No, no, no Rand. You are completely wrong.
It’s Unicorn Farts all the way down…
Because they are needed to reach Net Zero, take air-sourced electric heat pumps in northern climate. Please!
My most recent power company bill shows the use charge for natural gas adding up to 65.5 cents per therm (a therm is 100,000 BTUs). That Peter Zeihan guy states that natural gas currently is a byproduct the tight oil revolution, and yes, “they” are indeed practically giving it away. That price works out to an equivalent 90 cents/gallon of fuel oil used in heating. Or a gasoline price (allowing for 50 cents/gallon Federal and State road tax) of $1.30/gallon.
The per kWHr charge adds up to 17.5 cents/ kilowatt hour (you need a degree in accounting to read a modern power company bill, it is nothing like a gas station where the price per gallon is on a huge sign at the entrance) .
With a 96% efficient gas furnace, it takes 65.5 to deliver 96,000 BTU to the heated space. With electric resistance heat and at 3400 BTU/kWHr, it takes 28.2 kWHr to deliver the same heat, costing 494 cents ($4.94).
This means a heat pump would require a coefficient-of-performance of 7.5 to match the energy cost of a natural gas furnace. Write to me when an affordable air-source heat pump gets anywhere near that on a seasonal basis in a Wisconsin winter, even with a warm Wisconsin winter as we had last heating season.
If natural gas is so cheap, why is electricity priced so high? Because of utility capital spending to meet the Net Zero timeline?
An air-sourced heat pump made sense before the shale revolution and the current Net-Zero madness, back when electricity cost half as much and natural gas was double or triple the current price.
You just need a heat pump that uses natural gas for supplemental heating in the winter! Oh wait, isn’t that called central air and heating?
David, I know that you and I kid around a lot, and well-placed humor and satire is an important part of the political discourse, but take it easy with me if I attempt to be serious.
A guy I work with asked me if I call a service for annual furnace checks. The circumstances were that his not-all-that-old gas furnace went out, this being the coldest week we had in February 2023, and the service he called for repairs “condemned” his furnace for a heat-exchanger leak. I suppose he got a scolding “When was the last time you had this furnace checked?”
The service he used is this new business in the Madison, WI area named after an obnoxious song bird in our back yards. They had billboard ads “buy a new central air conditioner, get a free high-efficiency gas furnace”, and I wondered about the “catch.” My colleague said something about “a switch went bad, but (the service) would not replace the switch because of the bad heat exchanger. This business of “condemning” a furnace is on the radar of government regulators as a dodgy business practice, and all I could think about was the section in the Mario Puzo novel where service people had taken the Godfather’s furnace apart, who in turn asked #1 son Santino to “take care of this.” Don Coreleone hoped his son would use the old-country technique of a veiled threat, but instead, Sonny used “the American method” of pulling a gun on the service people and ordering them to put the furnace back together.
What could have happened was that the heat exchanger leak was serious enough that a pressure switch sensed that and shut the furnace down. A heat exchanger leak shouldn’t be neglected, but it shouldn’t be an immediate safety hazard because the high-efficiency furnace that everyone has where we live has a draft fan pulling below-atmospheric pressure in the combustion path. The safety feature of this system is that house air will be drawn into the combustion air rather than combustion air leaked into the house air.
I called my colleague in follow-up suggesting a second-opinion from another contractor, and by that time my colleague had already purchased a replacement air conditioner in addition to a replacement furnace, and not only that, he got himself one of those high-efficiency air-source heat pumps that will (allegedly) save on heating bills by only operating the gas furnace on really cold days when the heat pump loses efficiency.
The “catch” with the free gas furnace is that they probably charged a lot for that air-sourced heat pump, allowing them to “throw in a free gas furnace.”
That setup made sense when electricity was cheap for coming largely from coal and natural gas gas getting pricey before the widespread use of fracking. At 65 cents/therm natural gas and 17.5 cents/kWHr electricity, an air sourced heat pump, even the newer ones with a high coefficient-of-performance (COP–the multiplier effect in the amount of heat you get where a COP of 1 is electric resistance heating).
This heating service named after the obnoxious song bird is the “taking you for a ride” of electrification of everything to Save the Planet writ small, but the basic idea is something the Biden people want to impose on a large scale. The jokes about unicorn gas miss the point. There is tech to achieve Net Zero, but you will pay through the nose for it and get less reliable home heat and electric service in the bargain.
Yes, there will be handsome government subsidies to purchase the new gear, but the 17.5 cents a kWHr is something you will pay.
