5 ms·

Unfortunately that is the case in some places. Last year I did the math to see if a ground source heat pump would be feasible (Hudson valley, NY), but even acco

by crgwbr 4y ago

Unfortunately that is the case in some places. Last year I did the math to see if a ground source heat pump would be feasible (Hudson valley, NY), but even accounting for 400% efficiency vs 95% for gas, gas was still ~30% cheaper per month than electric. And that’s ignoring the extra $50k in equipment cost for the heat pump.

chii 4y ago
> gas was still ~30% cheaper per month than electric this sucks, because gas _should not_ be that much cheaper than electricity, but for subsidies or other market altering shenanigans.
- tshaddox 4y ago
  Namely externalities. Natural gas is almost certainly more expensive for home heating than electricity, it’s just that a portion of that expense is paid by a large number of third parties.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    Seeing as how natural gas is a required input for making synthetic fertilizer, without which billions would starve, it's hard to think of a product with more positive externalities than natural gas. Every time you go to the supermarket, you should be thankful that natural gas allows synthetic fertilizers to feed the world. It's easy to think of negative externalities and ignore positive externalities (or vice versa), but accurately summing these up is very difficult.
    - tshaddox 4y ago
      I didn’t say that all natural gas usage has negative externalities. But also, don’t the natural gas costs you’re talking about show up in the price of food?
      - rsj_hn 4y ago
        No, because prices are set by supply and demand, not the total social cost/benefit that obtains when all effects, direct and indirect, are taken into account. It is the discrepancy between market equilibria and total social cost/benefit that creates the theory of externalities. But my point is that actually determining social cost/benefit requires very extensive knowledge of all the social benefits and costs provided by something. For example, if you were to ask me what the positive externalities of clean drinking water are, I'd say they are enormous. But I couldn't really give you a number, and if anyone tries to give you a number, they are lying. But that is why I support subsidizing access to clean drinking water, rather than letting the market sort it out. It's just too valuable. When we are talking about things like energy or transportation, they generally have enormous positive externalities, which is why they are historically subsidized. For example, even if you never use a road, you benefit from the stores you buy from having access to roads so that goods can be delivered to them more cheaply. But it's even more subtle, because cheaper transportation means bigger markets. One of the reasons why local businesses historically opposed the construction of roads is that it would force them to compete with other businesses along the same road. If most people had to walk, then they get a captive market. As soon as you introduce roads, prices come down, and quality increases because lots of little monopolies are destroyed. So even if you never leave your house and only shop locally, you are getting huge financial benefits from cheap transportation. Thus there is a positive externality. This is why we don't mind that trucks cause most of the damage to roads but don't "pay their fair share" of road maintenance costs. It's because those trucks create enormous positive externalities by making all the goods we buy much cheaper, even if we ourselves never hire a truck. This is also why many nations subsidize railroads, bridges, roads, etc. The internet also has this aspect of enormous positive externalities. And when you are talking about energy -- it's the basis of modern civilization. Again, if you never use any energy yourself except wood that you chop down, you benefit from all the others who provide you with services having access to energy. Now I'm not saying that natural gas only has positive externalities and that there are no negative externalities. What I'm saying is that no one can tell you what the net is, because these are things foundational to our economy and have profound effects on everything else. So I would not try to use the logic of externalities when talking about these foundational technologies. Externalities makes sense if you are using a lawnmower and it annoys your neighbors, so you let them bid on how much you need to pay them in order to keep using the lawnmower. In very simple models, it makes sense. In the real world, it almost never makes sense, and ends up being a type of economic smokescreen for what is basically politics choosing winners and losers based on arbitrary or cherry picked criteria. So my recommendation is to not try to use "externalities" as a justification. Here's what I would argue, for example, when I am dictator. We want to transition to nuclear power and away from natural gas. So let's tax natural gas and use the money to pay for nuclear power so that it becomes cost competitive with natural gas, and then let's reserve natural gas for things nuclear can't do for us -- such as creating fertilizers. See what I did there? I made my actual motivation the main cause and didn't invoke any economic theory of externalities. Because overall goals should not be slaves to economic models, but rather the economic models should be servants of the overall social goals. The economic model can tell you how much to tax natural gas so that nuclear becomes cost competitive. But whether to decide to switch away from one source to another requires wisdom rather than brute force calculation of all outcomes -- there is no economic model that can spit out the answer. We should not give economists that type of power.
