Massachusetts wants to take my boiler away!

fentonc

@PMJ - It's definitely huge infrastructure changes over decades, but when they're talking about switching everyone over to hydrogen gas heating or something, that feels like a way worse solution than upgrading the electrical grid and using heat pumps. In terms of infrastructure upgrades, burying your power lines (just like your gas lines) might be a better option, but the right investments are going to be pretty location dependent. I haven't had the power go out yet in the winter in the 7 years I've been in this place, and as I mentioned, I don't know anyone on my block who has gas/oil heat that's setup to run off a generator if the power does go down. I do have a friend that is very 'independence'-minded, though, and he has a 16KW solar array and some batteries, which goes a long way.

Hot_water_fan

@fentonc That's how I see it too - if we're updating/maintaining underground utilities, I'd rather it be electric as electricity is more valuable to customers because of its versality. Electricity has what...99.999% market share? Plenty of the US has no access to oil/gas and gets by just fine. Really it's determined by the kitchen stove more than anything IMO. In the Deep South, I once had an electric furnace (ouch), electric water heater (minor ouch), but a gas stove ha!

Jamie Hall

No, actually, your numbers aren't that crazy. But there are two ringers in there. First, these are indeed "large lots". In fact, working farms, and the actual power demand now is close to 200 amps on most of them -- exclusive of heating. The other is that these aren't suburban mansion type setups -- these are mostly older (the newest house was built in the 1950s, and the oldest, Cedric's home, was started around 1780 and added on to since). There are outbuildings -- some heated. The other ringer is that "high property value", implying large dollars available for tear down/rebuild or conversion. That simply isn't true, but that's a discussion for another place and time. I think many of your conclusions are quite reasonable for a more typical upscale subdivision type setting, however.

Erin Holohan Haskell

@ron politics are not allowed here. Please follow site rules.

fentonc

@Jamie Hall - a friend has a working farm in PA with a building from ~1850, and they actually drill their own natural gas for heating. Given how dirt-cheap solar panels are already, I wonder if doing on-site electrolysis and storing the H2 in a tank would be viable. From a joules/$ perspective it would probably work fine, although I have no idea how practical seasonal storage of H2 would be.

ChrisJ

fentonc said:

@Jamie Hall - a friend has a working farm in PA with a building from ~1850, and they actually drill their own natural gas for heating. Given how dirt-cheap solar panels are already, I wonder if doing on-site electrolysis and storing the H2 in a tank would be viable. From a joules/$ perspective it would probably work fine, although I have no idea how practical seasonal storage of H2 would be.

What do you mean "They drill their own natural gas for heating"

fentonc

They have gas on their land, so they have a well and pipe it into their house (or at least my understanding from the pictures I saw and description) - I don't think they compress it in tanks or anything first.

ChrisJ

fentonc said:

They have gas on their land, so they have a well and pipe it into their house (or at least my understanding from the pictures I saw and description) - I don't think they compress it in tanks or anything first.

Ah.
I've heard of that with older wells, but I highly doubt they drilled it themselves. That's how I took that.

ethicalpaul

Jamie Hall said:

OK, I'll give you another one, with a known heat loss: Cedric's home. The design day heat loss is very close to 200,000 BTUh or about 65 kilowatts. Somewhere around 300 amperes for single phase 240 volts. Cedric's home is one of the larger on our piece of the grid, so saying 40 KW per house is reasonable. There are about 30 such houses on our bit of the grid, which is six miles of 23 KV single phase power. Can it handle that much power? Not even close. Is it unusual in our area? Nope -- that's what pretty much everyone has around here.

Again, I'm with @PMJ on this one.

300 amps @Jamie Hall ? Are you calculating for resistive electric heating?

JUGHNE

That would be my guess. You need, IIRC, 125% capacity for continuous load.

And being at design day temp, IDK what that is, but HP's COP would be pretty low.

ChrisJ

I can't wait until the day @ethicalpaul installs a heat pump and we get lows of -15 to -20F and he's all "YOOO it's cold up in this piece!!!!! Even my bathwater has a skin of ice on it!".

