Berkeley, CA becoming first city in U.S. to ban natural gas in new buildings

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San Jose voted to impose the ban - see San Jose Mercury News:
San Jose moves to boost electric use in homes, mayor touts electric cars as PG&E power shutdown continues
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/10...or-testifies-to-congress-about-car-emissions/


OTOH, via GCC:
What is the cost of usable energy for driving and heating our homes?
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/10/20191031-sivak.html


. . . The main findings are as follows:

We purchase substantially more usable energy when we buy natural gas for our furnaces than gasoline or electricity for our vehicles. This is the case even after taking into account the cost of the electricity to power air handlers for natural-gas furnaces and the heat losses through ductwork. In average scenarios, one dollar of natural gas buys about six times the amount of usable energy than does one dollar of gasoline and about three times than does one dollar of electricity.

In average vehicle scenarios, one dollar of electricity buys about two times the amount of usable energy than does one dollar of gasoline.
 
It doesn't help any one when they mandate electric vehicles be sold and ban natural gas "to male the air cleaner" then turn off the power.
Or refuse to build power plants then over build a crazy power transmission infrastructure that they can't maintain and causes wild fires.
The road to hell really is paved with good intentions.
 
With bad intentions at least you always knew where you would be going and that it wouldn't take long to get there.

Would they be worse off building their own power generation capacity, having thousands fewer miles of transmission lines, maintaining power line right of ways and practicing reaponsible forestry?
I think not.
 
Oilpan4 said:
With bad intentions at least you always knew where you would be going and that it wouldn't take long to get there.

Would they be worse off building their own power generation capacity, having thousands fewer miles of transmission lines, maintaining power line right of ways and practicing reaponsible forestry?
I think not.

You are getting way far afield here.
This is about the first (of many hopefully) city to ban natural gas.
I applaud them for this step.
Here in Minnesota, Natural Gas is almost a given at any house. We specifically built without it for a number of reasons, including energy efficiency, cost, and health.
 
Zythryn said:
This is about the first (of many hopefully) city to ban natural gas.
I applaud them for this step.
Here in Minnesota, Natural Gas is almost a given at any house. We specifically built without it for a number of reasons, including energy efficiency, cost, and health.

That only works if you have a reliable supply of non-fossil electricity. Otherwise, it is more efficient to burn natural gas where you need heat rather than in a powerplant with 60% efficiency at best.
 
Titanium48 said:
Zythryn said:
This is about the first (of many hopefully) city to ban natural gas.
I applaud them for this step.
Here in Minnesota, Natural Gas is almost a given at any house. We specifically built without it for a number of reasons, including energy efficiency, cost, and health.

That only works if you have a reliable supply of non-fossil electricity. Otherwise, it is more efficient to burn natural gas where you need heat rather than in a powerplant with 60% efficiency at best.
Ever heard of heat pumps ? One would only need a winter season COP of ~ 1.5 to match combusting NG, and that presumes that the heat pumps are used in the same lousy distribution system as the NG. In reality they are used as mini-splits and the 20-30% losses of distribution are avoided.
 
Banning natural gas just puts more load on the aging power grid.
Potentially this shifts peak load from hot summer days to cold winter nights.
An aging overloaded power grid is ripe for failure.
 
Oilpan4 said:
Banning natural gas just puts more load on the aging power grid.
Banning new natural gas hookups directs new investment into the power grid, rather than into the obsolete natural gas network.

Cheers, Wayne
 
SageBrush said:
Titanium48 said:
Zythryn said:
This is about the first (of many hopefully) city to ban natural gas.
I applaud them for this step.
Here in Minnesota, Natural Gas is almost a given at any house. We specifically built without it for a number of reasons, including energy efficiency, cost, and health.

That only works if you have a reliable supply of non-fossil electricity. Otherwise, it is more efficient to burn natural gas where you need heat rather than in a powerplant with 60% efficiency at best.
Ever heard of heat pumps ? One would only need a winter season COP of ~ 1.5 to match combusting NG, and that presumes that the heat pumps are used in the same lousy distribution system as the NG. In reality they are used as mini-splits and the 20-30% losses of distribution are avoided.

I have always thought of heat pumps as behaving like the the Leaf's heating system - great when it is only cool, but much less effective when it is actually cold, with COP dropping to near 1 by -15°C. Then today I learn about systems using CO2 as a refrigerant that maintain a COP over 2 down to -30°C. That could actually work in places that get real winter. COP still depends on delta-T though, and the combination of falling COP and increasing heating demand leading to dramatic increases in power demand as temperatures drop might be difficult for electrical grids to accommodate.

That brings up the other option for more efficient use of natural gas - cogeneration. Instead of just burning gas to heat your house, use it to run a generator and heat your house with the waste heat. The two options could be complementary during the transition, with lower temperatures resulting in more power production from buildings with cogen units, while buildings with heat pumps increase their consumption. Cogeneration would also be complementary to solar PV, as heating demand is inversely correlated to solar PV production.
 
Titanium48 said:
I have always thought of heat pumps
...
The important number when discussing overall efficiency is SEER -- average COP. And if you want to improve it, you can by improving home insulation and envelope so that heating loads can be shifted to the warmer times of the day.

As for your other argument, if your local grid can handle AC on hot sweltering days, it can handle heat load in the winter.