For your poor friend who may have gotten scammed I’m more reminded of that scene from the movie Brazil when the “authorized” central heating and plumbing guys show up to “fix” what the free lancer had already repaired and effectively destroy the poor fellows apartment.
I too just a few years ago went through a furnace replacement when the gas valve on my old propane furnace failed. I too replaced it with one of those fancy “high-efficiency” gas furnaces. A decision I somewhat regret. Because I use budget billing with my gas company to keep by gas bills from rolling into 4 digits in the winter time, I spread it out over the course of an entire year. When I do that, I don’t really realize much in the way of savings due to the efficiency of my furnace. The difference between a “high-efficiency” and “normal” furnace is the difference between 80-85% efficiency and above 90% It also requires additional piping of both inflow and outflow combustion air. I had to have new holes drilled through the side of my house because the new furnace cannot use the existing flue and it is noisier in operation to boot.
The good news is that it came with an evap coil. It currently isn’t hooked up but to obtain central air I don’t have to replace the furnace. Just have the outdoor compressor unit installed and plumbed to the existing furnace.
This furnace (compared to my old furnace) is a marvel of machine construction. Unlike my old furnace there is literally nothing inside it that I feel competent to repair. Along with my Nest thermostat that refuses to communicate with my smart phone app unless it can connect to the Internet so that it can rat me out to Google. Planet killer that I am!
Well at least I didn’t go on and on about solar panel subsidies and Tesla Powerwalls that may or may not be able to recharge from the solar depending upon weather, season and snow cover. Oh and who pays for the replacement when they fail in 20 years or so? One would hope the Unicorn is immortal…
The short-lived unicorn is the air-sourced heat pump.
As an air conditioner, it can have a decent lifetime in a northern climate where you don’t run the unit very much except in the two-week sweltering heat wave in a 3-month air conditioning season.
In winter here, you would be running that heat pump for 8 months out of the year, maybe flat out form 4 months apart from the few weeks you revert to the gas furnace. The unit will just plain wear out, and I hear that central A/C units let alone heat pumps run in the mid to high single-digit thousands?
Last quote I had from the time of replacement was mid 4 figures.
Obviously you haven’t looked too closely into the Unicorn Fart ecosystem. It’s all free to you through government subsidies! I mean like sheesh, you still pay an electric bill?
…are based on fantasies and fairy tales.
No, no, no Rand. You are completely wrong.
It’s Unicorn Farts all the way down…
Because they are needed to reach Net Zero, take air-sourced electric heat pumps in northern climate. Please!
My most recent power company bill shows the use charge for natural gas adding up to 65.5 cents per therm (a therm is 100,000 BTUs). That Peter Zeihan guy states that natural gas currently is a byproduct the tight oil revolution, and yes, “they” are indeed practically giving it away. That price works out to an equivalent 90 cents/gallon of fuel oil used in heating. Or a gasoline price (allowing for 50 cents/gallon Federal and State road tax) of $1.30/gallon.
The per kWHr charge adds up to 17.5 cents/ kilowatt hour (you need a degree in accounting to read a modern power company bill, it is nothing like a gas station where the price per gallon is on a huge sign at the entrance) .
With a 96% efficient gas furnace, it takes 65.5 to deliver 96,000 BTU to the heated space. With electric resistance heat and at 3400 BTU/kWHr, it takes 28.2 kWHr to deliver the same heat, costing 494 cents ($4.94).
This means a heat pump would require a coefficient-of-performance of 7.5 to match the energy cost of a natural gas furnace. Write to me when an affordable air-source heat pump gets anywhere near that on a seasonal basis in a Wisconsin winter, even with a warm Wisconsin winter as we had last heating season.
If natural gas is so cheap, why is electricity priced so high? Because of utility capital spending to meet the Net Zero timeline?
An air-sourced heat pump made sense before the shale revolution and the current Net-Zero madness, back when electricity cost half as much and natural gas was double or triple the current price.
You just need a heat pump that uses natural gas for supplemental heating in the winter! Oh wait, isn’t that called central air and heating?
David, I know that you and I kid around a lot, and well-placed humor and satire is an important part of the political discourse, but take it easy with me if I attempt to be serious.
A guy I work with asked me if I call a service for annual furnace checks. The circumstances were that his not-all-that-old gas furnace went out, this being the coldest week we had in February 2023, and the service he called for repairs “condemned” his furnace for a heat-exchanger leak. I suppose he got a scolding “When was the last time you had this furnace checked?”
