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Your points make sense, but I don't think they're relevant to this article. His point in this particular article isn't about individual home heating systems, it

Your points make sense, but I don't think they're relevant to this article. His point in this particular article isn't about individual home heating systems, it's about residential heating in aggregate, and the distribution of energy required to support them. I thought his general point made sense: that gas distribution systems are more readily (and cheaply) able to meet "peaky" demand for heating than electric ones.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Heating demand is not particularly peaky. Furnaces do not run continuously nor do they run at any particular time of day. A well insulated house only drops a few degrees over a 24 hour period without heat even when it is really cold outside. A well insulated house is a good "thermal battery" from the perspective of the grid. Any peakiness can be managed quite readily through pricing. A smart thermostat that raises the temperature in the house by 1 degree F when the price of electricity is low and lowers it 1 degree F when the price is high would smooth demand considerably and would be barely noticeable. And doing that would be very similar to the effect you get from a battery.
- tony_cannistra 4y ago
  Although I question how many homes are actually as well-insulated as you claim, you're right – heating demand doesn't have diurnal cycles of much significance. Diurnal "peakiness" isn't the issue at hand here, though. It's less predictable outliers in demand (e.g cold snaps) that can strain the grid's capacity to the point of failure. It seems like the point he's trying to make is that meeting unpredictable and dynamic energy demand is a tougher problem to solve at scale with electricity than with gas. As other folks here have pointed out, he largely ignores the actual practical reality of distributing gas, though, which undermines a lot of this whole point anyway.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

Heating demand is not particularly peaky. Furnaces do not run continuously nor do they run at any particular time of day. A well insulated house only drops a few degrees over a 24 hour period without heat even when it is really cold outside. A well insulated house is a good "thermal battery" from the perspective of the grid. Any peakiness can be managed quite readily through pricing. A smart thermostat that raises the temperature in the house by 1 degree F when the price of electricity is low and lowers it 1 degree F when the price is high would smooth demand considerably and would be barely noticeable. And doing that would be very similar to the effect you get from a battery.

tony_cannistra 4y ago
Although I question how many homes are actually as well-insulated as you claim, you're right – heating demand doesn't have diurnal cycles of much significance. Diurnal "peakiness" isn't the issue at hand here, though. It's less predictable outliers in demand (e.g cold snaps) that can strain the grid's capacity to the point of failure. It seems like the point he's trying to make is that meeting unpredictable and dynamic energy demand is a tougher problem to solve at scale with electricity than with gas. As other folks here have pointed out, he largely ignores the actual practical reality of distributing gas, though, which undermines a lot of this whole point anyway.