Jamie Hall

Yes. Resistive heating. Design day, so called, around here is 2, which is optimistic (that's Waterbury, which is almost 1,000 feet lower); we routinely get down to 2, and will have at least a week below that.

ethicalpaul

I don't think anyone anywhere is suggesting to replace gas or oil with resistive electric. Let's keep the discussions fair and square

Jamie Hall

Fair enough. But then I might ask, what would I be expected to use for new construction in this area? There's no natural gas for conversion to hydrogen...

Hot_water_fan

I think it's easy enough with a hybrid system - run the heat pump 90% and keep low efficiency gas/oil appliance for the 10% coldest. Lessens the panel constraint. If it's a home with air conditioning, marginal installation cost is very low.

fentonc

For a new build, especially, a ground-source heat pump makes a lot of sense in areas with very low temperatures, and the COP is not particularly temperature dependent to the best of my knowledge. A well-insulated new house probably doesn't have a 200KBTU/hr heat loss either, so you're solving a much simpler problem.

Places like @Jamie Hall is describing with old buildings, large heating loads, mediocre infrastructure and limited ability to finance upgrades are probably going to have a problem no matter what in an era with volatile, $5+/gallon oil prices. The exact combination of envelope upgrades / heat source replacements / additions of things like solar panels / etc that makes sense is going to be site-specific. ASHPs are at least relatively low-cost and likely to keep getting better, so I would imagine @Hot_water_fan 's suggestion of heat pump with propane/oil backup for the worst days will wind up being the most economical choice in most of those situations.

ChrisJ

fentonc said:

For a new build, especially, a ground-source heat pump makes a lot of sense in areas with very low temperatures, and the COP is not particularly temperature dependent to the best of my knowledge. A well-insulated new house probably doesn't have a 200KBTU/hr heat loss either, so you're solving a much simpler problem. Places like @Jamie Hall is describing with old buildings, large heating loads, mediocre infrastructure and limited ability to finance upgrades are probably going to have a problem no matter what in an era with volatile, $5+/gallon oil prices. The exact combination of envelope upgrades / heat source replacements / additions of things like solar panels / etc that makes sense is going to be site-specific. ASHPs are at least relatively low-cost and likely to keep getting better, so I would imagine @Hot_water_fan 's suggestion of heat pump with propane/oil backup for the worst days will wind up being the most economical choice in most of those situations.

I think it depends on just how big the mansion is.

But no, no normal single family house is likely going to exceed 60-80kbtu.

Jamie Hall

All quite true, and fair enough, folks. The trick is going to be to see if the regulatory and legislative actions match common sense... although the cost and disruption in historic structures is going to be a real problem (I can buy and install several new boilers, and a lot of fuel, for what installing any form of heat pump would cost).

I will say, though, that for a new build for a residence, direct passive solar heat with very good insulation makes even more sense than a ground source heat pump... in my view, anyway. There's another thread around here somewhere where I talk about that.

JakeCK

Some thoughts from a novice: 

Most middle class families purchase a new vehicle every couple of years. Mainly because they want something new and shiney. Not because their current vehicle's wheels are falling off. And many, if not most of these families like large trucks and suv's for grocery getters. They ain't cheap. They also like to spend thousands a year on new toys like smart phones, tablets and the service to enable them. Of course none of this applies to low income families. I feel their pain. 

I could do a deep energy retofit for the price of a well equiped SUV. 

There is a lot of opportunity for envelope upgrades on our typical mid century suburban homes.

The less fossil fuels those who can move away from them use the more there is for those who can't yet.

Electricity is fungible. Fuel is not.

The vast majority of heating systems in this country need electricity just as much as fuel to run. Yes the electricity fails often compared to NG. But NG fails too. About 6 years ago there was a multiday outage out by my mother, it also affected some of my coworkers. Luckily it wasn't that cold. In a truly shtf situation both NG and electric will fail quickly. How long was the gas service turned off after the Merrimack Valley gas explosions? How many houses burnt down or exploded because someone royally f*ed up? 

Don't design a system around the outliers. Just like you don't design a heating system to heat a house when it's 30 below design you don't design our infrastructure around 1 percent of the population. Yes an 80 year old boiler can run on a car battery. That is not typical for today. 

There is a lot of overhead in maintaining two types of infrastructure to enable the delivery of both NG and electric service. And we all pay for that additional overhead. The grid could be much more resilient and redundant if the investment was there instead of pipe lines. 

