What's new
By:
Filters

NY to ban natural gas in new construction.

bgaidan said:
I huge chunk of NYC IS still heated with distributed steam.
Click to expand...
quite a bit of it here as well. Our current building is all steam, college is steam. Lots of old municipalities are steam. Gas fired or fuel oil for back up. I tried to explore biomass for our new facility (federal) but was told it didn't make sense and was cost prohibitive.
 
rockota said:
especially in northern climates where heat pumps/electric heat can be horribly inefficient.
Click to expand...
it isn't that the heat pump is inefficient
it is that it is using resistive heat when it gets actually cold out instead of the heat pump which can be well over 200% efficient in converting electric into "heat inside the house"

and electric resistive heat while 100% efficient at the end user, has a whole lot of thermal loss on the other side of the power meter, mainly in generation but also in distribution
where newer condensing gas furnaces can be over 90% efficient which kicks the absolute shit outta even the very most efficient large scale electric generation plants
 
Last edited:
[486] said:
it isn't that the heat pump is inefficient
it is that it is using resistive heat when it gets actually cold out instead of the heat pump which can be well over 200% efficient in converting electric into "heat inside the house"

and electric resistive heat while 100% efficient at the end user, has a whole lot of thermal loss on the other side of the power meter, mainly in generation but also in distribution
where newer condensing gas furnaces can be over 90% efficient which kicks the absolute shit outta even the very most efficient large scale electric generation plants
Click to expand...

I don’t buy the heat pump being 200% efficient. Below 35 degrees and/or when emergency/backup coil is needed, they suck. And they don’t bring heat as much as warmth, because the vent temp is ~85-90 degrees instead of hot from gas.

Just my opinion, though. We have to augment with wood here… I can’t imagine electric over gas back in MN
 
92 Green YJ said:
Net metering so it won’t be no electric bill but it should make a good dent in it. Especially given how much roof real estate we have that gets great sun all day.


It’s coming. I’ve seen plenty of tree huggers bitching about wood stoves and how bad it is for the environment to burn wood for heat and it contributing to the climate change BS. I wouldn’t be surprised to see that one coming down sooner or later as well.
Click to expand...

Check out some of solar resource maps online and you'll quickly see there are regions that PV does not make sense. Note the PNW especially.

What is not considered with wood heat is the total carbon footprint of the petroleum fuels. The extraction, refining, and transport. Wood is usually very local supply, and live trees need not be harvested when there's sufficient windfall around. There's also merit to harvesting the downed wood to help prevent forest fire (a far greater polluter.)
 
I just don't know how the earth has made it for millions of years....without the climate changer fixers. Even my trees are better when those people hug'em
 
87manche said:
look, I'll agree that we're probably changing the environment with our emissions.
I'll agree that we should move on to electric cars, for the planet or some shit, but mostly because they're fast as fuck.
but when I tell them that I think we should ring the great lakes with nuclear power plants suddenly I'm a fucking monster.
Click to expand...

Personally I like the barge based reactor model. When it's all fucked up and needs to be disposed of, you tow it out into the ocean, out of the environment, and scuttle it.

Cleanup cost is now literally a couple days of tug boat time.



I too am often accused of being some sort of environmental monster. I just don't understand.
 
[486] said:
it isn't that the heat pump is inefficient
it is that it is using resistive heat when it gets actually cold out instead of the heat pump which can be well over 200% efficient in converting electric into "heat inside the house"

and electric resistive heat while 100% efficient at the end user, has a whole lot of thermal loss on the other side of the power meter, mainly in generation but also in distribution
where newer condensing gas furnaces can be over 90% efficient which kicks the absolute shit outta even the very most efficient large scale electric generation plants
Click to expand...
Where did you get your EE degree?

Heat pumps in colder environments don't work because of the temperatures involved. Heat pumps don't work efficiently or at all below a certain ambient temp.

And 200% efficient? You must be confusing heat pumps with Cummins trucks that put fuel back into the tank when dragging trailers uphill at 75 mph.

