3 ms·

Lovely, but heat pumps can easily top 300% efficiency. If your electrical generation and transport is ~50% (which seems shockingly bad), you get a lot more heat

Lovely, but heat pumps can easily top 300% efficiency. If your electrical generation and transport is ~50% (which seems shockingly bad), you get a lot more heating from a heat pump than from direct mechanical heating.

thfuran 3y ago
Wouldn't 50% be outlandishly good for solar? I think even 25% would be exceptional.
- MengerSponge 3y ago
  Yes, but this isn't solar. And to be a like-for-like comparison, we'd have to incorporate the lost/missed energy in the windmill's vanes.
mechagodzilla 3y ago
Electricity from solar panels on your roof is in the range of 16-23% efficient, but there are no distribution losses. Electricity from a coal plant or single-cycle natural gas plant is ~30-40% efficient, and a combined-cycle natural gas plant can reach up to 60% efficiency under ideal conditions, with an additional 5% of produced electricity lost in distribution.
- MengerSponge 3y ago
  Yes, and wind turbines are 20% to 40% efficient at converting wind into energy
fancyfredbot 3y ago
The article has a long section on using the windmill to directly drive the compressor of a heat pump using a gearbox. This is likely to be more efficient than converting to electricity and then using that to run an electric compressor.
- MengerSponge 3y ago
  I know, I saw that. The article is lovely, and I love the design (dithered images like that hits all the right nostalgia notes), but it's lacking in a meaningful technical analysis. Directly driving the heat pump has the potential to be more efficient still, but it's 1) very hard to design and 2) a custom (and therefore quite expensive) design. Hooking your turbine to a generator, which can probably do something like 80% efficient transformation of the mechanical energy to electric energy (incorporating losses). Wire that generator to an electric heat pump. 240-320% > 100% You can lose another half of your electrical energy in transport and storage and still come out ahead. Thermodynamics is weird.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    Energy means nothing without knowing it's entropy!

thfuran 3y ago

Wouldn't 50% be outlandishly good for solar? I think even 25% would be exceptional.

MengerSponge 3y ago
Yes, but this isn't solar. And to be a like-for-like comparison, we'd have to incorporate the lost/missed energy in the windmill's vanes.

mechagodzilla 3y ago

Electricity from solar panels on your roof is in the range of 16-23% efficient, but there are no distribution losses. Electricity from a coal plant or single-cycle natural gas plant is ~30-40% efficient, and a combined-cycle natural gas plant can reach up to 60% efficiency under ideal conditions, with an additional 5% of produced electricity lost in distribution.

MengerSponge 3y ago
Yes, and wind turbines are 20% to 40% efficient at converting wind into energy

fancyfredbot 3y ago

The article has a long section on using the windmill to directly drive the compressor of a heat pump using a gearbox. This is likely to be more efficient than converting to electricity and then using that to run an electric compressor.

MengerSponge 3y ago
I know, I saw that. The article is lovely, and I love the design (dithered images like that hits all the right nostalgia notes), but it's lacking in a meaningful technical analysis. Directly driving the heat pump has the potential to be more efficient still, but it's 1) very hard to design and 2) a custom (and therefore quite expensive) design. Hooking your turbine to a generator, which can probably do something like 80% efficient transformation of the mechanical energy to electric energy (incorporating losses). Wire that generator to an electric heat pump. 240-320% > 100% You can lose another half of your electrical energy in transport and storage and still come out ahead. Thermodynamics is weird.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  Energy means nothing without knowing it's entropy!