I don't know if Zythryn lives in a Edmonton style winter but MN is pretty cold in the winter. You should read his blog.
 
It depends on the heat pump. If some one buys a simple fixed speed heat pump it's pretty much going to have to use backup resistance heating when it gets really cold.
The CoP goes in the craper when the resistance heat kicks on.

Coefficient of performance for my cheap inverter splits is 3.4 when heating.
The much bigger, heavier and nearly double the price premium efficiency energy star unit CoP is 4.2 when heating.
Both heat pumps are 9,000btu and made by the same manufacturer.

Comparing the cheap inverter to a cheap fixed speed the inverter is only about 20% more $.
There's no reason to buy a fixed speed unless you have an occasional use application.
 
Our HP is ground sourced. It's reservoir never gets below 53 degrees (F).
We do have a electric resistance coil for backup. Hasn't been needed yet and at this point we don't expect it ever will.
 
Titanium48 said:
<snip>

That brings up the other option for more efficient use of natural gas - cogeneration. Instead of just burning gas to heat your house, use it to run a generator and heat your house with the waste heat. The two options could be complementary during the transition, with lower temperatures resulting in more power production from buildings with cogen units, while buildings with heat pumps increase their consumption. Cogeneration would also be complementary to solar PV, as heating demand is inversely correlated to solar PV production.


Co-gen's an option, but from what I recall it's less efficient than keeping the two uses separate. Some general comments, albeit now a decade old so possibly overtaken by technical improvements re CHP versus heat pumps can be found here: https://www.withouthotair.com/c21/page_146.shtml

and read through to page 154. There's also the technical section on heating, page 289 et. seq: https://www.withouthotair.com/cE/page_289.shtml

Which also discusses the limitations of ground-source heat pumps in high-density neighborhoods ( which I'm guessing doesn't apply to Zythryn) in colder climates. For the Mediterranean climate in which most of California's population lives, air source heat pumps would seem to be the best answer.

Another option would be to replace NG pipes with H2 pipes, which would provide a similar dual-fuel capability to the electricity and natural gas model we have now and would also allow home fueling of FCEVs, while simultaneously allowing a nearly complete shift to variable renewables, as we'd use H2 for long-term storage of excess electricity. H2 piping is considerably more expensive than that needed for NG, although economies of scale would undoubtedly bring the cost down. Which of the two approaches is most cost-effective or more practical in the short or long-term I couldn't say.
 
SageBrush said:
Titanium48 said:
I have always thought of heat pumps
...
The important number when discussing overall efficiency is SEER -- average COP. And if you want to improve it, you can by improving home insulation and envelope so that heating loads can be shifted to the warmer times of the day.

As for your other argument, if your local grid can handle AC on hot sweltering days, it can handle heat load in the winter.

I don't know if Zythryn lives in a Edmonton style winter but MN is pretty cold in the winter. You should read his blog.

Minnesota can be just as cold as Alberta in the winter, but summer is hotter there. 30°C is a really hot day here, 35°C is the all time record high, and humidity over 40% when it is hot has everyone wondering why it is so muggy. That means that the worst case for air conditioning is about a 12°C difference between inside and out and a COP of 3.5. Peak heating demand will be an approximately 50°C delta-T and a best case COP of 2. That's more than 7 times the demand for heat pump heating compared to AC. Today the summer and winter demand peaks are about the same here with nearly all building heating being fueled by natural gas. The transmission infrastructure could handle somewhat more in the winter (it takes a lot more to overheat transformers and transmission lines when there is a -30°C heat sink available), but large scale adoption of heat pump heating may still require upgrades and would definitely require significant winter peaking capacity when there is little sun and usually little wind.
 
Titanium48 said:
Minnesota can be just as cold as Alberta in the winter, but summer is hotter there. 30°C is a really hot day here, 35°C is the all time record high, and humidity over 40% when it is hot has everyone wondering why it is so muggy. That means that the worst case for air conditioning is about a 12°C difference between inside and out and a COP of 3.5. Peak heating demand will be an approximately 50°C delta-T and a best case COP of 2. That's more than 7 times the demand for heat pump heating compared to AC. Today the summer and winter demand peaks are about the same here with nearly all building heating being fueled by natural gas. The transmission infrastructure could handle somewhat more in the winter (it takes a lot more to overheat transformers and transmission lines when there is a -30°C heat sink available), but large scale adoption of heat pump heating may still require upgrades and would definitely require significant winter peaking capacity when there is little sun and usually little wind.
You are confusing peak load with total energy transfer
 
No, just saying that higher peak electrical loads could make the lowest total energy transfer solution more difficult to implement, and that cogeneration might be a good partial solution, particularly for retrofits of existing buildings if products are developed as drop-in gas furnace replacements.
 
Titanium48 said:
No, just saying that higher peak electrical loads could make the lowest total energy transfer solution more difficult to implement
.
You are still not understanding. The peak load of a heat pump is about the same for heating and cooling.
 
SageBrush said:
Titanium48 said:
No, just saying that higher peak electrical loads could make the lowest total energy transfer solution more difficult to implement
.
You are still not understanding. The peak load of a heat pump is about the same for heating and cooling.


But how often is it 50+ degrees hotter than room temperature outside...?
 
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