A resistive load is the tits to the power company. Power distribution is usually running with a lagging power factor due to predominantly inductive loads. A PF of 80% lagging is not unheard of - substations run banks of capacitors to correct the PF as best they can (a capacitive load has a leading power factor). A purely resistive load has a power factor of 1, and is optimum.
 
rockota said:
I don’t buy the heat pump being 200% efficient. Below 35 degrees and/or when emergency/backup coil is needed, they suck. And they don’t bring heat as much as warmth, because the vent temp is ~85-90 degrees instead of hot from gas.

Just my opinion, though. We have to augment with wood here… I can’t imagine electric over gas back in MN
Click to expand...
inputs to outputs, takes less energy to concentrate outdoor heat than to chemically make that heat

well yeah below 35 deg they suck ass because they're all running r410a so they can double as an air conditioner in the summer by using a switching valve to swap the condenser and evaporator

get some R23 action going on and they'd work well a lot lower, though you'd need to do something about evaporator icing
 
Scott Cee aka 2drx4 said:
Personally I like the barge based reactor model. When it's all fucked up and needs to be disposed of, you tow it out into the ocean, out of the environment, and scuttle it.

Cleanup cost is now literally a couple days of tug boat time.



I too am often accused of being some sort of environmental monster. I just don't understand.
Click to expand...
Sure, that way the coasts can have some too.

you get a reactor and you get a reactor. reactors for everyone.

if we'd subsidized nuclear power instead of fucking windmills we'd be energy independent by now because we'd have 1.21 gigawatts of fucking power everywhere.
 
plym49.2 said:
Where did you get your EE degree?

Heat pumps in colder environments don't work because of the temperatures involved. Heat pumps don't work efficiently or at all below a certain ambient temp.

And 200% efficient? You must be confusing heat pumps with Cummins trucks that put fuel back into the tank when dragging trailers uphill at 75 mph.

A resistive load is the tits to the power company. Power distribution is usually running with a lagging power factor due to predominantly inductive loads. A PF of 80% lagging is not unheard of - substations run banks of capacitors to correct the PF as best they can (a capacitive load has a leading power factor). A purely resistive load has a power factor of 1, and is optimum.
Click to expand...
In terms of btu output vs electricity input. Yeah they can be 200% or far better than electric resistance.

Nat gas is way up there as well. Electric resistance is the worst, wood beats it out due to cost and sustainability even if wood is 40-70% efficient
 
plym49.2 said:
And 200% efficient? You must be confusing heat pumps with Cummins trucks that put fuel back into the tank when dragging trailers uphill at 75 mph.
Click to expand...
Heat pumps can in fact run well over 200% efficient (effective) when it's cold-but-not-too-cold out. Their efficiency drops with temperature until they now longer can produce enough heat to keep the home warm against the cold outside temperature. Modern heat pumps can maintain 100%+ efficiency down around ten degrees or lower.
 
87manche said:
Sure, that way the coasts can have some too.

you get a reactor and you get a reactor. reactors for everyone.

if we'd subsidized nuclear power instead of fucking windmills we'd be energy independent by now because we'd have 1.21 gigawatts of fucking power everywhere.
Click to expand...

Exactly. And if you build too many you can always export them. Or move them around if demand changes. Or if Hawaii decides they finally want to stop running diesel generators (unlikely, they're a bunch of fucking hippies), even they could have a few.
 
CrustyJeep said:
Heat pumps can in fact run well over 200% efficient (effective) when it's cold-but-not-too-cold out. Their efficiency drops with temperature until they now longer can produce enough heat to keep the home warm against the cold outside temperature. Modern heat pumps can maintain 100%+ efficiency down around ten degrees or lower.
Click to expand...
the new inverter stuff seems to do a lot better than when they were all the rage here 30 years ago and then a bunch of people found out how they didn't work below freezing.

I would consider one of the new fancy ones as long as I had a woodstove for the 2 weeks it's below 0 here.
 
