5 ms·

> For now, the concrete supercapacitor can store a little under 300 watt-hours per cubic metre – enough to power a 10-watt LED lightbulb for 30 hours. > The po

by abeppu 2y ago

> For now, the concrete supercapacitor can store a little under 300 watt-hours per cubic metre – enough to power a 10-watt LED lightbulb for 30 hours. > The power output "may seem low compared to conventional batteries, [but] a foundation with 30-40 cubic metres (1,060-1,410 cubic feet) of concrete could be sufficient to meet the daily energy needs of a residential house", says Stefaniuk. This made me suspicious, because it sounded too low. But it turns out it's true ... for an average British home that's heavily dependent on gas. 40 m^3 * 300 watt-hours/m^3 = 12 kwh. I.e. 500 watts for a whole day. Apparently the average American residential electricity use is 10,791 kwh/year, which is ~1,231 watts, whereas the average British home is only 2,700 kwh/year which is ~308 watts. I had no idea that the difference was so large. https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=97&t=3 https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html https://www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html

tombert 2y ago
I'm saying this with no data, but could it be because energy is just cheaper in the States? I have been using considerably less electricity since moving to NYC, since the price-per-KWh is about double what my costs were when I lived in Texas. Also, I'd be curious how much of this could be due to electric car usage increasing? This of course is anecdata, but I think a large percentage of it might come down to the fact that UK houses don't seem to run AC nearly as much. I spent two weeks in York a few years ago, during an extremely hot summer, and I was missing my AC very very much.
- dgacmu 2y ago
  Some quick checking: Average (well, median) US house size: 2000 ft^2 Average UK house size: 68 m^2 = 740 ft^2 That makes for a very, very different HVAC bill. Numbers vary a lot by source but the relationship (2x+ larger in the US) holds. For example: https://www.zigguratrealestate.ph/post/how-big-is-a-house-average-house-size-by-country-2023 https://www.zigguratrealestate.ph/post/how-big-is-a-house-av...
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah, that does not surprise me. The apartment I stayed at in York was absolutely tiny. It was decent, and big enough for one person, and it was pretty cheap, so I'm not complaining really, but I've never seen an apartment that small in the US. Also there was just no HVAC there to begin with, so I guess even less of an HVAC bill.
    - LadyCailin 2y ago
      That’s ironic, because a lot of the apartments in New York are also very small.
      - leoedin 2y ago
        It's kind of mad that the US houses are an average of 2000 square feet, yet if you watch some of the "New York apartment tour" videos on YouTube they are often far smaller than even what you'd find in London. The kitchens are often absolutely pitiful little spaces, especially considering the multi-thousand-dollar rents.
        tombert 2y ago
        If you’re in downtown or midtown they’re small. I lived in Washington Heights (north Manhattan) for a few years and my apartment was two bedrooms with a relatively big living area, and I was able to afford that with an academic’s salary. I don’t remember the exact square footage but my wife and I lived there and it didn’t feel cramped at all. I own a house in Brooklyn now and if you count the basement it’s about 1600sqft. Though York is a fairly rural town, and houses/apartments that small in rural America, as far as I am aware, are basically unheard of.
  - oersted 2y ago
    From my anecdotal experience, residential HVAC is fairly uncommon in EU. Lived in northern Spain and Netherlands for many years.
    - 2y ago
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  There's lots of places in the US that don't have natural gas infrastructure and do all heating electrically. The UK has a much higher population density so services like natural gas are more widely available, I'd guess with no evidence to back that up.
  - londons_explore 2y ago
    In the UK, places without natural gas almost all use oil for heating instead. A small chunk of buildings built in the 60's use electricity because we thought that would be cheap in a post-nuclear world. We were wrong.
    - idiotsecant 2y ago
      In the US there are lots of places where electricity is fact quite cheap like that. For example, in my county heating with propane doesn't even come close to making sense, due to the excess of cheap hydro power.
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 2y ago
    Quite a few people use LPG where nat gas isn’t available. Converting nat gas equipment to LPG is quick and simple.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  The big differences are: * UK requires appliances to be eco friendly - that means for most appliances they only take a quarter of the energy to do the same job. Dishwasher/washing machine/etc. * UK housing has really high insulation requirements for new builds. Your body heat will keep it warm most of the year. They are starting to require retrofits for old buildings too. * Widespread use of LED lighting and expensive electricity * Smaller houses - less rooms etc. * Tumble driers aren't widespread (big energy user). * Electric water heating is rare (most houses use gas or oil). * Air conditioning isn't widespread, despite the climate kinda needing it in the middle of summer.
