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

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LeftieBiker said:
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...?

Exactly.
It's going to draw the same amount of power as when its air conditioning in the summer, but on a very cold night its probably going to run just about all night barely stopping. Using way more kwh compared to summer time air conditioning.
 
Yes. In a cold climate, sizing for winter heating load will result in a much larger system than sizing for summer air conditioning load. Many houses in cold climates don't even have air conditioning. I have four 5000 BTU/hr window units that draw 500 W each, and that is plenty to keep my 1500 ft^2 comfortably cool on the hottest days. Even if they could be switched into heating mode at the same COP, there is no way they could keep up in winter.
While it is the draw while operating that is important for sizing building wiring, it is the total load on a neighborhood circuit, substation or transmission line that is important to the power utility. High peak draw in individual buildings will still average out to a modest load if the duty cycles are short, but not if all of those compressors are on almost all the time.
 
^ On a building level, no, but at the utility level it there is a huge difference between 1000 or 10,000 or 100,000 customers running 5-10 kW compressors 10% of the time on a hot day and those same customers running those compressors 70% of the time on a cold evening.
 
Titanium48 said:
^ On a building level, no, but at the utility level it there is a huge difference between 1000 or 10,000 or 100,000 customers running 5-10 kW compressors 10% of the time on a hot day and those same customers running those compressors 70% of the time on a cold evening.
There is none to little difference. The utility plans its investments in infrastructure by theoretical peak load. Peak AC cooling load is the same as peak heat pump heating load.
 
One tiny problem with peak load shifting to night.
There is no solar and usually not as much wind.
 
SageBrush said:
There is none to little difference. The utility plans its investments in infrastructure by theoretical peak load. Peak AC cooling load is the same as peak heat pump heating load.
No they don't. If everyone maxed out the service to their house or business at the same time they would overload the distribution system and bring it down. Even half that much demand would be greater than the generation and transmission capacity. The all time record demand in my province is just under 12 GW, for a population of 4 million. Maximum generation capacity if every powerplant is online is 16 GW. A million houses pulling 100 A each would be 24 GW before even counting any industrial or commercial demands. The system is definitely not designed to support the theoretical maximum peak load, it is designed to support the expected average demand (which is about 10 GW here) with a reasonable margin. Switching the largest consumers of energy from gas to electricity will increase the average demand and will require upgrades to the electrical system.
 
In January 2011 here it was -16F and the power grid was almost brought down by little plug in space heaters at about 0500L.
The local power grid had been in brown out conditions since around 0200L.
The natural gas pressure got so low it shut down the boilers where I work.
So it's safe to say with out natural gas the power grid would have failed, people may have froze to death and at the very least a lot more pipes would have burst causing millions of dollars in home damages. Even with the heat on the next day every hardware store in town was sold out of pipe.
 
Proof of city scale concept starts in less than two months in near coastal Northern California cities with these building codes going into effect 1/1/2020.

Technology continues to improve, renewables and distributed battery storage continue to become more affordable, and this will spread throughout the country starting with the most mild climates and environmentally conscious locations first.

10+ years from now new technologies, cost and efficiency gains, grid/transformer upgrades, new buildings constructed with ground source heat pumps, and ever growing urgency will more easily allow us to surmount challenges currently seen as too difficult for colder climates.
 
GCC:
California Energy Commission approves first local energy efficiency standards that go beyond 2019 statewide requirements
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/12/20191212-cec.html



. . . The ordinances focus on building decarbonization—the strategic lowering of climate-changing emissions from buildings—including five that move toward building electrification. Local ordinances approved include the following requirements:


  • City of Menlo Park – New residential construction must use electric space and water heating, but may use gas cooking and fireplaces. New nonresidential construction must be all-electric and install solar generation. Allows for some exceptions, on a case-by-case basis.

    Cities of San Jose, San Mateo, and Santa Monica; County of Marin – New buildings that include natural gas are required to be more energy efficient than all-electric buildings.

    City of West Hollywood – New buildings and major modifications must include either solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, or a vegetative roof, and larger buildings must have additional energy and water efficiency measures. . . .
 
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