Texas of the north.
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
17 points (79.3% liked)
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space heaters
The least efficient/most expensive way to heat air.
Care to elaborate? A space heater draws 1500 watts of electrical energy and converts it into 1500 watts of heat energy that is released into the room. That seems pretty efficient to me.
A heat pump can take 1500 watts and use it to pump 3000-4500 watts of heat out of the ground loop and into your house.
True but not everybody has access to a ground source heat pump or can even afford to have one installed, especially with short notice of an upcoming cold snap. I will advocate for heat pumps until I'm blue in the face but the current cost of entry is abhorrent
space heaters
The least efficient
Care to elaborate?
heat pump can use 1500 watts and use it to pump 3000-4500
not everybody has access to a ground source heat pump
You see where you changed the argument from "compare the efficiency of the two" to a discussion on 'heat pump privilege'? You see where you moved the goalposts?
Not cool. Stay on topic.
especially with short notice of an upcoming cold snap
I've unfortunately lived in 'berta for the past 3 years. Every winter there's been a week in January where it's been below -30. Two winters ago my furnace was screaming trying to keep up. The last thing this cold snap should be is a surprise to anyone who lives here.
Cost is also a factor. A modern natural gas furnace is 90+% efficient and even an older one is going to be above 50%. When natural gas is 1/7 the cost of electricity that 50% efficiency is still 1/3 the cost. There’s an argument for using a space heater to heat just the occupied portion of the home, but at 3-6 times the cost of gas ones often just as far ahead to keep the furnace going. On that note, even if the heat pump gets a COP of 3 like your example, that’s still twice the cost of gas for the amount of heat put in the house and 3+ times the cost to install a proper ground loop and heat pump vs a gas furnace.
I suspect part of the issue though is shitty rental units that don’t give the tenant control of their heat and/or the landlord pays gas but passes off electricity on the tenant. Also. If it’s a poorly done build you can get things like the HVAC not being designed to match the floor plan, so you end up with some rooms being cooler and people supplement with electric heat.
But Alberta is Texas north? Why do you not all have megawatt gas generators on your property?
The faster Canada drops oil the faster we can have a larger, more stable base load.
A modern natural gas furnace
Fracking says what?
True. It's still a middling way of heating things, though, not the worst. A wood furnace would probably be the worst that still gets used.
And, uh, most people report a heat pump won't work at -35 right now anyway. I'm sure better ones are coming.
So, is Danielle smith going to try and blame it on the little sprinkling of renewables that currently is active?
Meanwhile Québec runs on 95% renewables, and we've not had grid load problems in decades. We have problems with trees taking out the power lines, but we've never been asked to turn it down despite most people having electric heaters.
They're always blaming renewables, but so far renewables is the one I've had the least amount of issues with, and by far the cheapest too. My energy bill is 5x the amount in the US and it's barely freezing. It's all fossil fuels, of course, the supposed cheap and reliable.
Renewables are great except for the big oil companies.
I mean, they would point out that you have a ton of hydro power potential that we don't. I would counter that we were drawing from the battery storage plants we have during that period, which were themselves charged up by the solar plants (since there's no reason to charge a battery off of a gas plant).
How to cheaply store renewables is kind of a trillion-dollar question right now, but I'm sure it will be answered. At the very least, we're good at drilling into things and could make some nice pumped air plants.