I don’t know how many forums you’ve cut and pasted your way on to but debates generally consist of an idea or two followed by a cogent explanation of one’s position.
We’re all happy for you now that you’ve discovered the secrets of the universe but next time you might consider a forum such as this may have discussed topics about the efficient use of energy.
Thanks for sharing and if you ever think of changing your name I’d like to suggest Ctrl_V.
There may be a few grains of merit buried within the OP.
Electrical resistance heating is a lousy way to heat space and water. Fossil fuels are burnt in power stations, 2/3 of the heat dissapears up the cooling towers, the rest is transmitted down the power lines losing a bit more, and finally is converted into heat in the resistive elements. Far better to burn the fossil fuels directly to create heat.
Heat pumps can achieve apparent “over-unity” efficiencies in that you can use 100 watts of power to pump 300 watts of heat from a cold outside to a warm inside, without breaking any rules of thermodynamics. Around 300% “efficiency” is readily achievable, 450% is bigger than anything I’ve heard of but not impossible. However, it should be noted that you get 300 watts of heat from every 100 watts of work energy you put in. So if you burn natural gas in an IC engine in your home, you may get 25% of the energy out as work and 75% as heat, which can usefully be used for space heating. Then you put that work energy into a heat pump with 300% “efficiency” and get an overall 150% heating efficiency from burning natural gas. Not that there’s anything special about natural gas - you can do the same trick burning “heating” oil in a diesel engine, for example.
The devil of course is in the details. In theory you could certainly reduce energy budgets significantly by converting wholesale to combined-heat-and-power units in every home in cold and temperate areas, and do even better with heat pumps incorporated into the systems. I’ve stated elsewhere on the boards that I don’t believe cap-and-trade will achieve anything other than create an overpaid army of beaurocrats and regulators. To lower CO2 emissions an enormous shift in basic infrastructure is what’s required, and a big push for combined-heat-and-power and heat pumps may well be feasible and cost effective. The OP could have done a better job of stating his case, though, and given cites for his figures. And I don’t really see what benefit a NG /propane / E85 vehicle will have - NG doesn’t give good efficiencies in an IC engine due to its low flame propagation rate.
I set the tone of thread early on to show that drive by interlopers will not be tolerated. Only serious posters are welcome. And if none are serious so be it. I am too busy to wade through a pile of BS to respond to the few that have a keen interest and besides seriously responding to the few is fruitless in an environment where emotion is continually interjected as some are easily distracted and valuable and honest feedback is tainted.
The 2 year horizon was actually 4 years when the OP was originally conceived. But in the intervening time the government chose to increase expenses with health care reform rather than the first priority of any well managed business is to reduce expenses to obtain a budget for new expenses The socialist calls them bad profits while the capitalist calls them retained earnings. It is also called saving up for your next purchase.
At the time, 2008, there was the discussion of cap and trade to reduce carbon emissions by 1.5B metric tons by 2012. So the discussion, 2010, is again cap and trade or as most Americans feel is really cap and tax. The Policy is a lower cost, lower tax way to achieve the same goal of reducing carbon emissions. And the target dates become 2014 for 1.5B metric tons and 2018 for 6B metric tons.
The Policy of reducing carbon in the near term is independent of the policy to eliminate imports of foreign oil by switching to natural gas vehicles. Replacing furnaces, NG or electric resistive, at normal rate at the end of there useful lives 7 to 15 years is the current production capacity so new manufacturing plants will not be needed merely switching volume to the GSHP versions to meet the goal as there little difference between manufacture of GSHP’s and traditional air conditioners.
The only real difference is the infrastructure of the ground loop which is non-existent today but are simply like water wells or loops of tubing laid in nominally 8 foot trenches. With a 25% unemployment rate in the construction trade today there is more than enough man power to build the ground loop infrastructure.
The vehicle NG retrofit are tasks easily performed by any competent mechanic with tools that already exist in any shop including the fast oil change drive through. Tubing, tank, regulator, and engine control module is all there is. All are currently manufactured and well understood. Nearly 15% of the vehicles were converted to propane in two years during the 70’s oil crisis. Only about seven years would be required to convert 244 million vehicles to NGV’s.
The big problem is the delivery of NG to filling stations and the availability of NG in sufficient volume to meet the demand of NG for the NGV’s. This is one of the beauties of the Policy as NG to heat homes goes down then NG can be put into NGV’s and no new pipelines for NG will be required to satisfy the demand from the NGV’s and the NG suppliers have a brand new market for their NG and price spread between NG today and OPEC/Canadian oil is such that costly new NG wells and coal gasification would have an ROI to justify their cost.
