6 ms·

I had a non-optional experience along this axis living thru the 2021 Texas grid crisis. Being in the gulf coast region automatically makes it nearly impossible

I had a non-optional experience along this axis living thru the 2021 Texas grid crisis. Being in the gulf coast region automatically makes it nearly impossible to fit a 2kW budget during the summer (unless you live in a large walk-in freezer), but during the winter I was able to get down to 800 watts continuous for a period of a few days. This included my computer, fridge, some lights and central furnace blower. The furnace is kind of cheating though - replacing the natural gas with a heat pump would instantly blow my 2kW budget all on its own. That said, you could probably get really close if you tried to hit the target with a modern heat pump and good insulation throughout. The only reason I voluntarily subjected myself to this was because I was being billed $9/kWH thru Griddy (a wholesale, real-time rate provider) during the entire, multi-day incident. I did run a one-off load of laundry that probably cost me ~$50. Requiring use of variable rate energy providers and forcing consumers to adapt habits to the available resources seems like one way to get people to pay attention to how much energy various things consume. It also seems like an effective way to mitigate one-off generation shortfalls.

Gravityloss 4y ago
I come from a country where the average temperature is the same as in a refrigerator. I sometimes think it would be a lot easier to just move most people away from here... at least those living in big badly insulated electrically heated houses. Some pensioners actually do move to Spain, maybe visit the summer cottages every now and then (when it's too hot in Spain and the cottage doesn't need heating). Birds certainly follow the seasons. I guess the same applies to very hot climates. You could move away for the summer at least, if not completely.
- bombcar 4y ago
  In both places you may get most of the benefits from moving down - underground rooms mitigate temperatures.
- etothepii 4y ago
  An interesting question springs to my mind. How does the carbon omissions of having a summer and winter house and flying between them compare to heating the summer house in winter or cooling the winter house in summer.
  - Gravityloss 4y ago
    If you live alone and use 10 kW constantly, and an airliner uses 40 kWh per passenger per 100 km, that means per day you use 240 kWh, equivalent of 600 airplane kilometers. If your season travel is 6000 km, and you don't need any energy in the destination (since it's a paradise), it is worth it if with that you can stay there for more than 10 days. (2400 kWh). If you travel away for 3 months, you could save 90 x 240 - 2400 = 19200 kWh. If a kilowatt hour costs 10 cents, you save 2400 dollars in electricity bills and of course you pay back some (or all) of it in flights.
  - cinntaile 4y ago
    I used [0] for the carbon calculations of a roundtrip flight. Assume 200 passengers. Flying between Stockholm and Malaga gives us 460 kg of CO2 in total. An average 150 sq meters villa uses about 12500 kWh during October-March, if I take the current CO2-intensity from [1] this gives us about 375 kg of CO2 during these months. This is excluding any calculations to cool the summer house in southern Spain. This calculation would be completely different for Germany right now, which has 10x as much CO2-intensity as the electricity region that Stockholm is a part of. That would be 3,75 tonnes of CO2 during these months. In other words, it's very country dependent. This is also ignoring any different heating modes (heat pump/gas/wood/...) between houses. [0] https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/Pages/default.aspx https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/P... [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    You'd have to winterize the summer house really well when you left it for the winter house. And for either house you probably don't want to turn the heat/AC completely off, anyway. Modern house interiors aren't built to survive huge temperature and humidity swings. Your finishes will fall apart fast and the winter house will have serious mold problems, if you totally shut off heating and cooling.
    - Gravityloss 4y ago
      We have had a summer cottage for 30 years and we let it just freeze every year. It has electricity, TV, etc. No problems whatsoever so far. Normal water pipes are drained before leaving in the fall. We leave a little bit of heat in the bathroom with most of the critical stuff like boiler, washer, toilet seat and the (well insulated) waste water pipe to the tank.
Schroedingersat 4y ago
> Being in the gulf coast region automatically makes it nearly impossible to fit a 2kW budget during the summer (unless you live in a large walk-in freezer), Metric R5 insulation is quite achievable, and you don't need to keep things at a perfect 24C year round in the whole building. I live in an area that has plenty of 35-40C days and have never used more than 1kW on average even in a poorly insulated rental. On the really bad days you just cool one room. Also the 2kW is entire primary energy (ie. including fuel and the energy to drill for and refine the fuel and make the AC etc. etc.). In a western country it's almost impossible to get your share of the total energy budget that low because you likely are not allowed to go many places without being in a car (or travelling 5x as far and waiting 10 minutes to cross each road) and the shops will all be blasting AC with the doors open.
perilunar 4y ago
> I did run a one-off load of laundry that probably cost me ~$50. So ~5kWh for a load of washing? Use a cold wash and a clothes line instead of the tumble dryer and you'd be well under a single kWh.