Modern NG furnaces/boilers are anywhere from 80-95% efficient in best case scenario, and are often way oversized. Resistance electric is 100%, and heat pumps can easily be 300% most of the time, admittedly not all of the time. But that's ok. Again you don't design for the 1%. 

Fuel burning appliances harm/kill more people via co poisoning than in electrical fires. A quick Google search shows about 400 electrocutions, and 4000 non fatal injuries a year, 500 electrical fire deaths and 1400 electrical fire injuries a year vs 430 CO deaths and 50000 ER visits a year in the US. Does this sound correct? How many of those injuries are related to heating equipment? 

The CO2 that we have put into the atmosphere to get it to an excess of 400ppm was carbon that has been in the ground for 50-60 million years. The carbon that was in the atmosphere the last time it was at 400ppm tens of thousands of years ago is in the trees that we are also cutting down and the permafrost we are melting. That is now starting to be released. This is going to get interesting. 

Fossil fuels will run out at some point if we keep using them. They are a finite resource. The fuel we're pulling out of the ground formed over millions of years. We've used most of the easily accessible oil/gas in a couple centuries. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to ignore this.

Nuclear fission is viable using modern designs. 

Nuclear fusion might be viable. Strides have been made in
Recent years. But I wouldn't place my bets on it. 

Carbon capture is extremely energy intensive. Hail Mary Pass?

The oil companies used the same tactics as big tabacco to obfuscate the facts. But Big tabacco couldn't obfuscate the consequences of smoking being obvious with in a life time. Big Oil had the benefit that the consequences of burning fuel takes generations to become obvious. Like boiling a frog.

Misinformation is rampent.

Cognitive Dissonance is a real thing. We all suffer from it to varying degrees. Regardless of education, experience, or intelligence.

JakeCK

Oh and lastly:
Change is inevitable, learn to adapt.

Jamie Hall

I would have to -- somewhat reluctantly -- agree with most of what @JakeCK says just above here. Indeed, some of it I might say a good deal more forcefully (seeing someone in office clothes picking up a bag of groceries at Whole Foods in... a shiny new Chevy K2500 Silverado with all the trimmings, to drive to their home in a suburban street causes me to mumble...).

My only -- and I'm sorry if it is beginning to sound repetitive -- plea is that the policy makers actually take into account the lower income people (around here, anyone making less than six figures) and those with "heritage" properties or living in rural areas. They are indeed a small fraction of the population, especially the latter two groups (the folks I know around here, including me, are members of all three of those groups), but some flexibility and consideration would be appreciated. And throwing subsidies at the problem, or being told to learn to adapt isn't going to help.

ethicalpaul

What I see unfolding over decades is the following: More mandates against gas and oil for new construction in areas with alternatives.

This has a multi-pronged affect: it will spur more advances in the alternatives, and it will act to lower or at least moderate the cost of gas and oil which will allow those in areas where alternatives are not affordable or possible to continue using traditional fuels. No one in the next 50-100 years is going to try to take away oil heating from a place like Jamie's.

Over decades, not years, what will happen is the alternatives will become better and affordable, and as that occurs, people will choose to use them because they are just better (I mean, I choose them today, but I like to spend money in interesting ways). Then gas and oil become "legacy", much like coal is becoming today (and no longer by legislation, but by choice--even though coal does continue to be used today and yes even in future years).

As mentioned above, choices in building methods and materials will be made in the planning stages with alternative heating in mind (heat pumps, either air or water), and that match will be better than it could ever be for a retrofit situation of a home built in the 1800-1900s.

Surely all these same arguments occurred as NG overtook oil in areas where NG could economically be served, right? Heck, even TODAY we are still arguing about if NG is better than oil, with people scare-mongering over the explosions, and promoting oil as having "more energy per whatever". While at the same time in my mind, there is no contest--NG is far far superior for many reasons. We've been here time and time again--old verses new.