If you look closely at the data we only import NG because the oil companies find using cheap NG to pump down oil bores to increase production in old fields. While the price of NG increase to be at the same level as imported oil to put into NGV’s any one of many alternative means of reinvigorating old fields could and would be used freeing up that NG. And the price of NG can go up because that albatross of using NG to heat homes is not around the neck of the family budget.
Another real beauty of the Policy is that all manufacturing of the components is extant in the US. China has found little motivation in supplying these low labor and high shipping cost components and where high lobor is required as with installation of ground loops and conversion kits it has to be done in the US on site using a currently underemployed workforce.
The most important aspect of the policy is that it puts real money in real pockets of real families year after year after year not some transitory government stimulus whose benefit ends when the stimulus money runs out. The downside seen by some would be that it empowers the individual and that is verboten.
You should note that I only post with vehement hostility as a response in kind when it so moves me to beat back the ignorance.
Thank you for your poignant questions and assistance kicking off this discussion anew.
Focus on Z
E85 is energy/land intensive and has less energy than gasoline. Engines would have to be more powerful and fuel tanks larger to compensate for the difference. It’s a poor substitute.
Boone is a pig! He has no desire to reduce imports of imported oil. He makes too much money from oil to kill it. He only used that gambit to attract a population of supporters in the beginning but he was really after the support of the Green wackos to promote his windmills on his rights of way. And he pitted to the two factions against one another and let the Greens win by banning the non-greens.
His basic premise was to use wind mills to replace NG used to generate electricity. Which is bogus claim as the preponderance of NG was used to provide peak demand during high usage periods. Windmills cannot be turned on with the press of a button as with NG turbines so they must supply the base load (non-peak demand) and with the recession he is not building his wind mills because a recession cause a reduction of base load as manufacturing consumption of electricity is reduced. You lay off workers you turn off machines too.
The tone you actually set was that you were of the same basic mentality as Troothers, Birthers, and lekatt.
Your OP was sufficiently hostile before anyone had responded.
If you really think you have a point to make, simply drop the hostility and argue your points. Let any opponents demonstrate their lack of substance by displaying hostility. Otherwise, this thread will simply turn into one more hate fest where nothing is learned or decided.
Its an excellent substitute for exporting wealth. A trade deficit is not as bad as a public debt but nearly so. Like $700B per year during 2008 and now back down on the order of $300B per year. That money could circulate right here in the US from individual pocket to pocket not lost forever to some tin horn dictator wanting to buy guns.
The compensation is small and acceptable trade off particularly in regions where an NG infrastructure is non-existent and where land is plentiful which serendipitously coincide.
The tax credits for bio-fuels is a reduction in taxes and on the decrease for corn based ethanol while on the increase for cellulosic ethanol which can be grown on marginal lands. The processing of bio- material into ethanol uses NG, a totally US product and is a net positive energy output. Even if the net energy output of the ethanol process was net negative the energy itself from the NG was not imported.
NB. the engine computer control component for E85 fuel in non-E85 factory vehicles is the same component needed to modify the engine fuel injection system for NGV’s and are currently manufactured in the US by many companies.
OK cool!
It is really hard sometimes to resist the whack-a-mole.
I have read it and read it and tweaked it and tweaked it and other people have said it but no one has been specific. I really wish someone would show me specifically where in the OP it is hostile or how as a whole it comes off hostile.
Your initial post was simplistic hand-waving pablum served on a plate of condescension. The fact that the moderator hasn’t sent it to the pit at this point is a testament of self restraint and you should interpret it as a chance to regroup your thoughts. This isn’t a church and we’re not your choir to be preached to or admonished for challenging your views. Any salient points that may exist in your debate go out the window with this approach and you become the debate. That fact that you can’t let it go and went so far as to start another thread bitching about it is mind-numbingly pointless.
As for your original paste-it-debate, it’s so broad and simplistic it’s difficult to discuss. If you truly want to debate it then focus on the parts you think are salient and make a case. Linking a handful of corporate websites does not constitute support for a position.
If I may synopsize.
You are suggesting that a better Policy would be to replace furnaces with a combined heat/power unit. One that generates electricity needs for the structure while suppling heat for the structure.
Well
the combined heat/power units are available but they are not available in quantity today and the recession needs a boost today to reduce the suffering and stop the hemorrhaging of debt.