  - protocolture 2y ago
    A lot of that doesnt apply to old dwellings does it? I recall in my great grandparents old terrace house, the kitchen was set behind the neighbors fireplace. The only rational place for the fridge stand effectively copped 50-80 degrees from the neighbors fire, just radiating from the brick. This lead to the fridge running constantly and having an extremely short lifespan (and sometimes not functioning at all) That said because it was old everything was air dried.
    - Grimblewald 2y ago
      that sounds like it has got to be an outlying situation though, and things like this tend to work on population averages.
      - jfengel 2y ago
        The UK has a ton of old dwellings. Like, a three century old home isn't even a local landmark. It's just a house. They have of course been retrofitted with electricity and plumbing and gas and modern insulation (usually), but exactly what you get depends on how recently it's been renovated. And "mid 20th century" is a very common answer.
      - physicsguy 2y ago
        Not really, the U.K. has some of the oldest housing stock in the world. For e.g. my house is pretty typical, built in 1912, it has a double skin wall of bricks but with no cavity. It has three original fireplaces which are all very draughty. I have timber sash windows, and though I recently got double glazing my neighbours on either side do not have it.
bitlevel 2y ago
Simplest explaination - air conditioning - which isn't much used in the UK.
mathsmath 2y ago
Keep in mind that the UK is much smaller and has a colder climate in general. If you look at a state like Colorado, the energy usage is vastly different than Florida or Texas with lots of heat and humidity. I would bet that the southern states skew the results quite a bit for the entire USA.
- salty_biscuits 2y ago
  Here in Australia the coldest state (tas) uses more energy (8600) than anywhere else (e.g. qld 5500). They have basically 100% hydro power and use reverse cycle AC for heating. Not sure what else is going on there.
- johngalt 2y ago
  >If you look at a state like Colorado, the energy usage is vastly different than Florida or Texas with lots of heat and humidity. Electricity usage yes. Energy usage no. Household energy usage is lower in the warmer states, and higher in colder states. I would expect that CO household energy consumption would be higher than FL or TX.
  - inhumantsar 2y ago
    > Household energy usage is lower in the warmer states, and higher in the colder states. that's quite the assertion, what makes you believe it to be true?
  - mathsmath 2y ago
    Yes whoops. I should have made that distinction. The parent comment was talking about electricity, and that’s what I meant. I would argue that the USA as a whole generally has more climate variability than the UK in addition to larger housing to account for the overall energy usage as well.
mschuster91 2y ago
> Apparently the average American residential electricity use is 10,791 kwh/year, which is ~1,231 watts, whereas the average British home is only 2,700 kwh/year which is ~308 watts. I had no idea that the difference was so large. Well, American homes aren't built out of brick and concrete like European buildings are, instead they're made out of wood and cardboard which is barely insulating against heat (and doesn't hold up at all to major storms which is why you're seeing so much destruction after hurricanes), so they lose a lot of energy during winter and have to spend a lot of electricity on AC during the summer. On top of that, their homes are (at least in suburbia) so much larger than European homes. Heat loss/influx is cubic-related to the footprint IIRC, so it makes for much more energy demand as well.
rldjbpin 2y ago
probably due to a combination of pricing, house size, and lack of air conditioning in the uk as mentioned.
tzs 2y ago
> Apparently the average American residential electricity use is 10,791 kwh/year, which is ~1,231 watts, whereas the average British home is only 2,700 kwh/year which is ~308 watts. I had no idea that the difference was so large. They main reason is that US has a higher percentage of all-electric homes. The average medium sized UK home uses 2700 kWh/year of electricity and 11500 kWh/year of gas. See that table in your second link. What you want to compare is average household energy use excluding transportation. For the UK the numbers in your link give 9400 kWh/year for 1-2 people in a flat or 1-bedroom house, 14200 kWh/year for 2-3 people in a 3-bedroom house, and 21100 kWh/year for 4-5 people in a 5-bedroom house. I'll leave it to someone else to find out how those are distributed to work out the average for the UK as a whole. For the US, in 2011 [1], annual usage was 108 MBTU for single family detached houses, 89 MBTU for single family attached houses, and 54 MBTU for multi-family housing. In kWh that's 31700 kWh, 26100 kWh, and 15800 kWh. I'll leave it for someone else to find the distribution so those can be combined, and to find later data. Almost all searches for household energy US of US households just return electricity usage and the 2011 document was the only thing I found that gave what I was looking for. [1] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/location_efficiency_btu.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/lo...