The service he used is this new business in the Madison, WI area named after an obnoxious song bird in our back yards. They had billboard ads “buy a new central air conditioner, get a free high-efficiency gas furnace”, and I wondered about the “catch.” My colleague said something about “a switch went bad, but (the service) would not replace the switch because of the bad heat exchanger. This business of “condemning” a furnace is on the radar of government regulators as a dodgy business practice, and all I could think about was the section in the Mario Puzo novel where service people had taken the Godfather’s furnace apart, who in turn asked #1 son Santino to “take care of this.” Don Coreleone hoped his son would use the old-country technique of a veiled threat, but instead, Sonny used “the American method” of pulling a gun on the service people and ordering them to put the furnace back together.
What could have happened was that the heat exchanger leak was serious enough that a pressure switch sensed that and shut the furnace down. A heat exchanger leak shouldn’t be neglected, but it shouldn’t be an immediate safety hazard because the high-efficiency furnace that everyone has where we live has a draft fan pulling below-atmospheric pressure in the combustion path. The safety feature of this system is that house air will be drawn into the combustion air rather than combustion air leaked into the house air.
I called my colleague in follow-up suggesting a second-opinion from another contractor, and by that time my colleague had already purchased a replacement air conditioner in addition to a replacement furnace, and not only that, he got himself one of those high-efficiency air-source heat pumps that will (allegedly) save on heating bills by only operating the gas furnace on really cold days when the heat pump loses efficiency.
The “catch” with the free gas furnace is that they probably charged a lot for that air-sourced heat pump, allowing them to “throw in a free gas furnace.”
That setup made sense when electricity was cheap for coming largely from coal and natural gas gas getting pricey before the widespread use of fracking. At 65 cents/therm natural gas and 17.5 cents/kWHr electricity, an air sourced heat pump, even the newer ones with a high coefficient-of-performance (COP–the multiplier effect in the amount of heat you get where a COP of 1 is electric resistance heating).
This heating service named after the obnoxious song bird is the “taking you for a ride” of electrification of everything to Save the Planet writ small, but the basic idea is something the Biden people want to impose on a large scale. The jokes about unicorn gas miss the point. There is tech to achieve Net Zero, but you will pay through the nose for it and get less reliable home heat and electric service in the bargain.
Yes, there will be handsome government subsidies to purchase the new gear, but the 17.5 cents a kWHr is something you will pay.
For your poor friend who may have gotten scammed I’m more reminded of that scene from the movie Brazil when the “authorized” central heating and plumbing guys show up to “fix” what the free lancer had already repaired and effectively destroy the poor fellows apartment.
I too just a few years ago went through a furnace replacement when the gas valve on my old propane furnace failed. I too replaced it with one of those fancy “high-efficiency” gas furnaces. A decision I somewhat regret. Because I use budget billing with my gas company to keep by gas bills from rolling into 4 digits in the winter time, I spread it out over the course of an entire year. When I do that, I don’t really realize much in the way of savings due to the efficiency of my furnace. The difference between a “high-efficiency” and “normal” furnace is the difference between 80-85% efficiency and above 90% It also requires additional piping of both inflow and outflow combustion air. I had to have new holes drilled through the side of my house because the new furnace cannot use the existing flue and it is noisier in operation to boot.
The good news is that it came with an evap coil. It currently isn’t hooked up but to obtain central air I don’t have to replace the furnace. Just have the outdoor compressor unit installed and plumbed to the existing furnace.
This furnace (compared to my old furnace) is a marvel of machine construction. Unlike my old furnace there is literally nothing inside it that I feel competent to repair. Along with my Nest thermostat that refuses to communicate with my smart phone app unless it can connect to the Internet so that it can rat me out to Google. Planet killer that I am!
Well at least I didn’t go on and on about solar panel subsidies and Tesla Powerwalls that may or may not be able to recharge from the solar depending upon weather, season and snow cover. Oh and who pays for the replacement when they fail in 20 years or so? One would hope the Unicorn is immortal…
The short-lived unicorn is the air-sourced heat pump.
As an air conditioner, it can have a decent lifetime in a northern climate where you don’t run the unit very much except in the two-week sweltering heat wave in a 3-month air conditioning season.
In winter here, you would be running that heat pump for 8 months out of the year, maybe flat out form 4 months apart from the few weeks you revert to the gas furnace. The unit will just plain wear out, and I hear that central A/C units let alone heat pumps run in the mid to high single-digit thousands?
Last quote I had from the time of replacement was mid 4 figures.
Obviously you haven’t looked too closely into the Unicorn Fart ecosystem. It’s all free to you through government subsidies! I mean like sheesh, you still pay an electric bill?