    - matsemann 4y ago
      Well, wouldn't it then be better to use the gas for that, and use other means for heating homes?
      - rsj_hn 4y ago
        Yes, using natural gas for the things that only natural gas can do would be an excellent public policy. However that's not the policy we are pursuing. We are pursuing very blunt instruments to try to discourage investment in developing natural gas fields full stop. Which is bad public policy. The other issue is by raising the price of natural gas, we are raising its price for all uses. And the price of natural gas tends to determine the price of fertilizer, which tends to determine the price of food. So this policy makes food more expensive. Even worse, natural gas and things like coal and oil are in some sense substitutes. Not perfect substitutes, but what happens when we make oil more expensive is that people shift to coal and natural gas to generate energy, and so these two become more expensive as well. Similarly, if we were take all coal offline, that would increase demand for natural gas and oil as substitutes, and again, the price of these commodities would rise, which would increase the price of food. What would be nice would be to see if we could de-couple these prices somehow -- e.g. tax usages of natural gas downstream of the price of the commodity itself. Other ideas are also possible.
- lazide 4y ago
  Gas is a defacto waste product from oil extraction, and very energy dense. It’s shocking it’s not a bigger delta the other way.
crmd 4y ago
Thanks - this is exactly the kind of data point I’m looking for. I have a big, drafty loft in Brooklyn that is heated with gas forced air. I’ve been curious about the relative operating cost of an air source heat pump, and I assume the sky high cost of electricity in nyc makes it a non-starter.
- silverlake 4y ago
  Also in NYC. I pay roughly 35cents per kWH (air-source heat pump) and $3 per therm natural gas (radiant heat, 95% efficient). I think 1 therm == 100k BTU, 1kWH == 3412 BTU. To equal 1 therm is takes 29kWH of electric heat costing $10.15. Then divide by the efficiency of heat pumps: $3.40 at 300% efficiency, $5 at 200%. I’ve read air-source heat pumps become far less efficient as the temps fall, so < 2x may be more realistic in winter.
  - crmd 4y ago
    Hey, thanks for responding. Am I understanding you correctly that 1 unit of gas heat costs $3 and each unit of heat pump heat costs between $3.40 and $5.00 depending on efficiency of the heat pump?
    - silverlake 4y ago
      If my math checks out (which is doubtful) then yes, heat pump could be more expensive than gas heat on the worst cold days like last week (10F). However, a heat pump handles heating and cooling. So it’s cheaper to install 1 system that does everything rather than 2 systems to save money on a few cold days. Add a few solar panels and the heat pump cost goes to 0. However, we put in a gas combi-boiler for hot water. Since we were renovating a townhouse, it was easy to throw in some radiant heaters on all floors. It’s a quiet, comfortable heat. I have the heat pump set to assist if the temps drop below 68F inside. All that said, insulation and air sealing is by far the most important thing to do first. FYI: I checked the specs on my unit. It claims a 3.3X COP. So that’s $3 per therm, same as gas.
  - mechagodzilla 4y ago
nicpottier 4y ago
$50k in equipment? At what scale are we talking. I got a Mitsubishi heat pump with three heads installed for less than $15k and it works well into the negatives.
- manfre 4y ago
  Ground source requires drilling and is not the more common type of heat pump found at most homes.
brnt 4y ago
Note that you are unlikely to achieve 95% efficiency on the gas. That requires you to run your plumbing at about 20 degrees (celcius), since burning gas means simple thermodynamics apply. At 40C you're already down to 90%, and virtually every installation I've seen actually is set to 60-80 degrees, at which point you're nearing an efficiency of only half. Hotter water means a more reactive system and smaller radiators (you'll need five times the volume for a given power output when you compare plumbing water of ~30 to 70+. You are almost certainly not installing that. Maybe you are installing floor heating, in which case you are likely OK. But most people I speak to don't realize that 1. Gas efficiency goes up as temperature differential goes down, and 2. energy transfered to water also needs to leave the system at your radiators. So size them for the effiency you want, or be disappointed with a significantly higher gas bill.

