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Wow, that surprised me. Current demand is 45GW in Texas vs. 24GW in California. Over double per capita.
by s0rce 6y ago
Wow, that surprised me. Current demand is 45GW in Texas vs. 24GW in California. Over double per capita.
- rconti 6y agoWell, yeah, the populated areas of Texas happen to be insanely cold right now at this moment we've cherry-picked, and the populated areas of California happen to be.. checks thermometer between 55-65f right now. (Bay Area, Sacramento, LA, San Diego). Also, Texas heating is HEAVILY reliant on electricity (heat pumps), since they're used as air conditioners in the summer. Presumably this means CA has a lot more forced air natural gas, like my house. Of course, I keep hearing ads encouraging me to replace my polluting "methane gas" furnace with a clean, efficient electric heat pump....
- s0rce 6y agoI didn't think about heat pumps that makes sense. I had electric heat pump for heat when I lived in WA state. Worked well with cheap hydro power.
- StillBored 6y agoYas, there are heat pump systems designed to work at fairly low temps. Those aren't the ones they install in TX, where its just a cheap reversing valve on a stock R410 system. AFAIK they don't even necessarily have aux heat (my mother's in FL didn't) and even if they do, after a decade or two it might not even work and no one would know.
- unethical_ban 6y agoSunday night before the capacity dropped, TX was at 65 GW consumption.