9 ms·
California ban on gas furnaces and water heaters
- skybrian 4y agoWould peak electricity use be any higher? Heaters and air conditioning aren't needed at the same time. Maybe we get more use out of the (natural gas powered) peaker plants we have?
- spiralpolitik 4y agoA nice idea but I don't see how this is going to work given the age of a lot of California houses. A good chunk of California houses built in the 20th Century don't have the upgraded electrical to make this a drop-in replacement. It's likely to move to an electric furnace or water heater most houses will have to drop in a new electrical panel and run a new to wire the furnace room. That's $2-3K right there before the cost of a furnace or water heater. Given that you'll almost certainly pull permits, you'll probably then discover that your current furnace room doesn't match current building code, costing even more money to fix, if it's even fixable.
- egberts1 4y agoNot to mention the ridiculous cost of the onerous permit needed from some non-self-sufficient government agency, notably in a state that is highly hostile toward new housings.
- codefreeordie 4y ago
- dang 4y agoCould you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it repeatedly and that's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- codefreeordie 4y agoThere is nothing unsubstantiated.
- dang 4y agoI'm talking about comment quality. Even if we assume you're right about everything, your comment was still the kind of sensational-indignant rhetoric that is so common on the internet, but which HN users are asked not to post here. We want thoughtful, curious conversation—an altogether different animal. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- egberts1 4y agoalmost all true, except for your last part. “they” and “useless eaters” were only mentioned in Dr. John A. Coleman’s “300 Committee”, book page 105, and no place else. Almost had it.
- alamortsubite 4y agoI'd imagine most of those homes already have air conditioners. Aren't the electrical requirements of a mini-split pretty close to a couple window units? I'm pretty sure our five-head 12K BTU Mitsubishi is on a 15 amp double pole breaker.
- toast0 4y agoI have a small sample size, but I've lived in several dwellings in california with natural gas furnace, natural gas water heater and no a/c. If there were any window units, they were on 120vac.
- fy20 4y agoSo what is the alternative here? Keep on using natural gas and ignore the effects it has on the environment and air quality? If California - one of the richest areas in the world, which for the most part has a very mild climate - cannot switch away from natural gas, how is anyone else expected to?
- ars 4y agoYes, keep using natural gas. At least for now. As long as 38% of electricity is being generated from natural gas, banning natural gas usage in homes is silly. Heat pumps at least help, but simply replacing with electric water heater and electric stoves actually hurts the environment more!
- nullc 4y agoAlmost all at-home gas usage is after the sun has gone down, as a result the vast majority of the electricity used for the alternative would be generated from natural gas not just 38%.
- rocket_surgeron 4y ago>As long as 38% of electricity is being generated from natural gas, banning natural gas usage in homes is silly. Generating electricity in a large gas power plant, transmitting that electricity over vast differences, and then turning that electricity into heat, motive power, or light is much, MUCH **MUUUUUUUCH** more efficient than piping gas all over the place and burning the gas in homes. By, like, a lot. With gas burners the vast majority of energy is wasted, blasted out into the ambient air. In a turbine it is almost all turned into whatever is desired. Once at the home immersed heating elements or inductive elements turn most of the electricity into what is desired. Transmission losses are irrelevantly small compared to the astronomically huge increases in efficiency of the endpoints. Same goes for cars. Even if power plants used gasoline, which they don’t, it would be more efficient to burn the gasoline to generate electricity in huge generators, transmit the electricity a thousand miles, and use it to charge batteries in EVs. If a house doesn’t have the capacity to switch to electric, subsidize improvements. If the grid can’t handle it, fix it. Don’t just throw up your hands and go “well we tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas!”
- refurb 4y agoGood point. My brother bought a house with a 100amp panel. Barely sufficient even when your running a gas furnace and stove. He paid something like $15,000 to upgrade to a 200amp panel. Not cheap.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThat cost is atypical. It’s usually $2-4k, and there are income based subsidies available in the Inflation Reduction Act (and no income limit if the panel upgraded is required as part of a rooftop solar install; it too is eligible for a 30% federal tax credit).