For sustainment in long run one not a stop gap measure one must look to FREE energy from the earth and the sun that have capitol costs that are on the order of 3 years payback. This payback at current energy prices for GSHP and NGV’s and solar thermal panels is on the order of that three years.
A combined heat/power unit only postpones the inevitable depletion of resources. At this juncture, where we are today, extracting FREE energy from the earth is being done today and is doable.
There is no infrastructure to supply enough NG for combined heat/power and NGV’s. And heating oil used predominately in the east is imported. The US only produces enough oil to supply the US industrial base. And imports of Canadian oil will foster economic growth in the future.
Combined heat/power units do well to address the supply of heat during the cold months but do nothing to reduce the costs of air conditioning during the hot months. A GSHP operates in both cooling and heating modes. They dump excess heat into the earth during the summer and extract heat from the earth in the summer.
Reducing CO2 and oil imports by implementing a combined heat/power/GSHP system would double the cost of system pushing payback out 6 or more years and does not give payback in the useful life of the equipment. The ground loop cost is one time for the life of the structure the cost of replacing furnaces over multiple time over the life of the structure is expected and budgeted. The cost of the GSHP is nearly identical to an standard air conditioner ignoring the supply and demand pricing pressures.
It is far better to go get FREE energy and so in doing that, the replacement of the electrical resistive heaters will reduce the I squared R loses of the electrical transmission infrastructure and no new power lines will need be built. 50% of the household use resistive heat substituting a 300% efficient heater than electrical consumption will drop by 2/3 of 50% or about 30% over all. And that 30% savings was FREE from the earth.
It is not an enormous shift to lower CO2. The normal replacement of furnaces at the end of their normal useful lives with GSHP’s is all that is required to meet 1.5B metric tons. In order to acheive the 6B metric tons the entire Polciy would need to be implemented. NGV/ethanol/propane vehicles produce about 15% less CO2 than gasoline ICE’s and all furnaces in the country would need be replaced with GSHP’s and the commensurate reduction in coal generated electricity gets the US to the goal of 6B metric tones CO2 reduction.
The ethanol question was asked and I hope answered above. As to propane, it is produced during the production of gasoline and NG as a by product. The components to convert vehicles from gasoline to to either propane or NG are the same. A quad-fuel capable vehicle is ideal for the diverse refueling infrastructure across the nation. Propane in south east, ethanol in the mid west and NG about everywhere else and gasoline would still be available everywhere. The porpane and NG and ethanol distribution already exists it is just the use of the fuels in vehicles and motivating the NG distribution companies to install fueling stations is all that is lacking. The Policy sets it up so it is a win win for everyone.
The links were intended to provide background on the technology and offer a lexicon for the Policy.
The debate I hope is about the overall policy which is a synergy of many technologies and adapting the existing US infrastructure to achieve the mutually supportive goals of:
david
All the figures can be backed up with cites. I will collect those and provide a bibliography if necessary to further the discussion.
His basic premise was that if he got those windmills, he’d need to run wires to them. And to get the wires, he’d get right of way rights from all these town from eminent domain. And once he got right of way, he could do fun stuff with water. Check it out, it matches geographically.
And what about those of us who don’t live in areas where geothermal power is available or practicable?
It is not geothermal energy as with high temperature geysers or hot springs. It is low temperature ground source heat.
The earth about 6 to 15 feet below your feet has a constant temperature from 65 degrees to 50 degrees depending on your latitude. The heat is inexhaustible and only needs to be coupled using water filled tubing and circulating pump to be extracted. A heat pump moves the heat where it is desired just like an air conditioner moves heat from the inside of your home to the outside.
A GSHP is applicable to all areas of the US unlike air source heat pumps ASHP’s which only work well in areas that are above freezing most of the year.
America has been rich in all forms of energy over its history and America is blessed with a location that makes it the richest nation on the planet for FREE energy from the earth to both heat and cool all of Americas offices, and homes, and stores.
I can’t reads Boone’s mind but his jockeying the politics points to the correctness of what you say.
To run wires to them he did not need to obtain rights of ways because in the the wind corridor and Texas oil patch there are so many abandoned and under used pipelines that it would be easy to use them as electrical conduits for the wires eliminating the need for aerial high tension lines and these underground transmission conductors could be built for about for 1/3 the cost of new above ground spans and would have gotten the windmill produced electricity all the way to Florida his biggest primary customer. Also using HVDC high voltage direct current system the losses due to transmission would be reduced by over 1/2.