by abeppu 2y ago

tombert 2y ago

I'm saying this with no data, but could it be because energy is just cheaper in the States? I have been using considerably less electricity since moving to NYC, since the price-per-KWh is about double what my costs were when I lived in Texas. Also, I'd be curious how much of this could be due to electric car usage increasing? This of course is anecdata, but I think a large percentage of it might come down to the fact that UK houses don't seem to run AC nearly as much. I spent two weeks in York a few years ago, during an extremely hot summer, and I was missing my AC very very much.

dgacmu 2y ago
Some quick checking: Average (well, median) US house size: 2000 ft^2 Average UK house size: 68 m^2 = 740 ft^2 That makes for a very, very different HVAC bill. Numbers vary a lot by source but the relationship (2x+ larger in the US) holds. For example: https://www.zigguratrealestate.ph/post/how-big-is-a-house-average-house-size-by-country-2023 https://www.zigguratrealestate.ph/post/how-big-is-a-house-av...
- tombert 2y ago
  Yeah, that does not surprise me. The apartment I stayed at in York was absolutely tiny. It was decent, and big enough for one person, and it was pretty cheap, so I'm not complaining really, but I've never seen an apartment that small in the US. Also there was just no HVAC there to begin with, so I guess even less of an HVAC bill.
  - LadyCailin 2y ago
    That’s ironic, because a lot of the apartments in New York are also very small.
    - leoedin 2y ago
      It's kind of mad that the US houses are an average of 2000 square feet, yet if you watch some of the "New York apartment tour" videos on YouTube they are often far smaller than even what you'd find in London. The kitchens are often absolutely pitiful little spaces, especially considering the multi-thousand-dollar rents.
      - tombert 2y ago
        If you’re in downtown or midtown they’re small. I lived in Washington Heights (north Manhattan) for a few years and my apartment was two bedrooms with a relatively big living area, and I was able to afford that with an academic’s salary. I don’t remember the exact square footage but my wife and I lived there and it didn’t feel cramped at all. I own a house in Brooklyn now and if you count the basement it’s about 1600sqft. Though York is a fairly rural town, and houses/apartments that small in rural America, as far as I am aware, are basically unheard of.
- oersted 2y ago
  From my anecdotal experience, residential HVAC is fairly uncommon in EU. Lived in northern Spain and Netherlands for many years.
  - 2y ago
idiotsecant 2y ago
There's lots of places in the US that don't have natural gas infrastructure and do all heating electrically. The UK has a much higher population density so services like natural gas are more widely available, I'd guess with no evidence to back that up.
- londons_explore 2y ago
  In the UK, places without natural gas almost all use oil for heating instead. A small chunk of buildings built in the 60's use electricity because we thought that would be cheap in a post-nuclear world. We were wrong.
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    In the US there are lots of places where electricity is fact quite cheap like that. For example, in my county heating with propane doesn't even come close to making sense, due to the excess of cheap hydro power.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 2y ago
  Quite a few people use LPG where nat gas isn’t available. Converting nat gas equipment to LPG is quick and simple.
londons_explore 2y ago
The big differences are: * UK requires appliances to be eco friendly - that means for most appliances they only take a quarter of the energy to do the same job. Dishwasher/washing machine/etc. * UK housing has really high insulation requirements for new builds. Your body heat will keep it warm most of the year. They are starting to require retrofits for old buildings too. * Widespread use of LED lighting and expensive electricity * Smaller houses - less rooms etc. * Tumble driers aren't widespread (big energy user). * Electric water heating is rare (most houses use gas or oil). * Air conditioning isn't widespread, despite the climate kinda needing it in the middle of summer.
- protocolture 2y ago
  A lot of that doesnt apply to old dwellings does it? I recall in my great grandparents old terrace house, the kitchen was set behind the neighbors fireplace. The only rational place for the fridge stand effectively copped 50-80 degrees from the neighbors fire, just radiating from the brick. This lead to the fridge running constantly and having an extremely short lifespan (and sometimes not functioning at all) That said because it was old everything was air dried.
  - Grimblewald 2y ago
    that sounds like it has got to be an outlying situation though, and things like this tend to work on population averages.
    - jfengel 2y ago
      The UK has a ton of old dwellings. Like, a three century old home isn't even a local landmark. It's just a house. They have of course been retrofitted with electricity and plumbing and gas and modern insulation (usually), but exactly what you get depends on how recently it's been renovated. And "mid 20th century" is a very common answer.
    - physicsguy 2y ago
      Not really, the U.K. has some of the oldest housing stock in the world. For e.g. my house is pretty typical, built in 1912, it has a double skin wall of bricks but with no cavity. It has three original fireplaces which are all very draughty. I have timber sash windows, and though I recently got double glazing my neighbours on either side do not have it.

