Are we in the beginnings of a infrastructure change?

Intplm.

Many, as I have, expressed concern about the "electrification" that is asked for in the U.S..

Is it happening now? I have seen many projects firsthand taking place in my neck of the woods that show that it is happening now. Is this how the electricity will be supplied in the coming decades?

pecmsg

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/197365/are-we-in-the-beginnings-of-a-infrastructure-change

In the near future is wont be available! One good winter storm is all thats needed to wake up the blind!

Jamie Hall

Probably. Eventually. The problem is really pretty simple, though. The end change is being forced on the country — electric this, electric that, whatever — whether it is wanted or even feasible at the present time with the present technology, which is isn't. The result will be several decades, if not longer, of uncertain electrical supplies and, eventually, much higher prices for power to offset the costs involved.

The average consumer does not see nor, I fear, clearly understand the problems involved.

Larry Weingarten

Hi, I'm probably myopic in this, but it seems that we have barely scratched the surface of how far efficiency can take us. My house uses 1/10th the energy per square foot of living space of the typical American home, and I've measured outside temps from 18F to 109F. This efficiency allowed me to build off-grid, so the grid and it's problems don't affect me much. Streamlining vehicles has been demonstrated to double or triple their mileage. I know that there are places where efficiency cannot have a big effect, but used appropriately, it would do a LOT to help us clean up our act and greatly reduce the strain on the grid. Guess this makes me myopically optimistic 🤪

Yours, Larry

delcrossv

It's pretty much an exercise in futility unless we commit to nuclear for baseload power.

DanHolohan

None of us can stop it. Some will find great opportunity with it. It has always been that way.

jumper

Tight windows & doors can reduce heating necessary. Also sweaters & indoor hats can help.

Reducing cooling seems to be more difficult. Geothermal? I heard that there's an underground town in Australian desert.

Electricity is more complex than North American consumer perceives. Some places have different receptacles for different appliances like we do for dryer & stove.

I think that the rush to eliminate domestic NG is dumb. First replace NG fired utility electricity. Bring back PURPA. An engine powered A/C with co-generation can be more economic than distributing electricity.

hot_rod

we have a glut of NG in the country to the point of being a large exporter. These peaking plants go up much quicker than nuclear power plants. So generation can come online quickly.

The distribution grid may be the weaker link. That’s where the smart grid has a place. But they can brown or black out your loads nowadays when adequate power is not available.

A lot of power Hungary server farms going up across the US, somehow they find a reliable source of clean power, even when homeowners cannot.

The saying out west here is water flows towards money, I suspect the same goes for electricity😏

Golf courses are getting plenty watered and some have radiant cooling that needs to be powered.

jumper

In early days assumption was that wires & transformers last indefinitely. Now replacing, let alone upsizing, distribution seems shockingly expensive. Distributing NG and letting each building or neighborhood to roll its own may be more affordable. I think there was a company called Tekogen that rented generators to places too far from electric grid.

hot_rod

Several hundred rural communities in Alaska depend on diesel generators for power, I’ve read $.50- 1.00 per kWh

Jamie Hall

Keep in mind that some states and countries are mandating "net-zero" which is usually interpreted to mean no fossil fuel usem on very short time frames. Admirable, perhaps — but the problem is, of course, that for grid connected use it means really huge battery banks, and for transportation use not only huge battery banks (particularly for rail freight — about 23 to 40 megawatt hours per engine) but reasonably fast recharging. Neither of which are yet available, even in prototype form, and won't be for some time after the mandates kick in. Going to be interesting…

delcrossv

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1805122#Comment_1805122

And therein lies the problem. Historically, new technologies supplanted old ones organically; they were "better, faster,cheaper" so the public adopted them as a matter of course. This isn't that. This is worse, slower and more expensive to a great extent, but it's being rammed down the throats of the public by government edict. Hot rod's mention of NG plants being a case in point. Tons of cheap NG, but we can't use it. Gotta go with windmills. Just nuts.