The Policy reduces the demand for electricity repalceing inefficient resistive heaters so investments in electrical distribution infrastructure is not needed. But this stupid administration are busy spending tax payer money on smart grid just so they can eves drop on your home and control your energy use and turn off your big screen TV by remote control under the pretense of controlling the load on already overloaded wires. All unnecessary intrusions with the Policy.
Not necessarily better, but supplementary. A GSHP is not FREE energy - you have to input 1 watt of work (force moving through a distance) to get 4.5 watts of heat, assuming your 450% “efficiency” figure is correct. You can’t magically transform one of your watts of heat back into work to pay for itself - a GSHP isn’t a perpetual motion device.
To drive the motor of a GSHP you can use electricity, but if that electricity is grid electricity generated at a power plant, then you have thrown away about 2/3 of the fuel energy used to generate that electricity, up the cooling towers and through transmission losses. The GSHP over-unity heating is doing little more than compensate for the lossy conversion of heat into work at the power plant. You’d have to look carefully at the figures to see if burning fuel in a power plant and transmitting the energy through wires to a GSHP for home heating actually beats simply burning the same fuel in a home furnace.
If you generate the electricity in your own power unit, you get to use that waste heat AND use the work generated to run a GSHP, which absolutely does gain you an overall power saving. The technical difficulties with operating such units at the scale of a single home are not trivial, but nor are they insurmountable.
Your points 1-6 I pretty much agree with, although I would argue that GSHP and/or solar panels are as much a stopgap as combined-heat-and-power. In the long run, if we want to stop burning fossil carbon, we either have to go with LARGE SCALE renewables - fill the deserts with solar plants, get OTEC working in the oceans, put large area wind plants offshore etc, or go fully nuclear. And while I’d prefer the first, I’d bet on the nuclear option actually happening.
I’m still not convinced about NG as a vehicle fuel from an engineering point of view. For conversions done today, you’d have to store it as compressed gas, which is a low-density energy bank. It also doesn’t perform that well in engines. Your arguments are partly economic though; a perspective I haven’t really considered.
I’d be interested to read your cite for 450% efficient GSHP - that’s impressive. The three-year payback time for GSHP and solar panels is also rather better than I’ve been led to believe.
What about serious interloping?
E85 is not an economical fuel. It’s even less economical if made from corn. Bio-diesel from algae represents a far more efficient energy source which can be fed with co2 scrubbed from coal fired power plants. It doesn’t require the use of farm land. It would use existing distribution nodes and the engines that burn it are as efficient as hybrids.
3.5 watts is FREE FREE FREE.
Grid losses are only 4% to 7%.
Electric generator efficiency ranges from 35% to 60% depending on fuel. This Electric generator efficiency would be the same for centralized power plants or your in home combined power/heat plants so is not relevant to the comparison during the cooling season.
Maintenance costs for those millions of distributed in home combined power/heat units would be 1000% of the costs that are incurred for those few centralized power plants.
Over the year the in home combined power/heat units are less efficient by easily 50% or more depending on the length of your cooling season as the heat is unusable during the hot months. Thus would be totally stupid to implement in all the southern tier states.
Why do it if it only address the need in the northern tier stats and there is no manufacturing base for them. They are a pipe dream. A fuel cell approach is much more practical and efficient but they have yet to be perfected and again there is no manufacturing base.
The need is NOW not some far distant future.
I use stop gap in terms of generationAL horizon, 80 years. Switching to NGV’s and GSHP’s US easily extractable oil will supply the US industrial base for 100 more years and US easily extractable NG will supply NGV’s for 100 more years and coal will last 300 years. AS IT IS NOW 10 YEARS AT $3T TRADE DEFICIT AND NO DRILLING FOR NG AND OIL, THE US HAS GOT ABOUT 7 YEARS TILL THE BALLOON POPS.
NG produces 15% less CO2 and is 15% more efficient fuel for an ICE while ethanol is about 15% less efficient but produces about 15% less CO2 as it is from a bio source.
But the scale of efficiency differences are minuscule in relationship to the $300B of lost capital by importing oil.
Using composite tanks with NG absorbent materials the NG fuel tank weight and capacity for the same vehicle mileage range are on par with gasoline tanks. And the absorbents allow for tank pressures not exceeding 400PSI.
[/quote]
http://www.waterfurnace.com/products.aspx?prd=Envision
COP 5.0 is 500% efficiency
Why do you allow yourself to be led by others in believing anything? HVAC is not a religion it is a science. The payback calculation is simple math based on price of installed system and cost of saved energy bills.