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> Heat pump passion is kind of a thing for some reason! Because they are throwing money at it. Billions. All policy driven, not science-driven. If every hom

> Heat pump passion is kind of a thing for some reason! Because they are throwing money at it. Billions. All policy driven, not science-driven. If every home in the US switched to electric powered HVAC heat-pump systems we'd have huge blackouts in every city. Our power grid and power generation systems are not ready for this at all. Add electric cars to the mix and the scenario gets much darker (no pun intended, lights will go out!). This is a case of placing the cart ahead of the horse. We are in desperate need of a non-trivial 25 year program to double out reliable power generation and delivery infrastructure.

cmui 4y ago
You're right about switching everything over all at once. That would be a big step change in grid load! But large scale heat pump adoption is going to take a decade or more, and in the meantime we can work to build out the grid, and also on technologies that make load shifting more feasible.
- robomartin 4y ago
  Of course. My issue is that there seems to be no serious acceptance of this reality and, therefore, a strong political push to address it. All we talk about are the wonders of electric-everything, as if power will magically appear from somewhere. Gradual adoption is conceptually easy to understand, except that in certain places it will not take much for gradual adoption to reach a threshold that will lead to a painful reality. Speaking in terms of Southern California, it doesn't take much for a city like Los Angeles to create a power availability/grid crisis. We've already been there multiple times. The issue with reliable (strong emphasis on that term) power generation is that, in the US, it takes decades and much red tape to address it. In other words, cart before the horse: We can't afford to materially increase demand without a solid preexisting plan to also materially increase supply ahead of demand. The two need to be out of phase, with power generation build-up happening first.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
Let's suppose that you want to switch over, say, Chicago, to be fully electric heat pump driven. Let's further suppose you want to do this over 25 years. There are just over 1M households in Chicago. If we assume (wrongly) that nobody has heat pumps today, that conversion needs to take place in 123 households every day of every year for the next 25 years. If the contractors don't work weekends, it's 153 households a day. And all this while the same thing has to take place in Houston, NYC, LA and cities and towns of every size at the same time. That's a huge task even spread out over 25 years. It seems very unlikely we will meet that goal, so your hand wringing over heat-pump induced blackouts seems misplaced.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > your hand wringing over heat-pump induced blackouts seems misplaced. I would very much appreciate it if we could keep to a mutually-respectful conversation rather than resorting to insults. We only learn if we respect each other's positions. I have no problem being wrong. Show me how and will forever be grateful. I have no problem with anyone challenging anything I say. Thanks for questioning my claim. I can't get into numbers for Chicago without doing much research. Not sure that data exists. This is what I was able to find quickly though: https://www.statista.com/statistics/220357/manufactured-shipments-of-unitary-air-conditioners/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/220357/manufactured-ship... According to this information over six million HVAC systems were sold per year in 2021. I think it is fair to assume these systems were installed. They don't provide information on the geographic distribution, kind or type of installation (residential, commercial or industrial). What it says for me is that there's a great deal of installation capacity. This page gives us a sense of the concentration of contractors per state: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1243016/plumbing-and-hvac-contractors-by-state-usa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1243016/plumbing-and-hva... This association link gives us an idea of how many HVAC contractors exist in the US: https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-businesses/heating-air-conditioning-contractors-united-states https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-busi... Their number is 145K. The first link says Illinois has about 4100 contractors, or 2.8% of the national number. I am just trying to get a sense of proportion here with some quick math. I do realize these numbers come from different years. If I take the 6 million annual HVAC system sales rate for the US and calculate 2.8% of that, we get 168K units per year. Per this metric, installing a million units would require just 6 years. If the million units, on average [0], require 3 kW of power, we are adding a power requirement of 504 MW per year. I am trying to keep it simple. In terms of power demand, the average is meaningless [0], what matters are outliers on the high side of the distribution curve. Keeping it simple... By this metric we would need to build half a nuclear power plant [1] per year in Illinois, for a total of three brand-new nuclear power plants in six years. I think these numbers more than support my thinking that power problems might be severe. If we understand that, once again, averages are a horrible metric [0], the numbers are likely much higher than this. Over that period of time electric ground transportation would experience significant growth, further exacerbating the problem. BTW, I have not addressed the issues we will have with the grid itself --power transmission lines, substations, transformers, etc.-- not being able to handle the increased load. The current estimate is that a full transition to electric vehicles will roughly require a doubling of the entire US power generation and transmission infrastructure [3]. This means the equivalent of 1200 brand new nuclear power plants. By this I do not mean we have to build that many, I am using them as a unit of measure for a sense of proportion [1]. Electric heat pumps will add significant demand on top of this. As I said in another post, this, I feel, is a cart before the horse situation. There's nothing wrong with electrification. What's wrong is that we need to put the horse (power generation) ahead of the cart. As far as I can tell, we are not doing that, at all, anywhere. Solar and wind are not enough. We need a non-trivial program to boost energy generation and transmission capacity. This, in my opinion, must include nuclear power. Notes: [0] I truly hate using averages because it is a horrible figure that has no merit when applied to the entire population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_averages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_averages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet [1] I like to use nuclear power plants for a sense of proportion because the typical plant is rated at 1 GW and people can understand the severity of needing new nuclear power plants. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcI6FaaDp8g&t=3510s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcI6FaaDp8g&t=3510s

cmui 4y ago

You're right about switching everything over all at once. That would be a big step change in grid load! But large scale heat pump adoption is going to take a decade or more, and in the meantime we can work to build out the grid, and also on technologies that make load shifting more feasible.