Hot_water_fan

Seems like a lost opportunity to burn NG in our homes when we can use it to power heat pumps more efficiently most of the time and export the surplus. What backwards business sees growth as a problem?

Steamhead

@Hot_water_fan , if you're talking about burning NG in a boiler to make steam to run a turbine that powers a generator to make electricity, then transmitting that power over long distances to customers, I've read that over-all process is something like 30-35% efficient. So it would take a lot more gas to do it that way.

Hot_water_fan

@Steamhead you were right once, but no more. Combined cycles are much more efficient now and coal (less efficient) is losing market share. Paired with a heat pump, average gas usage will decrease, leaving more for export and lower costs for us.

Jamie Hall

You are assuming, I think, that the powers that be will let anyone burn gas at all…

In some areas of the country (like the northeast) the primary use of natural gas these days is peaking plants — which usually are gas turbines and can respond astonishingly rapidly. They are neither the steam boiler/steam turbine type, nor the combined cycle (although there are a few installations where the heat from the turbine exhaust is used somewhat productively).

Unfortunately, they aren't all that efficient. Equally unfortunately, they — or some other rapid response equipment (like nuclear (boo hiss)) or batteries (unobtanium) or pumped storage (rare, but handy) are required to maintain grid stability in the absence of large rotating machinery steam power plants (regardless of fuel for them) or large scale hydro (also rotating machinery)(which has often overlooked, but significant environmental problems)..

Steamhead

@Hot_water_fan , that makes no sense. With all the losses involved in producing electricity that way, there's no way even the best heat pump could overbalance them. And the further north you go, the less efficient heat pumps become, to the point where they need some sort of backup. If the backup is electric resistance, the customer will hear banjos when the utility bill comes in. Not everyone lives in the Deep South.

The one thing that will change this is adding more wind, solar and battery storage. These can be more locally placed to sidestep the heavy transmission losses from large, centrally-located plants, and they don't have the generating losses either.

Hot_water_fan

@Steamhead are you going to do the math yourself ? It’s not that hard, these figures can be found with a google search :)

Jamie Hall

A minor correction to my immediately above comment — some, but by no means all, of the old coal fired steam plants in the northeast have been converted to natural gas, and are operated as base load plants. The limitation is gas supply, which is quite constrained (the gas supply in the US is ample — the pipelines are not).

With regard to heat pumps. I am not opposed — to the extent that Cedric's home has one, and is likely to get another, as supplements to Cedric (they cost about the same to run down to about freezing). However. Even though there are very good cold temperature heat pumps available, they simply have not gotten to the point where they are a total replacement for fuel fired heating in colder climates. You either have to go with resistance backup (and at current electric rates, that's not cheap) or put up with being cold.

It would be most helpful to regard the experience of other regions than the mid-Atlantic US or California in this regard. In the UK, for example, despite generous subsidy for both the manufacture and installation of heat pumps, the experience overall has been less than satisfactory (to put it politely), and despite what one says about the climate, it's actually not too different from southern New England, never mind further north.

When and if heat pumps become a satisfactory equivalent in purchase and running cost, I'm quite sure people will accept them. Otherwise, forcing them on people has been found to not turn out so well…

ChrisJ

Imo a fission plant driving heat pumps is impossible to beat.

HomerJSmith

@Chrisj , Imo a fusion plant, use only once technology.

ChrisJ

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1805167#Comment_1805167

If they can get them to work absolutely.

delcrossv

The saying is fusion is 20 years away- and always will be.

Zman

This is an "if we build it, they will come" moment. It doesn't make much sense now, but it could in the future.