Jamie Hall

I do hope you're right, @ethicalpaul ! But I'd better get out and do some maintenance on my number one truck, so I can keep it running when the only other thing I can buy is all electric singing and dancing... which won't do the job needed! More paradoxically, folks like me are, as a general rule, very much in favour of innovation, and if something new can do the job needed better we're all for it. Just one example -- if I were to build a house for my ex, which I'm very much thinking of doing, it would be a near zero net energy semi-passive solar affair (for running, and still one unsolved problem there -- she wouldn't care to cook on a woodstove, and refrigerators take a surprising amount of solar panel power and batteries! Construction is another matter, and pretty energy intensive). We are not opposed to change, or the new -- assuming it works and does the job -- indeed we are often "early adopters" (self-driving cars? We've had self-driving tractors for better than a decade in some areas! And we have wi-fi coverage in all the barns and outbuildings, as well as the house). But I guess we're a little like most of the livestock we care for: the harder you try to force them, the more they resist (every try working with a mule?). And we are heartily tired of suburban and urban types telling us what to do and how to do it.

Walk a mile in our shoes...

ethicalpaul

I grew up on a farm

Edit: also, refrigerators don't really use that much energy...they are just heat pumps after all and we know how well those do their job with minimal electricity.

The thing that takes all the energy in a refrigerator is the defroster circuit!!

ChrisJ

Jamie Hall said:

I do hope you're right, @ethicalpaul ! But I'd better get out and do some maintenance on my number one truck, so I can keep it running when the only other thing I can buy is all electric singing and dancing... which won't do the job needed! More paradoxically, folks like me are, as a general rule, very much in favour of innovation, and if something new can do the job needed better we're all for it. Just one example -- if I were to build a house for my ex, which I'm very much thinking of doing, it would be a near zero net energy semi-passive solar affair (for running, and still one unsolved problem there -- she wouldn't care to cook on a woodstove, and refrigerators take a surprising amount of solar panel power and batteries! Construction is another matter, and pretty energy intensive). We are not opposed to change, or the new -- assuming it works and does the job -- indeed we are often "early adopters" (self-driving cars? We've had self-driving tractors for better than a decade in some areas! And we have wi-fi coverage in all the barns and outbuildings, as well as the house). But I guess we're a little like most of the livestock we care for: the harder you try to force them, the more they resist (every try working with a mule?). And we are heartily tired of suburban and urban types telling us what to do and how to do it.

Walk a mile in our shoes...

Well.

Where is most farm equipment engineered and manufactured?
Where was your truck engineered and manufactured?

Jamie Hall

Eh? Most of the farm equipment either in the US or Canada (Ferguson, Massey-Ferguson, International, Agco Allis) and the trucks -- all three -- US and Canada (Chevrolets). Ex's car various (also Chevy, diesel). Son-in-law's logging equipment, some US (Caterpillar) and some Sweden (Volvo). We can't afford equipment which we either can't service ourselves (e.g. John Deere) unless the service is incredibly good (e.g. Volvo(Volvo's service is incredibly good -- not that they need much -- but the other day a critical computer failed. Volvo had a man on site -- a mile into the woods -- in less than 24 hours, with the parts and tools needed)), but it has to work -- and has to keep working.

JakeCK

An electric truck might not be able to do the job of a ICE truck today. But as Ethicalpaul said, the technology will get better. I bet someone said the same thing about new fangled auto mobiles a 100 years ago while they were plowing with a horse.

Also the comment about adapting isn't really a choice. And it isn't really imposed by others. It is imposed by nature at the end of the day. When the oil runs out or gets so hard to extract that it becomes prohibitively expensive one will have to adapt. There will be no other choice. And I wasn't trying to be mean. I was just stating truths as I see them.


"Truth is like the sun. It casts light on everything but does not let itself stared at."

Jamie Hall

I have no problem with a choice imposed by nature. I work with them every single day, and I adapt to them as needed.

When someone comes to me and tells me I am not permitted, by law, to purchase a light to medium internal combustion engine vehicle after 2030 or so, that is not a natural choice. That is a man-made fiat. You will tell me, I'm sure, that in 8 years someone will have made a 4 wheel drive truck powered by a battery with a 700 mile range safely towing a 25,000 pound trailer at reasonable highway speeds in hilly to mountainous terrain, never mind the Peterbilt with the 80,000 mgw gooseneck (we share that one with three other people). We can't feed you and your suburban friends with wishes and dreams. We can't build your roads and your houses with hopes and promises. At the risk of really annoying people -- maybe when we see folks walking the walk we'll begin to be less contrary minded.

ethicalpaul

No one is going to pass a mandate that will prevent food from being grown, harvested, and shipped across the country and world.

rsilvers

MA stopped giving rebates for oil burners. Now they have up to $10,000 for heat pump. It was more interesting when the electric was 0.22 and only double the national average. Now it's 0.29 and triple a good price. Heat Pump in MA only saves money when oil is over $4 gallon, which it wasn't until recently.

ethicalpaul

OK so I'll put you down for agreeing that heat pumps are saving money vs oil. Excellent.

