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My father in law, a quite intelligent person with a non-technical background, asked me a really good question re: electric appliances and vehicles. He was hold
by jvanderbot 5y ago
My father in law, a quite intelligent person with a non-technical background, asked me a really good question re: electric appliances and vehicles.
He was holding off on getting an electric car, because he didn't understand how it could possibly be more efficient and cost-effective to use gas appliances in the home, but suddenly it's more efficient and cost-effective to use electric motors in cars.
Of course the problem is that generating heat with electricity is probably easiest done by spark-gapping to start a fire, and letting the fire generate heat, whereas generating motion with electromagnetism is quite easy compared to harnessing explosions to transfer to movement.
At any rate, I'd say let's replace cars first, then come after home appliances. They're relatively efficient at their job.
- Tagbert 5y agoAnd cars are a much much larger scale problem. Home stove emmisions are a rounding error.
- smileysteve 5y agoTo add confusion; induction is drastically more efficient than resistance heating; heat pumps are drastically more efficient than gas or traditional heat. So the communication problem is also one of changing technology. Technologies that adults learned 30 years ago are not the same as those today.
- mikewarot 5y agoResistance heating is 100% efficient, how can inductive heating be more efficient than that?
- 8note 5y agoResistance heating is 100% efficient at heating the element, but to heat the pan, it has to transfer through the pan/element interface. 100% isn't the highest efficiency you can get though. It's even more efficient to use the electrical energy to concentrate existing heat than it is to create new heat
- rdtwo 5y agoOutside is a really large heat sink. So you can dump unwanted heat or cold outside to heat out cool your house using a heat pump.
- TheCoelacanth 5y agoResistance heating is 100% efficient at heating the world. Considerably less efficient at heating the one specific pot you are trying to heat.