The book was an eye-opener for me and what it would take behind the scenes for all of this to work. https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Fraying-Between-Americans-Energy-ebook/dp/B01DM9Q6CQ

Teemok

Fusion hopes and fission necessities. We can build our way out of this! Do the math, It's clear: We can never build our way out of this. But if we could build our way out of this ………we might. We can never build our way out of this. Why wouldn't we try? It's likely gonna be less comfortable and more expensive than the previous generation either way. Awe shucks change sucks but it's coming like it or not. Hanging on our irrational comfort levels and the privileges of the past at the expense of the unborn is so very peak oil human. Yup, I'm guilty too.

Intplm.

I started this post because I am seeing more happening than ever before in my lifetime. Back in the 1980's solar tried and failed. Now it is moving. Rooftops and fields with solar panels.

I was driving north on Rt.95 in Connecticut and saw wind turbines being assembled on the newly expanded New London pier.

As for fossil fuels, recently in my area, many new natural gas lines have been installed underground in both cities and rural areas. (What ever happened to hydrogen?)

[Some] of the arguments I have heard remind me of some history books I have read in the past with people complaining about these new-fangled motor cars that are replacing the horse and buggy. The new ugly phone lines installed on these telephone polls that are being installed in all of the neighborhoods. And no more running in the cold and dark to the out-house at two in the morning. (No complaints there.)

These are my thoughts as to why, I think, we are in an infrastructure change.

Side note… my mother-in-law had a party line phone line until the mid-1970s. One ringy-dingy Lilly Tomlin-type character. How about that?

ratio

It's not that things are changing (they are, and must), but the changes are being forced with an ideological drive that gives no room for dissent, no matter how well reasoned. Now, I'm sure that some are wealthy enough to weather the changes unscathed, but how many won't?

Intplm.

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1805192#Comment_1805192

I'm not so sure about this. It begs the question. How long is too long? How short is too short? I'm wondering if it is too fast or too slow. Will it all balance out over time?

Jamie Hall

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1805194#Comment_1805194

Some changes, if they are truly beneficial to people, can and do happen very fast indeed. Tractors on farms — automobiles — and airplanes — and computers might be examples. Some do not. However, if the changes are forced based on an ideology or political bent, they may not be truly beneficial to people — try the urban renewal policies of the Fifties and Sixties, for some truly ghastly examples.

People, taken as a whole, are not stupid. If something works and is an improvement it will be adopted.

Unhappily, some people — and forms of government — have the notion that they, and they alone, are endowed with the knowledge of what's right for everyone else, and that they must force the masses to conform. If they do have enough power — usually ultimately, physical — they succeed, for a time at least (try Soviet Russia).

How fast is too fast? At the moment, we have a sort of popular feeling that the world is going to end if we don't get to net-zero by some very close date (next few decades). True, things may be very different in a century or so. People may have to learn to do things differently. They may even find their favourite beach or city under water, for instance.

From the standpoint of a geologist or even an historian, the notion that the world is going to end as a result of our current situation and actions or inactions, or that we can somehow prevent change by hysterical action, is alternatively very funny — or very tragic.

Take a longer view. Use all the technology and ability we have been granted. Stop sounding and acting like a five year old in a toy store who can't have the latest craze.

If you are among the elite endowed with superior knowledge, lead. But don't push. Don't force. That will not end well — for you, for the people, or for the planet.

And go read Psalm 90. Wisdom from 2,500 plus years ago.

delcrossv

Excellent post! ^^^

Teemok

Hard to have the fully developed prefrontal cortex's figure anything out with the rapture and short term profits being so exalted by so many. Things are very different now than they have ever been before. We had never seen the light from stars at the edge of the universe. We have only just figured out the universe is expanding. Galileo's life is not that far back. The planet has never been this small. We have always had somewhere new to exploit and the life support systems of this space ship have always had the capacity to handle our crap. We've never before seen the scarcities or limits we are approaching. We are just starting to imagine how the space ships systems will adapt. You can poo hoo the risks and predictions but if wrong, it very well could be disastrous. We tend to forget that all this was not, and is not, and likely will never be, a well thought out plan. I know it would be horrifying to many but we really could just be not much more than slightly clever yeast in a bucket with some sugar and water. We will consume till we make it uninhabitable. The limits have always been there and real and not negotiable and maybe hard and terminal. Change slow or change fast. The thing I don't see changing is the idea that we can build our way out of our short sighted problems. The building is the root of the problem. Smelting aluminum for the next global set of panels is just slowly rolling coal if it's void of many other necessary actions. I remember the day I sat at my middle school desk and learned that the basis of our economy is infinite growth in a finite space. The good Earth—we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Hot_water_fan