- refurb 4y agoAtypical? Based on what? That's the normal cost to rewire a house and upgrade service in California unless you're talking about some podunk town in the Central Valley. This ain't the mid-West.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoJust had a friend have the work done an hour out of Sacramento for the price I mentioned. I’m aware of the California tax, but $15k wildly deviates from the median unless your utility is requiring a service entrance upgrade under concrete.
- hansvm 4y agoIt costs $3-5k for an electrician in that part of the country to get off their arse and sign off on an already completed installation. Throw in the permitting procedure and everything else involved, and I'm moderately surprised it's so cheap. There's a reason such a high percentage of homes in the area have illegal lofts/porches/bedrooms/stoves/....
- rdtwo 4y agoThey will mandate these in essence. Force everyone that’s renting to go heat pump. That’s the cheapest retrofit https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rheem-introduces-120-volt-proterra-plug-in-heat-pump-water-heaters-301587523.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rheem-introduces-12...
- rahimnathwani 4y agoThis looks cool. Does it need direct access to air from outside, or can it suck the heat out of the air in the garage?
- rdtwo 4y agoIt’s more efficient in a garage or basement but you can put it in the house it will just fight your heater in the winter
- LatteLazy 4y agoGiven the power required to replace a decent gas boiler, I hope Cali can afford to build 5x the current number of power stations and then have them sit idle for 22h a day...
- Ekaros 4y agoAren't they building solar? Though that might be the wrong 2h...
- GoOnThenDoTell 4y agoThey’ll just push time-of-use charges and hope that people buy big batteries
- PopAlongKid 4y agoIs a "space heater" (the official term) the same thing as a "furnace" (from the headline)? IOW, are they saying that a typical legacy "central air" HVAC system in a single family residence (or multi-unit building for that matter) with a gas furnace cannot be replaced after the cut-off date?
- bombcar 4y agoYes. They’re saying that gas fired furnaces and water heaters must be replaced with something not gas fired - likely heat pumps.
- rdtwo 4y agoI wonder if you can make a heat pump water heater that can plug into a regular 20amp circuit as a simple retrofit. Performance will be poor/slow but landlords don’t care
- bombcar 4y agoThe tankless are already at that I think
- rdtwo 4y agoTankless on electric needs like a 100 amp circuit
- grawprog 4y agoAir to water heatpumps exist for this purpose. https://www.hpacmag.com/features/heat-pump-interest-growing-in-canada/ https://www.hpacmag.com/features/heat-pump-interest-growing-...
- rdtwo 4y agoYou don’t need anything that complicated I’m thinking something like this. It already exists btw https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/29/120-volt-heat-pump-water-heaters-hit-the-market-make-gas-replacements-even-easier/amp/ https://cleantechnica.com/2021/11/29/120-volt-heat-pump-wate...
- Blackstrat 4y agoHow does California propose this will work? They already have grid/power problems, rolling blackouts, limits on EV charging. Are they so ideologically bent that they ignore reality and simply punish the residents of the state? The poorer, less mobile population will be hit the hardest. The Ellisons, Zuckerbergs, Newsoms, et al are flush and mobile, assuming the rules even apply to them.
- mint2 4y agoGlobal warming isn’t going to go on hiatus for 50 years for new tech and power grids to be slowly foot draggedly adopted out of industry’s own volition. California is being a climate leader and people are constantly naysaying and seem like almost like they hope CA fails. What should we do? sit back and let the world burn or make an effort to prevent it?
- throwaway27727 4y agoAnd the poor will be the first to be thrown out with the bath water.
- rsj_hn 4y agoThe world is not going to burn if people use gas heaters. Not using gas heaters does not prevent anything bad from happening, or cause anything good to happen.
- ars 4y agoAn electric water heater does NOT help the environment - quite the opposite, it makes things worse, since 38% of electricity is generated from natural gas, which is less efficient than just burning the gas at home. What should we do? We should build nuclear plants, at least a hundred of them. > almost like they hope CA fails. The California Air Resources Board (CARBS) is responsible for forcing everyone to use special gas nozzles that spill tons of gasoline, while pretending to prevent spills. See: https://fee.org/articles/the-epic-failure-of-the-government-gas-can/ https://fee.org/articles/the-epic-failure-of-the-government-... and https://fee.org/articles/how-government-wrecked-the-gas-can/ https://fee.org/articles/how-government-wrecked-the-gas-can/ The do not exactly have a reputation for intelligent decision making, rather they have a reputation for emotional decision making.
