so you're already heading downwards from there. Heat pumps are different, but they also use electricity and are thus electrical heating. With heat pumps, even if you generated all the electricity for NYC by natural gas, which we don't, then you need a baseline COP of near 2 to be as efficient with the same natural gas resources put into electricity generation instead and heat pumps can operate up to over 5 and can still hit above 2 even well below freezing and that's a study with units from a decade ago when East Asian air-source heat pumps usable for fairly cold climates first started making their way here.
Northern Europe has just about no issue with getting energy resources from or energy dependence on Russia--the problem might be you don't know where Northern Europe is. Germany where there is a particular issue with dependence on natural gas from Russia along with other countries are not generally considered Northern Europe. The Scandinavian countries and Finland are generally what are considered Northern Europe and they are not particularly reliant on Russia for energy--this was also by design. Denmark is the somewhat larger proportional user of natural gas and had a blip in the mid 2000s where usage went up, but that's been dropping for the last decade or so and Denmark is a net *producer* of natural gas. Natural gas barely register as blips for total energy consumption in Sweden (which imports from Denmark) and Finland and what little amount of natural gas used in Finland is primarily used for a little bit of *electricity generation*, Norway exports nearly its entire natural gas production and has ample electrical generation from non-natural gas sources which is part of the large impetus for moving towards heat pumps (which run off of electricity). So what is it that you're trying to say about Northern Europe and natural gas again? It's possible that you saw the Nord Stream pipeline name or that it went through Northern Europe territorial waters and somehow in your head that got jumbled up with the idea that they are reliant on Russia for natural--guess what, it doesn't actually deliver natural gas to Northern Europe and Northern Europe is not reliant on Russian gas. That or you don't know what Northern Europe is.
That's a lot of mistakes for you to make in such a short post. This idea that you somehow have the larger nuanced picture is pretty ridiculous given all the errors you have in the "nuances". Try actually learning how a heat pump works, maybe? Not expecting you to know enough to actually work out the equations for modeling how a heat pump works in different environments, but it might be possible for you to at least look at the established literature and findings for in production units or to take an overview of what conditions are like where heat pumps have been growing in popularity though even that might be too tough.
Skepticism makes sense given that there's not that much familiarity in the US with heat pumps that operate well in cold climates. Gantz's skepticism is well-grounded in reality since he's noting the relatively high cost of electricity in NYC versus the only slightly above average cost of natural gas here, and he asked about the difference in efficiency being enough to make up for that which is reasonable given how relatively short the introduction of heat pumps suitable for this climate have been in the US because it does require a substantially higher COP around above 2 over a fairly broad band for this to be reasonable. He also asked about clothes dryers which I honestly was not sure about and is likely less efficient on a cost basis compared to natural gas clothes dryers even with the ventless, heat pump clothes dryers when used in cold conditions since the temperature differential that needs to be made up for a clothes dryer is much larger than that for room heating as pretty much no one is trying to heat the air in their homes well above 100F. You, on the other hand, act like you actually know something and seem comfortable making one erroneous statement after another like this was some tour de force exhibition of ignorance.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-17-2021 at 10:44 AM..
He did the same thing to me when I dared suggest Elon Musk could build tunnels throughout NYC at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time as bloated union contracts. He knew better and I had no idea what I was talking about
He did the same thing to me when I dared suggest Elon Musk could build tunnels throughout NYC at a fraction of the cost and a fraction of the time as bloated union contracts. He knew better and I had no idea what I was talking about
Yea, you don't have any idea what you're talking about. You were citing a cost per mile figure that was proposed for a narrow tunnel done under land and extrapolating that for a rail tunnel across the New York Bay from Staten Island to Manhattan. Tunnels are not all equivalent. Boring deep and laying it under a large body of water is a lot more work and resources especially since ventilation and emergency egress are important and expensive. A bore diameter that has to be a lot larger is very consequential as tunnel diameters scale at exp(2) to diameter so the material that needs to be removed is much more and the support needed for it much greater.
One person not having technical competency doesn't mean another person can't either. You can form a little committee if you want, but it does not change you have no idea what you're talking about and it's probably a bit irrational to appeal to another person of similar competency for support. It may be that even Enasci would know well enough that your statement about those tunnel costs was absurd, but that's not going to change that his post was rife with errors.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-17-2021 at 11:14 AM..
No one cares what you're aware of--the amount of grid resiliency and upgrades in the US aren't great, but they are undergoing in most parts including New York, on what are a greater concentration on electrical grid improvements than we've seen in a while and meanwhile for some of us we have solar+storage such that electrical, or even sillier, gas connections aren't necessary though still sensible enough for the electrical grid since there's a bit of money to be made staying connected. r.
Yawn. Airborne is right, if people like you aren't taking nuclear seriously, no self respecting "scientist" can take your green utopia dreams seriously either.
However, that's not even necessary as NYC is squarely in the temperature band where modern air-source heat pumps operate well which is also why much of Scandinavia in recent years has turned to such as have tropical paradises like coastal Maine and northern Japan.
You, on the other hand, act like you actually know something and seem comfortable making one erroneous statement after another like this was some tour de force exhibition of ignorance.
Between repeating yourself (bold) and gaslighting (italic), these long convoluted responses of yours continuously fail to mention:
Where is all this electricity coming from? Is the city (and state) prepared given the current fragility of the power grid during peak summer days? Why is New York not building nuclear power plants to go carbon free while avoiding having to import (carbon derived) electricity from Canada?