A lot of concern around "forced" transitions. To the extent that's happening, it pales in comparison to the market driven transition. Makes more sense to focus on what the market, ie the customers, want and worry less about what may or may not be policy driven which is subject to change.

Teemok

The hand of the market tends to fulfill the comforts, pleasures and needs of spenders. Unfortunately the market will never restrain itself and it's interests are generally not long term or for the benefit of the commons. The market is responsive and does correct but it's often based on the logic of nothing more than profit. Some problems are not suited for market correction. They are single shot, get it right or go away. We often confuse the forces of policy and economics. In our system they are typically in lock step. (See the supreme court) When the true costs of new and old tech are not accounted for, the math is always wrong. While I agree the market is our current main pilot and that it may be turning a good way, the inertia of this massive ship is likely to need more than the market hand to avoid the tipping points. If we haven't already cross them. You see, we wouldn't know if we did. I had a professor tell me he thought that one of humanities greatest flaws is our inability to understand exponential growth. The moment we truly recognize there's a problem afoot, it's already too late. The classic city in a valley question to it's politicians: How much growth is good growth? 4%? 12%? What's the doubling rate of 4% vs 12%. In just a life time or two a city in a small valley finds itself restricted. Because you'll never be popular enough to get elected if you point out the obvious limits. We get leaders that go head long into crisis, telling the people the lies they want to believe.

HomerJSmith

@Teemok, the one thing in the Universe that I can predict with utmost certainty is that change occurs. Everything else is a mystery. You say, "Things are very different now than they have ever been before." The difference that I see is that people, today, especially those running everything, are incredibly self adsorbed, call it selfish, to the extent that there is a lack of cooperation and regard for the other person or even the effect that narcissistic philosophy has on the world. What people avoid at all costs is self reflection.

I feel, It's like the sinking of the Titanic. It's every man for himself and be dammed for anyone else. We can sense a bad wind a blow'in.

We are prisoners of forces beyond our comprehension and control.

Intplm.

From reading the comments, I am beginning to think that we are indeed in the midst of an infrastructure change.

If anyone has owned a goldfish and didn't change the water in the fishbowl, the fish dies. The fish bowl is fine.

If we don't stop making our mess and clean up what we have done, the planet will be fine. Us! Probably not. Are we on the right track? Time will tell. I hope so.

HomerJSmith

"Forced Change" If we follow the "Pareto Principle" 80% of humans are asleep and 20% are awake, (thinkers). People don't like change and resist it. It's always forced either by Nature or man. People create repetitive routines, behaviors, because it take less energy and is less stressful, therefore, more comforting. People are insouciant because they are asleep and think tomorrow is going to be like today. Because they are asleep they don't see the subtle changes that make yesterday different than today and today different than tomorrow. Some changes are good and some changes are bad.

Proverb 14:12—There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Meaning—"Let the good times roll, we will worry about the consequences later." Choose wisely, especially those you wish to lead you.

You can't expect others to carry your "yoke" for you. It's called taking responsibility for your choices.

Teemok

Well now we have a king and a high court of robed politician experts to decide what's correct in all areas of concern. So….. our infrastructure future is looking very bright.

ChrisJ

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1805226#Comment_1805226

I expect toast to carry my yolk.

Erin Holohan Haskell

https://forum.heatinghelp.com/discussion/comment/1805234#Comment_1805234

No politics allowed. Thank you.