bitlevel 2y ago

Simplest explaination - air conditioning - which isn't much used in the UK.

mathsmath 2y ago

Keep in mind that the UK is much smaller and has a colder climate in general. If you look at a state like Colorado, the energy usage is vastly different than Florida or Texas with lots of heat and humidity. I would bet that the southern states skew the results quite a bit for the entire USA.

salty_biscuits 2y ago
Here in Australia the coldest state (tas) uses more energy (8600) than anywhere else (e.g. qld 5500). They have basically 100% hydro power and use reverse cycle AC for heating. Not sure what else is going on there.
johngalt 2y ago
>If you look at a state like Colorado, the energy usage is vastly different than Florida or Texas with lots of heat and humidity. Electricity usage yes. Energy usage no. Household energy usage is lower in the warmer states, and higher in colder states. I would expect that CO household energy consumption would be higher than FL or TX.
- inhumantsar 2y ago
  > Household energy usage is lower in the warmer states, and higher in the colder states. that's quite the assertion, what makes you believe it to be true?
- mathsmath 2y ago
  Yes whoops. I should have made that distinction. The parent comment was talking about electricity, and that’s what I meant. I would argue that the USA as a whole generally has more climate variability than the UK in addition to larger housing to account for the overall energy usage as well.

mschuster91 2y ago

> Apparently the average American residential electricity use is 10,791 kwh/year, which is ~1,231 watts, whereas the average British home is only 2,700 kwh/year which is ~308 watts. I had no idea that the difference was so large. Well, American homes aren't built out of brick and concrete like European buildings are, instead they're made out of wood and cardboard which is barely insulating against heat (and doesn't hold up at all to major storms which is why you're seeing so much destruction after hurricanes), so they lose a lot of energy during winter and have to spend a lot of electricity on AC during the summer. On top of that, their homes are (at least in suburbia) so much larger than European homes. Heat loss/influx is cubic-related to the footprint IIRC, so it makes for much more energy demand as well.

rldjbpin 2y ago

probably due to a combination of pricing, house size, and lack of air conditioning in the uk as mentioned.

tzs 2y ago

> Apparently the average American residential electricity use is 10,791 kwh/year, which is ~1,231 watts, whereas the average British home is only 2,700 kwh/year which is ~308 watts. I had no idea that the difference was so large. They main reason is that US has a higher percentage of all-electric homes. The average medium sized UK home uses 2700 kWh/year of electricity and 11500 kWh/year of gas. See that table in your second link. What you want to compare is average household energy use excluding transportation. For the UK the numbers in your link give 9400 kWh/year for 1-2 people in a flat or 1-bedroom house, 14200 kWh/year for 2-3 people in a 3-bedroom house, and 21100 kWh/year for 4-5 people in a 5-bedroom house. I'll leave it to someone else to find out how those are distributed to work out the average for the UK as a whole. For the US, in 2011 [1], annual usage was 108 MBTU for single family detached houses, 89 MBTU for single family attached houses, and 54 MBTU for multi-family housing. In kWh that's 31700 kWh, 26100 kWh, and 15800 kWh. I'll leave it for someone else to find the distribution so those can be combined, and to find later data. Almost all searches for household energy US of US households just return electricity usage and the 2011 document was the only thing I found that gave what I was looking for. [1] https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/location_efficiency_btu.pdf https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/lo...