- rahimnathwani 4y ago“The move will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower utility bills for consumers.” I looked at my most recent PG&E gas bill. Electricity costs me about $0.35/kWh. Gas costs about $2/therm (which a quick internet search says is equivalent to $0.07/kWh). How will switching from gas to electricity ‘lower utility bills for consumers’?
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoThat's interesting. In many parts of the world, gas prices are going through the roof. Mostly because prices in Europe are over the moon and EU countries are buying every last wisp of gas on the international market (and thus driving prices up there too) . Do you have a fixed contract or so? How have you managed to avoid noticing so far?
- rahimnathwani 4y agoWe don’t use much gas for most of the year, as San Francisco’s weather is pretty mild. The current PG&E tariff information is here: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/Res_Current.xlsx https://www.pge.com/tariffs/Res_Current.xlsx
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoUnfortunately I get an access denied on that particular page. If gas prices haven't gone up yet where you live, that's pretty awesome for you in some ways. But don't take it for granted. Enjoy it while it lasts, and maybe use the time to get a good price on replacements.
- masonic 4y agoCalifornia utilities are just pass-through delivery agents for natural gas -- they just charge cost + % to service. Gas prices can vary greatly depending on demand. What the current push against consumer access to natural gas ignores is that there is a lot of natural gas produced as a byproduct of producing other oil drilling products, and if not consumed for useful purposes it just gets burned off into the atmosphere directly.
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoEntire chunks of the European Union wish they'd made a law like this earlier, when there was still time.
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoAdding some reasoning why to the above: In February Russia invaded Ukraine, and Europe and Russia responded by levying sanctions and counter-sanctions. However the EU was rather dependent on Russian gas, so they couldn't act as rapidly as they'd have liked. If there had previously been an EU directive to "divest from natural gas by 2020-2025", the situation would be somewhat different. Even if the EU was only half-way, that would still have left them in a much better position. * There would be less reason to invade Ukraine, since the gas infrastructure would have been worth less to an invader. * Without a need to appease Russia, The European Union could have reacted a lot faster and sharper than it did. * Russian analysts would have been able to predict some of this ahead of time, and possibly advised against war in the first place. Thus: EU countries (especially Germany) would have been a lot better off if they had eliminated their dependency on non-renewable sources sooner. Especially for private use. To be fair, they thought they had more time. Unfortunately it turns out they didn't.
- rahimnathwani 4y agoOver half of California’s electricity generation is from natural gas: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/2021-total-system-electric-generation https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/califo... So instead of using gas directly, we’ll convert it to electricity first? Will the extra efficiency of heat pumps counteract the losses from generating and distributing electricity?
- Kim_Bruning 4y agoSince a reasonable air conditioner or heat pump can easily hit a Coefficient of Performance around 3, I'd say the odds are good. And these systems can be used for both heating and cooling. Of course, once you've switched to electricity, you then have the flexibility to (later) swap out the back end for something else that is cheaper/less polluting/some other optimization-du-jour. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance
- LatteLazy 4y agoGas turbine power stations are about 50% efficient. So you need 2x on that heat pump just to break even. You might get that if it's the same temperature inside as outside. But for heating water in winter? Never.
- Dagger2 4y agoThe long term goal is to not use gas at all. This is one necessary piece of that jigsaw puzzle.
- rahimnathwani 4y agoIt's not really a jigsaw puzzle, thought, right? I mean, expanding electricity generation capacity is not dependent on the existence of electric furnaces. Unless they plan to generate the additional electricity with the gas that would otherwise have been used to power consumer furnaces.
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 4y agoChildren's crusade. Methane unburnt is a dozen or more times worse for global warming than CO2. What methane is not sold is flared off.