How to prevent those nasty forest fires? Shut off the power!
The sheer number of certified geniuses in California government is truly remarkable.
How to prevent those nasty forest fires? Shut off the power!
The sheer number of certified geniuses in California government is truly remarkable.
Berkeley city council has also banned the words "manpower" "craftsman" and "manhole". Clearly, Berkeley has lost its berkeleying mind.
I have been to Berkeley! A good friend lives there. I'm pretty sure he's a half block from Oakland, though. It may not be representative, because it feels like Oakland. But I looked on Google Maps and there aren't any blue backyards in evidence 
But let's say this catches on...
So, heat pump on a pool. I get the concept, but in order to make one thing hot you need a hot thing to start with - no? Where you do you pull the heat from? Geothermal? Even if there are no pools, there will be hot water heaters.
Maybe someone needs to come up with a power source for California that's powered by mudslides and earthquakes.
RevRico said:Berkeley city council has also banned the words "manpower" "craftsman" and "manhole". Clearly, Berkeley has lost its berkeleying mind.
My parents' church went through this in the 80's. No more hymnbooks, now they have songbooks for example. It was ridiculous.
Keith Tanner said:Maybe someone needs to come up with a power source for California that's powered by mudslides and earthquakes.
I know you say that in jest, but what I don't understand is how the wave power generators I've been hearing about for 20 years aren't being used in California since it's right next to the ocean. Unless they're bad for some microscopic ocean organism
They're probably bad for surfers and the view.
In reply to infinitenexus :
I'm not sure I have a good source for the average heat rate of stoves, water heaters or furnaces.. I know I can pull the power-plant numbers from the EIA for generation as well as emissions. Per the 2017 data California is still ~45% fossil fuel based which is almost entirely natural gas. I suspect at the current fuel mix it is a net loss using electric but from a forward perspective this might actually make sense since the electric distribution service will likely have to be upgraded to meet future demand anyway and the natural gas distribution system is aging and will likely need some portion of replacement.
*Disclaimer I work in the energy industry, previously in the electric space and currently in the fossil fuel space. So take my opinion with the grain of salt that regardless of your opinion you can hold my method of earning a living against me.
Keith Tanner said:So, heat pump on a pool. I get the concept, but in order to make one thing hot you need a hot thing to start with - no? Where you do you pull the heat from? Geothermal? Even if there are no pools, there will be hot water heaters.
They go over this in the article. Sort of how an A/C or refrigerator works, where it blows ice cold air out of one end and hot air out of the other. It's just that in reverse, essentially.
RevRico said:Berkeley city council has also banned the words... "craftsman" and ...
They can have my wrenches when they pry them from my cold dead fingers
infinitenexus said:Keith Tanner said:So, heat pump on a pool. I get the concept, but in order to make one thing hot you need a hot thing to start with - no? Where you do you pull the heat from? Geothermal? Even if there are no pools, there will be hot water heaters.
They go over this in the article. Sort of how an A/C or refrigerator works, where it blows ice cold air out of one end and hot air out of the other. It's just that in reverse, essentially.
Cooling like that is removing energy. To heat something, you need to add energy. Where's the hot thing I get my energy from? Or am I missing something significant?
Here's what the Carrier website has to say. Looks like is is really an AC unit turned around, you're trying to refrigerate the world. I'd love to know efficiencies.
Thanks to a reversing valve in the outdoor unit, a heat pump can absorb heat energy from outside air, even in extremely cold temperatures, and transfer the heat inside the home, where it releases the heat into the air....Although a heat pump can heat a home, when outside temperatures drop below freezing, the efficiency of a heat pump is affected as the unit requires more energy to maintain warm temperatures inside the home. Typical heat pump systems have an auxiliary electric heater added to the indoor unit to add supplemental heat when outdoor temperatures drop. However because electric auxiliary heating Is not very efficient, the addition of a furnace can be a solution to this problem, creating a system that relies on the heat pump as the primary heat source but automatically switches to the furnace when appropriate.
If you work in the Natural Gas industry as I do, you aren't really threatened by this.
While yes, we want to grow our customer base by providing the most efficient way of providing heat, we really don't have any interest in serving huge communities for pennies. I'll also say this - really hot desert environments are quickly becoming losing propositions for many gas companies. It doesn't make sense to maintain an aging gas system when customers only use a few therms a year.
Now what is a bit annoying is that as a gas company you still have people in Berkley to serve. Which means you're serving every other house. Utility companies are going to start asking for higher rates with their Public Utility Commissions to help pay for maintaining a streets worth of main for a few services. Basically, it's cheaper for the community if they just allow the gas company to end ALL natural gas service in an area that to maintain a few services for little revenue.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
What about back up power? With the natural disasters and occasional brown outs that occur in the area, having backup power seems prudent to me. Are battery backups the only option for a new building?
pheller said:Now what is a bit annoying is that as a gas company you still have people in Berkley to serve. Which means you're serving every other house. Utility companies are going to start asking for higher rates with their Public Utility Commissions to help pay for maintaining a streets worth of main for a few services. Basically, it's cheaper for the community if they just allow the gas company to end ALL natural gas service in an area that to maintain a few services for little revenue.
That's the same problem Detroit is facing overall, I think. The infrastructure and footprint of a big city with a smaller city population. Unintended consequences in this case.
Thanks for the heat pump link, once I realized it was just a refrigerator or AC unit with the cooling coils outside the house it made sense. I live in the land of swamp coolers so I view refrigerated air as really expensive to run, but that's just a relative thing.
I have no real opinion on any of this except to say electric stoves suck anus and californians are welcome to the damn things.
infinitenexus said:If their concern is reducing emissions then this makes sense. Especially since their aim is to get all their electricity from renewable sources in a relatively short amount of time, and to stick to the paris accord to help keep this planet from melting. My only complaint would be that cooking on a gas stove is great compared to pretty much everything else, but I'll freely admit I've never cooked on an induction stove before. Who knows, it could be awesome.
Also I've noticed when people have to give up a tiny bit of convenience for a good cause they seem to lose their minds.
Pretty well sums up my thoughts as I read through the thread.
And welcome to the forum!
any tips on using an inductive stove ?
and do they make inductive home water heaters ?
At least they're not pulling a Germany in terms of energy production?
Yet?
My house is all-electric anyway, never had gas lines installed, so I'm mostly here to make snarky comments about possible if far-fetched unintended consequences. Not having gas lines is fairly common in Georgia, where our climate is similar to Berkeley's thermally if not politically.
This wouldn't be a particularly good one size fits all solution, though - in colder climates, it's hard to beat a furnace for keeping the house warm. There's some cold parts of the winter where a heat pump almost has to run 24/7 in northern Georgia, and using a resistive heating element as emergency heat is really inefficient.
californiamilleghia said:and do they make inductive home water heaters ?
I have seen heat pump driven water heaters, for the truly obsessive over energy use. An inductive water heater would be a lot harder to build than a resistive type, and wouldn't have any advantages.
Not specifically Berkley, but some statewide CA energy usage data because I was curious:
Non-hydro renewables means solar and wind, I assume. If so, that's pretty impressive.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
It usually includes biomass as well. I'll also add that April and May are generally good months for renewable generation because of moderate weather and it's also the season that conventional plants perform maintenance. Not to diminish the growth of wind and solar, I haven't looked at the most recent data but Renewables were set to outproduce coal in May this year which is a substantial change from a decade ago.
So when you run it through the Government-ese translator, "burning garbage" turns into "nonhydroelectric renewables?"
In reply to 1988RedT2 :
It's not water and no matter how many hippies live in cali they make just as much as the rest of the country.
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