Massachusetts wants to take my boiler away!

JakeCK

According to this it is just a ban on coal and fuel like wet wood. Something anyone who has actual experience with fire, such as when camping should know not to use.

https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/2677728/wood-burning-stove-ban-do-they-cause-pollution-and-what-do-i-do-if-i-have-one-already/

BobC

Improperly installed gas infrastructure is very much subject to problems caused by weather extremes. We sometimes see temps down to -10F here (even lower away from the coast) and the gas just keeps on flowing. Texas is what happens when companies get a bit to greedy and start skimping on the infrastructure installation.

Bob

ChrisJ

BobC said:

Improperly installed gas infrastructure is very much subject to problems caused by weather extremes. We sometimes see temps down to -10F here (even lower away from the coast) and the gas just keeps on flowing. Texas is what happens when companies get a bit to greedy and start skimping on the infrastructure installation. Bob

In the 41 years I've been alive I've never lost natural gas or heard of anyone losing it in NJ except those near the shore during Sandy.  But even then I didn't lose it.   And after Sandy while I still had natural gas many areas did not have electric for 2+ weeks which meant no gasoline or diesel either.  Lineups at the stations that could run were crazy.




But I lose electric several times a year in general without a bad hurricane.  And this is why I built my natural gas generator.

Im sure results are different in different areas but this is my experience.

PMJ

ChrisJ said:

BobC said:

Improperly installed gas infrastructure is very much subject to problems caused by weather extremes. We sometimes see temps down to -10F here (even lower away from the coast) and the gas just keeps on flowing. Texas is what happens when companies get a bit to greedy and start skimping on the infrastructure installation. Bob

In the 41 years I've been alive I've never lost natural gas or heard of anyone losing it in NJ except those near the shore during Sandy.  But even then I didn't lose it.   And after Sandy while I still had natural gas many areas did not have electric for 2+ weeks which meant no gasoline or diesel either.  Lineups at the stations that could run were crazy.




But I lose electric several times a year in general without a bad hurricane.  And this is why I built my natural gas generator.

Im sure results are different in different areas but this is my experience.

Ditto for me except not one gas outage in 65 years, at least that I know about.

2 per year anyway on electric and increasing. Last event in July 2021 was 3 days. The backup in all those events, um, fossil fuel.

JakeCK

A quick search for gas outages will find that they are in fact common. 

Power outages are more common today. Growing up I remember having one or two power outages total through my entire youth. Starting around 2005-2010 time frame they seem to have started to become much more common. I'd bet deregulation has something to do with that. In addition to more extreme weather events. Wires hanging from a pole are more vulnerable than pipes buried in the ground. 

There is also the lack of or under investment for the past oh what, 50 years? NG I also suspect has much more stringent safety regulations then electric. 

PMJ

JakeCK said:

A quick search for gas outages will find that they are in fact common. 

Power outages are more common today. Growing up I remember having one or two power outages total through my entire youth. Starting around 2005-2010 time frame they seem to have started to become much more common. I'd bet deregulation has something to do with that. In addition to more extreme weather events. Wires hanging from a pole are more vulnerable than pipes buried in the ground. 

There is also the lack of or under investment for the past oh what, 50 years? NG I also suspect has much more stringent safety regulations then electric. 

I guess a definition of common is needed.

Yes, we agree electric outages are more common - much more. There is a rush to blame worse storms for this, lots of debate there about what the data actually shows. Just using common sense causes one to realize that the suburbs were cleared farm land not all that long ago. 100 years grows a lot of tree. I've been in the same place for 60 years and what do you know...the trees I looked at as a kid are a lot taller now and have lots of limbs lots higher than the wires. Lots more limbs above the wires means lots more falling limbs taking out wires even with fewer milder storms. Hmmm.

You never know but I'm not expecting to hear about wholesale tree removal to get the grid reliability to approach that of the gas reliability within a decimal point. I am seeing new plastic gas lines going in all over. They've actually gotten really good at it with minimal disruption. Did my street last year.

Revenue to maintain the electrical grid seems to be getting harder to come by while obviously the need is increasing and also just as I'm hearing it will need to become the only game in town. I object to letting solar and wind generators reduce what they pay to support that grid when they fully expect that grid to provide them full power when there is no sun or wind for a good stretch. The truth is that the full grid we have now is still needed for those events plus it will need to have a large capacity expansion if we are going to load everyone's heat and car charger on it. Yet we are knowingly subsidizing reduced funds for even its current maintenance. Seems there is a disconnect here.

ratio

One detail about electrification & the grid that doesn't seem to come up very often is that as a general rule electric heat is either on or off (although the newer mini splits truly modulate). If you have say 10 kW of resistance heat and your actual heat requirement is 5 kWh, you don't use a steady 5 kW for that whole hour, you use 10 kW for a total of half an hour. Even the so-called modulating electric heat is only cycling on a much shorter time frame (seconds vs minutes, generally). COP aside, standard heat pumps aren't much better about consumption—they're either on or off (or, occasionally, low stage, c. 60%).

It sure seems to me that we're going to get bit on the rear by this, sooner or later. Even of the grid can easily handle the average load, it'll still need to handle the full load some of the time. Of course, that'll probably only happen on the coldest days of the year.

PMJ

ratio said:

One detail about electrification & the grid that doesn't seem to come up very often is that as a general rule electric heat is either on or off (although the newer mini splits truly modulate). If you have say 10 kW of resistance heat and your actual heat requirement is 5 kWh, you don't use a steady 5 kW for that whole hour, you use 10 kW for a total of half an hour. Even the so-called modulating electric heat is only cycling on a much shorter time frame (seconds vs minutes, generally). COP aside, standard heat pumps aren't much better about consumption—they're either on or off (or, occasionally, low stage, c. 60%).