by crgwbr 4y ago

chii 4y ago

> gas was still ~30% cheaper per month than electric this sucks, because gas _should not_ be that much cheaper than electricity, but for subsidies or other market altering shenanigans.

tshaddox 4y ago
Namely externalities. Natural gas is almost certainly more expensive for home heating than electricity, it’s just that a portion of that expense is paid by a large number of third parties.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  Seeing as how natural gas is a required input for making synthetic fertilizer, without which billions would starve, it's hard to think of a product with more positive externalities than natural gas. Every time you go to the supermarket, you should be thankful that natural gas allows synthetic fertilizers to feed the world. It's easy to think of negative externalities and ignore positive externalities (or vice versa), but accurately summing these up is very difficult.
  - tshaddox 4y ago
    I didn’t say that all natural gas usage has negative externalities. But also, don’t the natural gas costs you’re talking about show up in the price of food?
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      No, because prices are set by supply and demand, not the total social cost/benefit that obtains when all effects, direct and indirect, are taken into account. It is the discrepancy between market equilibria and total social cost/benefit that creates the theory of externalities. But my point is that actually determining social cost/benefit requires very extensive knowledge of all the social benefits and costs provided by something. For example, if you were to ask me what the positive externalities of clean drinking water are, I'd say they are enormous. But I couldn't really give you a number, and if anyone tries to give you a number, they are lying. But that is why I support subsidizing access to clean drinking water, rather than letting the market sort it out. It's just too valuable. When we are talking about things like energy or transportation, they generally have enormous positive externalities, which is why they are historically subsidized. For example, even if you never use a road, you benefit from the stores you buy from having access to roads so that goods can be delivered to them more cheaply. But it's even more subtle, because cheaper transportation means bigger markets. One of the reasons why local businesses historically opposed the construction of roads is that it would force them to compete with other businesses along the same road. If most people had to walk, then they get a captive market. As soon as you introduce roads, prices come down, and quality increases because lots of little monopolies are destroyed. So even if you never leave your house and only shop locally, you are getting huge financial benefits from cheap transportation. Thus there is a positive externality. This is why we don't mind that trucks cause most of the damage to roads but don't "pay their fair share" of road maintenance costs. It's because those trucks create enormous positive externalities by making all the goods we buy much cheaper, even if we ourselves never hire a truck. This is also why many nations subsidize railroads, bridges, roads, etc. The internet also has this aspect of enormous positive externalities. And when you are talking about energy -- it's the basis of modern civilization. Again, if you never use any energy yourself except wood that you chop down, you benefit from all the others who provide you with services having access to energy. Now I'm not saying that natural gas only has positive externalities and that there are no negative externalities. What I'm saying is that no one can tell you what the net is, because these are things foundational to our economy and have profound effects on everything else. So I would not try to use the logic of externalities when talking about these foundational technologies. Externalities makes sense if you are using a lawnmower and it annoys your neighbors, so you let them bid on how much you need to pay them in order to keep using the lawnmower. In very simple models, it makes sense. In the real world, it almost never makes sense, and ends up being a type of economic smokescreen for what is basically politics choosing winners and losers based on arbitrary or cherry picked criteria. So my recommendation is to not try to use "externalities" as a justification. Here's what I would argue, for example, when I am dictator. We want to transition to nuclear power and away from natural gas. So let's tax natural gas and use the money to pay for nuclear power so that it becomes cost competitive with natural gas, and then let's reserve natural gas for things nuclear can't do for us -- such as creating fertilizers. See what I did there? I made my actual motivation the main cause and didn't invoke any economic theory of externalities. Because overall goals should not be slaves to economic models, but rather the economic models should be servants of the overall social goals. The economic model can tell you how much to tax natural gas so that nuclear becomes cost competitive. But whether to decide to switch away from one source to another requires wisdom rather than brute force calculation of all outcomes -- there is no economic model that can spit out the answer. We should not give economists that type of power.
  - matsemann 4y ago
    Well, wouldn't it then be better to use the gas for that, and use other means for heating homes?
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      Yes, using natural gas for the things that only natural gas can do would be an excellent public policy. However that's not the policy we are pursuing. We are pursuing very blunt instruments to try to discourage investment in developing natural gas fields full stop. Which is bad public policy. The other issue is by raising the price of natural gas, we are raising its price for all uses. And the price of natural gas tends to determine the price of fertilizer, which tends to determine the price of food. So this policy makes food more expensive. Even worse, natural gas and things like coal and oil are in some sense substitutes. Not perfect substitutes, but what happens when we make oil more expensive is that people shift to coal and natural gas to generate energy, and so these two become more expensive as well. Similarly, if we were take all coal offline, that would increase demand for natural gas and oil as substitutes, and again, the price of these commodities would rise, which would increase the price of food. What would be nice would be to see if we could de-couple these prices somehow -- e.g. tax usages of natural gas downstream of the price of the commodity itself. Other ideas are also possible.
lazide 4y ago
Gas is a defacto waste product from oil extraction, and very energy dense. It’s shocking it’s not a bigger delta the other way.