robomartin 4y ago
Of course. My issue is that there seems to be no serious acceptance of this reality and, therefore, a strong political push to address it. All we talk about are the wonders of electric-everything, as if power will magically appear from somewhere. Gradual adoption is conceptually easy to understand, except that in certain places it will not take much for gradual adoption to reach a threshold that will lead to a painful reality. Speaking in terms of Southern California, it doesn't take much for a city like Los Angeles to create a power availability/grid crisis. We've already been there multiple times. The issue with reliable (strong emphasis on that term) power generation is that, in the US, it takes decades and much red tape to address it. In other words, cart before the horse: We can't afford to materially increase demand without a solid preexisting plan to also materially increase supply ahead of demand. The two need to be out of phase, with power generation build-up happening first.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

Let's suppose that you want to switch over, say, Chicago, to be fully electric heat pump driven. Let's further suppose you want to do this over 25 years. There are just over 1M households in Chicago. If we assume (wrongly) that nobody has heat pumps today, that conversion needs to take place in 123 households every day of every year for the next 25 years. If the contractors don't work weekends, it's 153 households a day. And all this while the same thing has to take place in Houston, NYC, LA and cities and towns of every size at the same time. That's a huge task even spread out over 25 years. It seems very unlikely we will meet that goal, so your hand wringing over heat-pump induced blackouts seems misplaced.

robomartin 4y ago
> your hand wringing over heat-pump induced blackouts seems misplaced. I would very much appreciate it if we could keep to a mutually-respectful conversation rather than resorting to insults. We only learn if we respect each other's positions. I have no problem being wrong. Show me how and will forever be grateful. I have no problem with anyone challenging anything I say. Thanks for questioning my claim. I can't get into numbers for Chicago without doing much research. Not sure that data exists. This is what I was able to find quickly though: https://www.statista.com/statistics/220357/manufactured-shipments-of-unitary-air-conditioners/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/220357/manufactured-ship... According to this information over six million HVAC systems were sold per year in 2021. I think it is fair to assume these systems were installed. They don't provide information on the geographic distribution, kind or type of installation (residential, commercial or industrial). What it says for me is that there's a great deal of installation capacity. This page gives us a sense of the concentration of contractors per state: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1243016/plumbing-and-hvac-contractors-by-state-usa/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1243016/plumbing-and-hva... This association link gives us an idea of how many HVAC contractors exist in the US: https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-businesses/heating-air-conditioning-contractors-united-states https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/number-of-busi... Their number is 145K. The first link says Illinois has about 4100 contractors, or 2.8% of the national number. I am just trying to get a sense of proportion here with some quick math. I do realize these numbers come from different years. If I take the 6 million annual HVAC system sales rate for the US and calculate 2.8% of that, we get 168K units per year. Per this metric, installing a million units would require just 6 years. If the million units, on average [0], require 3 kW of power, we are adding a power requirement of 504 MW per year. I am trying to keep it simple. In terms of power demand, the average is meaningless [0], what matters are outliers on the high side of the distribution curve. Keeping it simple... By this metric we would need to build half a nuclear power plant [1] per year in Illinois, for a total of three brand-new nuclear power plants in six years. I think these numbers more than support my thinking that power problems might be severe. If we understand that, once again, averages are a horrible metric [0], the numbers are likely much higher than this. Over that period of time electric ground transportation would experience significant growth, further exacerbating the problem. BTW, I have not addressed the issues we will have with the grid itself --power transmission lines, substations, transformers, etc.-- not being able to handle the increased load. The current estimate is that a full transition to electric vehicles will roughly require a doubling of the entire US power generation and transmission infrastructure [3]. This means the equivalent of 1200 brand new nuclear power plants. By this I do not mean we have to build that many, I am using them as a unit of measure for a sense of proportion [1]. Electric heat pumps will add significant demand on top of this. As I said in another post, this, I feel, is a cart before the horse situation. There's nothing wrong with electrification. What's wrong is that we need to put the horse (power generation) ahead of the cart. As far as I can tell, we are not doing that, at all, anywhere. Solar and wind are not enough. We need a non-trivial program to boost energy generation and transmission capacity. This, in my opinion, must include nuclear power. Notes: [0] I truly hate using averages because it is a horrible figure that has no merit when applied to the entire population. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_averages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranny_of_averages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anscombe%27s_quartet [1] I like to use nuclear power plants for a sense of proportion because the typical plant is rated at 1 GW and people can understand the severity of needing new nuclear power plants. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcI6FaaDp8g&t=3510s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcI6FaaDp8g&t=3510s