It sure seems to me that we're going to get bit on the rear by this, sooner or later. Even of the grid can easily handle the average load, it'll still need to handle the full load some of the time. Of course, that'll probably only happen on the coldest days of the year.

Local distribution has to be installed for worst case load plus a safety factor. Average load doesn't mean anything at the substation. The breakers at the substation are set to limit the downstream circuits to the maximum they can safely provide. That has to be at the maximum ever expected because past that demand means nobody gets any. This isn't rocket science. I'm hearing the excuses already(not from you) why all they are planning really doesn't have to be provided for.

JakeCK

Why would revenue get harder to come by if everyone switched to electric vehicles and electric heat? Sounds like that is a source of new revenue there. Unless the economic rules of supply and demand are wrong? 

Now what about solar being subsidized by everyone else? I have solar that covers about 100% of my usage over the course of the year as my house is right now.. But that is with a gas boiler, dryer, and until recently a gas water heater. My hpwh added about 100kwh a month to my overall usage. If I switched over to an electric boiler or air to water heat pump, a hp clothes dryer, and bought a Tesla I would meet only a fraction of my electric usage with my solar panels. And I have no usable roof left. And trying to charge just one EV with a 40amp charger would use about every last watt of power my panels could generate on the sunniest day at noon on the summer solstice. we can start talking about the subsidies oil and gas get? 

Here is first energy's 2021 fourth quarter earnings report.
tl;dr they had revenue of 11.1 billion and 1.3billion in earnings. 9% growth. I don't think they're having a problem.

https://www.firstenergycorp.com/newsroom/news_articles/firstenergy-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year--2021-financi.html#:~:text=AKRON, Ohio, Feb.,on revenue of $11.1 billion.

Also I did have a tree in my backyard once right on the rear property line that was growing up into the power lines. The puco did trim it back once. I ended up paying with my own cash to have it taken down and have the stump ground out just so it wouldn't cause a problem. No one asked, I just did it because it was going to be a growing problem. But hey that's just me, I like to tackle problems when they're still small and manageable. Kind of like the time I kept getting voltage drops and called it in, multiple times. First energy kept blaming it on a problem in my house... Until whatever was wrong finally failed entirely 6 months later and knocked out power to the whole neighborhood. 

Hot_water_fan

I object to letting solar and wind generators reduce what they pay to support that grid when they fully expect that grid to provide them full power when there is no sun or wind for a good stretch. The truth is that the full grid we have now is still needed for those events plus it will need to have a large capacity expansion if we are going to load everyone's heat and car charger on it. Yet we are knowingly subsidizing reduced funds for even its current maintenance. Seems there is a disconnect here.

Nearly all new wind and solar generation in the US (by GW) is utility scale, and therefore doesn’t impact distribution funding. 

PMJ

@JakeCK , I don't think the income statement of a public utility provides evidence of much of anything. Beyond being the only game in town, public utilities just get rate increases whenever they forecast coming up short. It takes a special set of skills to fail in that environment. First Energy manages to have the money for naming rights at Browns stadium and loges for their executives, but not the money to trim trees on their feed line in your back yard or mine. So while I do agree with you that their statements will be fine, we apparently won't agree on what that proves exactly.

The revenue I was referring to was simply what is lost when ratepayer funds are used to buy personal generating equipment which then reduces the contribution of some ratepayers. That remains the case whether total use goes up or not. This practice shifts the maintenance burden more heavily on the less well to do ratepayers. The issue is more about fairness of who is supporting what than any financial threat to the utility itself.  I support any ratepayer's right to buy whatever equipment he believes will reduce his energy bill. I do not support giving him funds from the public till to do it. 

The original concept was that government was to be small and to serve as basically the referee on the field. It has become something well beyond that and government folks are now picking the winners and losers in the game with subsidies, while masquerading as the technical experts in all things. The winners in that environment are called insiders, and the games fixed. Since little of what they are currently promoting would come to pass through the usual process with all the normal checks and balances, more and more things are just being classified as "emergencies" in order to bypass the open debate process. To any honest observer the government's record managing money is pathetic. I think it a legitimate question why we are letting the government tell us what an acceptable heating system is or for that matter about anything else.

Jamie Hall

Totally with you, @PMJ . Totally. And did you happen to see that there will be no new fossil fuel heating equipment permitted anywhere in New York STATE in new construction after 2030 if the governor's budget passes? Gets mighty chilly up there along the St. Laurence... or even anywhere north of the Harlem River.

JakeCK

Well if we want to level the playing field and keep the government from picking winners and losers. Let's scrap ALL the subsidies various sectors get. Including the $158billion in subsidies that solar get, and the $5.9Trillion that coal, oil, and gas gets. Then we can see which forms of energy are the most affordable/economically viable. 

Yea, I'm all for that. Let's do that.

Seriously.

ChrisJ

JakeCK said:

Well if we want to level the playing field and keep the government from picking winners and losers. Let's scrap ALL the subsidies various sectors get. Including the $158billion in subsidies that solar get, and the $5.9Trillion that coal, oil, and gas gets. Then we can see which forms of energy are the most affordable/economically viable. 

Yea, I'm all for that. Let's do that.

Seriously.

That's not how it works.

Jamie Hall

Step 1. Define "subsidy". Does it mean direct payment? Does it mean a tax reduction? The term gets thrown around rather loosely, and whether a given program is a subsidy or not, and whether it is good or bad, is an entirely political statement (such as the one @JakeCK made). I have -- as you would imagine by now -- my own ideas on the topic -- and taxes and government handouts in general -- but they are political, and are not fit for debate on the Wall.

Erin Holohan Haskell

This discussion is veering into politics, so I'm going to wrap it up. Thanks.