4 ms·

To be honest I wonder if those are good places for humans to live in, at all.

vel0city 4y ago
There's only a narrow band of land then where we would be able to live without expending large amounts of energy to stay warm or cool. Colder places use just as much if not more energy in wintertime. They just don't often use it as kWh from their electricity provider so they don't normally compare it this way. Instead of electricity they burn natural gas or propane or fuel oil or even wood pellets to heat their homes. Many people in this chat which talk about having pretty low energy usage then acknowledge they heat with gas. For many, changing to heat pumps would drastically increase their electric bills in the winter offsetting their gas bills. Just look at my comparison of energy usage of my heat pump cooling my home compared to the energy usage of other big usage areas. It's not even close. Running a heat pump for 12 hours to keep the house warm would be a similar amount of energy usage. It's the same tech. Raising the inside temperature from 0F to 70F (70F degrees of difference) takes more energy than cooling from 100F to 70F (30F of difference). So a place that spends half the year around 100F but then is close to comfortable inside for the other half requires less energy than a place that gets down to 0F half the year and then is close to comfortable the other.
- bonzini 4y ago
  My gas usage is 1400 m3/year, corresponding to roughly 15 MWh/year. A condensing boiler would lower it to at most 10 MWh, even less for a heat pump. Add in the electricity, and that would still be roughly 1 MWh/month or a third of what the user above mentions.
  - vel0city 4y ago
    It's rather hard to compare unless we know the spaces involved. My energy usage was significantly less when I was on the ground floor of a large apartment complex, using maybe 500kWh/mo at the highest. But I had less than half the space I do now, no private yard, no private garage. I couldn't install amateur radio antennas however I wish. I couldn't make changes to the unit however I wish. My family has grown and I now work from home significantly more than before. I don't need to use as much energy as I do, I could go back to living in a much smaller space and not have all the private spaces and rights I have now. But I'd rather not raise a family in <900sqft when I can afford not to and I get a lot of enjoyment of the private spaces I have. Sure, we could get everyone to use <500kWh/mo, even if we don't have to ask everyone to move to the narrow space that's close to room temperature year round. But that would mean massive changes in a lot of lifestyles, limiting a lot of people to far less space and property rights than they've been used to.

There's only a narrow band of land then where we would be able to live without expending large amounts of energy to stay warm or cool. Colder places use just as much if not more energy in wintertime. They just don't often use it as kWh from their electricity provider so they don't normally compare it this way. Instead of electricity they burn natural gas or propane or fuel oil or even wood pellets to heat their homes. Many people in this chat which talk about having pretty low energy usage then acknowledge they heat with gas. For many, changing to heat pumps would drastically increase their electric bills in the winter offsetting their gas bills. Just look at my comparison of energy usage of my heat pump cooling my home compared to the energy usage of other big usage areas. It's not even close. Running a heat pump for 12 hours to keep the house warm would be a similar amount of energy usage. It's the same tech. Raising the inside temperature from 0F to 70F (70F degrees of difference) takes more energy than cooling from 100F to 70F (30F of difference). So a place that spends half the year around 100F but then is close to comfortable inside for the other half requires less energy than a place that gets down to 0F half the year and then is close to comfortable the other.

bonzini 4y ago
My gas usage is 1400 m3/year, corresponding to roughly 15 MWh/year. A condensing boiler would lower it to at most 10 MWh, even less for a heat pump. Add in the electricity, and that would still be roughly 1 MWh/month or a third of what the user above mentions.
- vel0city 4y ago
  It's rather hard to compare unless we know the spaces involved. My energy usage was significantly less when I was on the ground floor of a large apartment complex, using maybe 500kWh/mo at the highest. But I had less than half the space I do now, no private yard, no private garage. I couldn't install amateur radio antennas however I wish. I couldn't make changes to the unit however I wish. My family has grown and I now work from home significantly more than before. I don't need to use as much energy as I do, I could go back to living in a much smaller space and not have all the private spaces and rights I have now. But I'd rather not raise a family in <900sqft when I can afford not to and I get a lot of enjoyment of the private spaces I have. Sure, we could get everyone to use <500kWh/mo, even if we don't have to ask everyone to move to the narrow space that's close to room temperature year round. But that would mean massive changes in a lot of lifestyles, limiting a lot of people to far less space and property rights than they've been used to.