4 ms·

Bizarre that you were downvoted, when your point is spot on. Yes, heating with a big electric radiator is wasteful. Heating with a heat pump, on the other hand

Bizarre that you were downvoted, when your point is spot on. Yes, heating with a big electric radiator is wasteful. Heating with a heat pump, on the other hand, is fantastically efficient.

Gibbon1 7y ago
Yes if you analyze it thermodynamically heating via natural gas is terrible. You're taking a high quality source of energy (a flame at 3500 degF) and turning it into the thermodynamic equivalent of garbage (hot air at 70 degF). All the work it could have done (say generating electricity) is tossed.
- allendoerfer 7y ago
  There is so much natural gas in Sibiria, due to climate change warming the permafrost, it will just escape into the atmosphere, before we come close to burning it all.
- usrusr 7y ago
  Which is where district heating comes in. Utilities, who unlike households are fully exposed to fluctuations of the electricity market, are increasingly switching their cogen pants to decoupled operation where large heat storage elements are added so that the plant can run as a peaker plant. It's not glamorous because they are still burning fossil fuel, but it's a huge improvement not only over separate burning for heat but also over synchronous cogen that would follow the heart demand. It's even a reasonable long term investment because a fully decarbonized economy would shave supply peaks with power-to-gas.
  - makomk 7y ago
    Yeah, in practice I think district heating is probably the only way to actually improve on the thermodynamic efficiency of just taking all that high-grade energy and converting it straight to low-grade heat. Running heat pumps off electricty from non-cogeneration gas plants can only roughly match the efficiency of gas heating, and smaller-scale CHP setups have efficiency losses that make them questionable.
  - piceas 7y ago
    An example from Hamburg is the Energiebunker. I went on a tour a few years ago which I can recommend. One comment was they had trouble with the local landlords not wanting to take up the offer resulting in poor utilisation. https://www.internationale-bauausstellung-hamburg.de/en/projects/energiebunker/projekt/energy-bunker.html https://www.internationale-bauausstellung-hamburg.de/en/proj...

Bizarre that you were downvoted, when your point is spot on. Yes, heating with a big electric radiator is wasteful. Heating with a heat pump, on the other hand, is fantastically efficient.

Gibbon1 7y ago

Yes if you analyze it thermodynamically heating via natural gas is terrible. You're taking a high quality source of energy (a flame at 3500 degF) and turning it into the thermodynamic equivalent of garbage (hot air at 70 degF). All the work it could have done (say generating electricity) is tossed.

allendoerfer 7y ago
There is so much natural gas in Sibiria, due to climate change warming the permafrost, it will just escape into the atmosphere, before we come close to burning it all.
usrusr 7y ago
Which is where district heating comes in. Utilities, who unlike households are fully exposed to fluctuations of the electricity market, are increasingly switching their cogen pants to decoupled operation where large heat storage elements are added so that the plant can run as a peaker plant. It's not glamorous because they are still burning fossil fuel, but it's a huge improvement not only over separate burning for heat but also over synchronous cogen that would follow the heart demand. It's even a reasonable long term investment because a fully decarbonized economy would shave supply peaks with power-to-gas.
- makomk 7y ago
  Yeah, in practice I think district heating is probably the only way to actually improve on the thermodynamic efficiency of just taking all that high-grade energy and converting it straight to low-grade heat. Running heat pumps off electricty from non-cogeneration gas plants can only roughly match the efficiency of gas heating, and smaller-scale CHP setups have efficiency losses that make them questionable.
- piceas 7y ago
  An example from Hamburg is the Energiebunker. I went on a tour a few years ago which I can recommend. One comment was they had trouble with the local landlords not wanting to take up the offer resulting in poor utilisation. https://www.internationale-bauausstellung-hamburg.de/en/projects/energiebunker/projekt/energy-bunker.html https://www.internationale-bauausstellung-hamburg.de/en/proj...