JakeCK

Oh I get it about trucks and towing. I was really hoping the new F150 Lightening would be something I could get excited about. It was not. The range and towing capacity is not there yet. But it is really a limit of the battery, not the rest of the truck. And there are possibilities with EV trucks that you could never get with an ICE. You mentioned mountainous terrain. The instant torque at any RPM is one hellvua advantage. You also have regenerative braking. It takes a lot of pedal to get a trailer up a mountain. With a diesel or gasser that energy is gone once you get to the top. With regenerative braking you can recoup a lot of that on the way down. And save your brakes in the process. How often do you hear about a truck ending up on one of those runaway ramps because they cooked their brakes?

ChrisJ

Jamie Hall said:

Eh? Most of the farm equipment either in the US or Canada (Ferguson, Massey-Ferguson, International, Agco Allis) and the trucks -- all three -- US and Canada (Chevrolets). Ex's car various (also Chevy, diesel). Son-in-law's logging equipment, some US (Caterpillar) and some Sweden (Volvo). We can't afford equipment which we either can't service ourselves (e.g. John Deere) unless the service is incredibly good (e.g. Volvo(Volvo's service is incredibly good -- not that they need much -- but the other day a critical computer failed. Volvo had a man on site -- a mile into the woods -- in less than 24 hours, with the parts and tools needed)), but it has to work -- and has to keep working.

No no,

I mean rural vs suburban vs urban.

Jamie Hall

Ah. Mostly urban, though not in big cities in general any more. The concentration of people and facilities in urban manufacturing centres is every bit as needed as the folks in rural areas, but the actual needs of the areas -- and the people in them -- are very different.

BobC

I used to go out to Oklahoma for training on the equipment we had to maintain a couple of times a year. A large hotel was at the training facility and it was some distance from almost anything else. If you didn't drive down to the school you could get a lift to the mall from one of the drivers who shuttled people back and forth to the airport so you got to know the drivers after a while.

It surprised me that some of these drivers were very interested in buying a Prius (about the only electric car at that time) considering how rural that part of Oklahoma was but these folks were chomping at the bit to get one. I always thought electric cars made sense for urban areas where trips were short but not so much for wide open spaces.

i understand the problem caused by burning fossil fuels but I also understand it takes time to upgrade infrastructure so you can switch horses. It's best to to make the new fangled method attractive enough so popular demand will make it a worthwhile to build new infrastructure. Doing it by fiat almost never works the way it was intended to.

bucksnort

For a good preview of what it'll look like without NG, just look at what will happen to Europe when the Ruskies turn off the NG spigot to them. I hope those old windmills in Holland will be able to keep up. Just eat more lentils and bugs and be happy.

fentonc

Suddenly shutting off the gas supply isn't really the same thing as spending a decade or two transitioning away from using it - this is what it looks like to be *dependent* on natural gas when your neighbor is Russia: You're one international incident away from having the pipelines shut off and ensuing disaster. If their NG demand were much lower, they could cover it with LNG shipments from a bunch of different potential sources, and they could have a larger buffer in terms of storage. With offshore wind turbines approaching a ~50% capacity factor, and utility-scale solar way under $1/watt, it's hard to imagine Europe somehow being worse off than they are now with more renewable energy investment.

Jamie Hall

What kind of got folks attention -- at least where some of my relatives still are in Scotland -- was a string of cold, cloudy, near windless days. And... the power failed. No wind power, no solar power, not enough NG. And you freeze in the dark. Oh yes -- and to "encourage" people to switch, using your fireplace or any other solid fuel heater is illegal. Some older folks died. Brave new world.

fentonc

When did that happen? I have family over there as well, and haven't heard of any actual power outages from lack of generation capacity (as opposed to storm damage or something), although prices have certainly gone way up recently. I think Texas (where I also have family) showed us even NG infrastructure isn't immune to systemic outages from weather.

Jamie Hall

It was on Orkney, in February -- I forget the exact date.