crmd 4y ago

Thanks - this is exactly the kind of data point I’m looking for. I have a big, drafty loft in Brooklyn that is heated with gas forced air. I’ve been curious about the relative operating cost of an air source heat pump, and I assume the sky high cost of electricity in nyc makes it a non-starter.

silverlake 4y ago
Also in NYC. I pay roughly 35cents per kWH (air-source heat pump) and $3 per therm natural gas (radiant heat, 95% efficient). I think 1 therm == 100k BTU, 1kWH == 3412 BTU. To equal 1 therm is takes 29kWH of electric heat costing $10.15. Then divide by the efficiency of heat pumps: $3.40 at 300% efficiency, $5 at 200%. I’ve read air-source heat pumps become far less efficient as the temps fall, so < 2x may be more realistic in winter.
- crmd 4y ago
  Hey, thanks for responding. Am I understanding you correctly that 1 unit of gas heat costs $3 and each unit of heat pump heat costs between $3.40 and $5.00 depending on efficiency of the heat pump?
  - silverlake 4y ago
    If my math checks out (which is doubtful) then yes, heat pump could be more expensive than gas heat on the worst cold days like last week (10F). However, a heat pump handles heating and cooling. So it’s cheaper to install 1 system that does everything rather than 2 systems to save money on a few cold days. Add a few solar panels and the heat pump cost goes to 0. However, we put in a gas combi-boiler for hot water. Since we were renovating a townhouse, it was easy to throw in some radiant heaters on all floors. It’s a quiet, comfortable heat. I have the heat pump set to assist if the temps drop below 68F inside. All that said, insulation and air sealing is by far the most important thing to do first. FYI: I checked the specs on my unit. It claims a 3.3X COP. So that’s $3 per therm, same as gas.
- mechagodzilla 4y ago

nicpottier 4y ago

$50k in equipment? At what scale are we talking. I got a Mitsubishi heat pump with three heads installed for less than $15k and it works well into the negatives.

manfre 4y ago
Ground source requires drilling and is not the more common type of heat pump found at most homes.

brnt 4y ago

Note that you are unlikely to achieve 95% efficiency on the gas. That requires you to run your plumbing at about 20 degrees (celcius), since burning gas means simple thermodynamics apply. At 40C you're already down to 90%, and virtually every installation I've seen actually is set to 60-80 degrees, at which point you're nearing an efficiency of only half. Hotter water means a more reactive system and smaller radiators (you'll need five times the volume for a given power output when you compare plumbing water of ~30 to 70+. You are almost certainly not installing that. Maybe you are installing floor heating, in which case you are likely OK. But most people I speak to don't realize that 1. Gas efficiency goes up as temperature differential goes down, and 2. energy transfered to water also needs to leave the system at your radiators. So size them for the effiency you want, or be disappointed with a significantly higher gas bill.