Gravityloss 4y ago

I come from a country where the average temperature is the same as in a refrigerator. I sometimes think it would be a lot easier to just move most people away from here... at least those living in big badly insulated electrically heated houses. Some pensioners actually do move to Spain, maybe visit the summer cottages every now and then (when it's too hot in Spain and the cottage doesn't need heating). Birds certainly follow the seasons. I guess the same applies to very hot climates. You could move away for the summer at least, if not completely.

bombcar 4y ago
In both places you may get most of the benefits from moving down - underground rooms mitigate temperatures.
etothepii 4y ago
An interesting question springs to my mind. How does the carbon omissions of having a summer and winter house and flying between them compare to heating the summer house in winter or cooling the winter house in summer.
- Gravityloss 4y ago
  If you live alone and use 10 kW constantly, and an airliner uses 40 kWh per passenger per 100 km, that means per day you use 240 kWh, equivalent of 600 airplane kilometers. If your season travel is 6000 km, and you don't need any energy in the destination (since it's a paradise), it is worth it if with that you can stay there for more than 10 days. (2400 kWh). If you travel away for 3 months, you could save 90 x 240 - 2400 = 19200 kWh. If a kilowatt hour costs 10 cents, you save 2400 dollars in electricity bills and of course you pay back some (or all) of it in flights.
- cinntaile 4y ago
  I used [0] for the carbon calculations of a roundtrip flight. Assume 200 passengers. Flying between Stockholm and Malaga gives us 460 kg of CO2 in total. An average 150 sq meters villa uses about 12500 kWh during October-March, if I take the current CO2-intensity from [1] this gives us about 375 kg of CO2 during these months. This is excluding any calculations to cool the summer house in southern Spain. This calculation would be completely different for Germany right now, which has 10x as much CO2-intensity as the electricity region that Stockholm is a part of. That would be 3,75 tonnes of CO2 during these months. In other words, it's very country dependent. This is also ignoring any different heating modes (heat pump/gas/wood/...) between houses. [0] https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/Pages/default.aspx https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/P... [1] https://app.electricitymaps.com/map https://app.electricitymaps.com/map
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  You'd have to winterize the summer house really well when you left it for the winter house. And for either house you probably don't want to turn the heat/AC completely off, anyway. Modern house interiors aren't built to survive huge temperature and humidity swings. Your finishes will fall apart fast and the winter house will have serious mold problems, if you totally shut off heating and cooling.
  - Gravityloss 4y ago
    We have had a summer cottage for 30 years and we let it just freeze every year. It has electricity, TV, etc. No problems whatsoever so far. Normal water pipes are drained before leaving in the fall. We leave a little bit of heat in the bathroom with most of the critical stuff like boiler, washer, toilet seat and the (well insulated) waste water pipe to the tank.

Schroedingersat 4y ago

> Being in the gulf coast region automatically makes it nearly impossible to fit a 2kW budget during the summer (unless you live in a large walk-in freezer), Metric R5 insulation is quite achievable, and you don't need to keep things at a perfect 24C year round in the whole building. I live in an area that has plenty of 35-40C days and have never used more than 1kW on average even in a poorly insulated rental. On the really bad days you just cool one room. Also the 2kW is entire primary energy (ie. including fuel and the energy to drill for and refine the fuel and make the AC etc. etc.). In a western country it's almost impossible to get your share of the total energy budget that low because you likely are not allowed to go many places without being in a car (or travelling 5x as far and waiting 10 minutes to cross each road) and the shops will all be blasting AC with the doors open.

perilunar 4y ago

> I did run a one-off load of laundry that probably cost me ~$50. So ~5kWh for a load of washing? Use a cold wash and a clothes line instead of the tumble dryer and you'd be well under a single kWh.