Between repeating yourself (bold) and gaslighting (italic), these long convoluted responses of yours continuously fail to mention:
Where is all this electricity coming from? Is the city (and state) prepared given the current fragility of the power grid during peak summer days? Why is New York not building nuclear power plants to go carbon free while avoiding having to import (carbon derived) electricity from Canada?
I would like for you to expand on the bolded.
__________________
"The man who sleeps on the floor, can never fall out of bed." -Martin Lawrence
Yawn. Airborne is right, if people like you aren't taking nuclear seriously, no self respecting "scientist" can take your green utopia dreams seriously either.
People like me? Where did you get the idea that I'm against nuclear power? I didn't mention it in this topic and Airborne wasn't addressing me when he said it was he? Not even going to touch what you think a self respecting "scientist" or green utopia dreams are as it's hard to tell what you're referencing there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by minnomaboidenapolis
Between repeating yourself (bold) and gaslighting (italic), these long convoluted responses of yours continuously fail to mention:
Where is all this electricity coming from? Is the city (and state) prepared given the current fragility of the power grid during peak summer days? Why is New York not building nuclear power plants to go carbon free while avoiding having to import (carbon derived) electricity from Canada?
Yea, I'm repeating myself because it seem like the idea isn't quite getting communicated. I also don't understand how that qualifies as gaslighting though perhaps you don't know what that word means. I'm giving you examples of regions where modern electric heat pumps have made large inroads as they're places that are generally colder than NYC and the Tri-State Area though not ridiculously colder like Fairbanks, Alaska where air-source heat pumps truly would be a bad idea. There are multiple arguments for showing that heat pumps are a good solution with one being from the actual performance of the heat pumps with their temperature range bands and their COPs and then the other is the myriad of fairly cold places that have seen new installations of such which may individually have different conditions from NYC/the Tri-State Area, but are also different from each other and yet are coming to the same technology because of its proven performance.
On top of that, there's that bit about nuclear power and your earlier mentioning of China's coal usage as well as what I've been saying about natural gas. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you aren't trying to gaslight me (actual usage of the word) by claiming that "people like me" are against nuclear power, but rather that you confused me with another poster. I am very much pro nuclear power and think we need to increase our research and development funding an order of magnitude (an actual order of magnitude) because it will possibly be our main source of usable energy in the mid and long term, and what qualms I have with them are on the levelized cost of electricity production basis and with arguably poor siting selection and concerns about a few of the older power plants.
I'll first repeat myself again that the theoretical COP value of natural gas heating is 1 while that of heat pumps for NYC's temperature bands during the late fall-early spring are mostly above 4, sometimes into the high 5s, still above 2 well below freezing. Those heat pumps use electricity.
What do you think nuclear power plants generate? Natural gas? No--they generate *electricity*. They ostensibly can use that electricity to convert into natural gas or similar via multi-step processes, but those are very inefficient processes and it would be ridiculous to do that in order to get heating with a COP of 1 when you can eschew that loss and transmit that as electricity to a heating process that has a much higher COP value.
What do you think we mostly use coal to produce? Natural gas? No--we use it to generate *electricity*. The process for attaining natural gas and the like from coal is also an inefficient multi-step process and it would be ridiculous to do that in order to get heating with a COP of 1 when you can eschew that loss and transmit that as electricity to a heating process that has a much higher COP value.
Is there a tried-and-true pathway towards generating electricity from natural gas? Yes, there is as a significant amount of electrical production source stems from natural gas and modern co-generation plants have an efficiency of about 60%. Take one therm of natural gas and its equivalent ~30 kWh of electricity. Let's say with less than optimal efficiency and distribution and transmission loss we knock down plant to home efficiency of 50% instead of 60% which would be above average losses. Then natural gas heating with a theoretical COP of 1 which we'll just take at face value means you need a COP of 2 to be as effective with a modern day heat pump. Do you want me to again repeat what the COP values for modern heat pumps in the NYC temperature bands are?
Right now new electrical production with the lowest LCOE is generally solar, but wind is competitive at times, too, and NYS also has ample hydroelectric production and resources and the likely cheapest electricity for us in the near term in large amounts is excess hydro electricity from Quebec even with the cost of a new HVDC line. So on top of all those sources mentioned above, what do you think solar, wind, and hydro produce? Natural gas? No--they generate *electricity*.
So on top of there being much higher efficiency for heating, which is the primary point, and a much broader base of sources that can be used, there's also another thing to factor in is which is what are the endpoint uses for electricity vs natural gas? There are a lot more endpoint uses for electricity aren't there? These devices we're typing on, the routers or signal towers transmitting this information and now even consumer passenger vehicles, yadda yadda yadda. After all, in this topic we see that electricity can cover and often cover better the main consumer use cases for gas, but it's not the same for gas trying to cover electricity as few things run on just natural gas itself and the conversion to electricity is not lossless and certainly an endpoint natural gas to electricity conversion is going to have much lower efficiency than that of a combined cycle power plant.
If there was any sense, then what the state and the city should be focusing on is expanding and improving the electrical grid rather than expansions of natural gas for endpoint use. That's where the focus and the resources should be. Natural gas for endpoint use in the city is a diversion, an inefficient sideshow.
I'm not against potential ecological advantages (that'd be pretty sociopathic), but what's missing or seldom given as much attention in a lot of public discussions is that this is likely the most economically pragmatic, resource efficient, and future-proofed direction to go. There's also sometimes a weird knee-jerk reaction among some people that if there are potentially ecological advantages that somehow this must be the less pragmatic route as well. That seems to be especially insane to me when both advantages can stem from efficiency gains from technological advancement.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 12-18-2021 at 09:23 AM..
I do have to give some credit to OyCrumble for his way of copying and pasting environmental activist talking points!
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