Scott Cee aka 2drx4 said:
Exactly. And if you build too many you can always export them. Or move them around if demand changes. Or if Hawaii decides they finally want to stop running diesel generators (unlikely, they're a bunch of fucking hippies), even they could have a few.
Click to expand...
derail:

You've seen the company proposing to do this exact scheme right? They've got a pilot project contract with india. Planning on building self contained units inside ships hulls. refueling would consist of dropping a new module in the hull and sending the old one back to the yard for refit.
 
CrustyJeep said:
Heat pumps can in fact run well over 200% efficient (effective) when it's cold-but-not-too-cold out. Their efficiency drops with temperature until they now longer can produce enough heat to keep the home warm against the cold outside temperature. Modern heat pumps can maintain 100%+ efficiency down around ten degrees or lower.
Click to expand...
Please explain the math because 200% efficiency means twice as much power out as you put in.
 
plym49.2 said:
And 200% efficient?
Click to expand...
I'll do some napkin calculations just for you

5 ton AC unit, draws 7kw, moves 60k btus worth of heat from the evap to the condenser
resistive heat is 3.41 btu per watt, so that means 17.6 Kw input to get the same 60k btu

17.6/7=2.51 so 251%

feel free to shove the long dick of thermodynamics right through any of that, I'm just a dummy with a shitty calculator
 
87manche said:
derail:

You've seen the company proposing to do this exact scheme right? They've got a pilot project contract with india. Planning on building self contained units inside ships hulls. refueling would consist of dropping a new module in the hull and sending the old one back to the yard for refit.
Click to expand...
Yeah. And I think it's a great idea.

If AECL wasn't a govcuck bunch of tax thieves they would have had this shit in production a long time ago, but nah, let's just keep trying to sell the 60 year old CANDU reactors. :homer:
 
87manche said:
derail:

You've seen the company proposing to do this exact scheme right? They've got a pilot project contract with india. Planning on building self contained units inside ships hulls. refueling would consist of dropping a new module in the hull and sending the old one back to the yard for refit.
Click to expand...
They should be doing it with subs. Would revitalize our electric boat industry. Keep them moored offshore a hundred feet down. Terrorist proof. Storm proof.
 
Scott Cee aka 2drx4 said:
Yeah. And I think it's a great idea.

If AECL wasn't a govcuck bunch of tax thieves they would have had this shit in production a long time ago, but nah, let's just keep trying to sell the 60 year old CANDU reactors. :homer:
Click to expand...
I mean, it's not like the navy done been running MW level nuclear reactors on board ships for 60 fucking years.
 
Provience said:
In terms of btu output vs electricity input. Yeah they can be 200% or far better than electric resistance.

Nat gas is way up there as well. Electric resistance is the worst, wood beats it out due to cost and sustainability even if wood is 40-70% efficient
Click to expand...
Electric resistance heat is 100% efficient; you get what you pay for. The beef is the cost of the electricity.

I'm not sure about your comparables... as far as btu-out vs electric-in. The wood/woodstove doesn't use anything electric unless you have a powered fan or electric chainsaw. :laughing:
 
CrustyJeep said:
Heat pumps can in fact run well over 200% efficient (effective) when it's cold-but-not-too-cold out. Their efficiency drops with temperature until they now longer can produce enough heat to keep the home warm against the cold outside temperature. Modern heat pumps can maintain 100%+ efficiency down around ten degrees or lower.
Click to expand...
the secret is to stop treating them as an air conditioner in the summer

have one stupid AC unit charged with R22 or R410A or R290 (boiling point around -40F) for summer cooling
have a second unit charged with something like R744 (boiling point around -100F) for winter heating

Then you've got the correct refrigerant for the temperatures you're working with
added bonus, can put the winter unit's compressor indoors so that the waste heat thrown off by the compressor goes directly inside the house
 
M92PV4U said:
I don't have solar and WILL be one of the last to get it. I have natural gas heat, hot water, "fireplace" and stove if the quit offering ng here I'll convert it all to propane.
Click to expand...
Just make sure you change all the orifices. Natural gas and propane are different. I only know this from people who live in mobile homes ordering gas appliances, then being upset not everyone refers to propane as gas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Back Refresh