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Natural Gas vs Heat pumps for heating

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Agree costs can be one main or partial reason to decide which home heating system to go with.

But a few things to clarify regarding fossil fuel impacts/carbon footprints/efficiency:

1) Even when heat pumps are least efficient during the coldest days/hours, they are always more efficient than burning NG directly in a home furnace. So in a hypothetical grid scenario powered 100% from NG on the coldest days/hours, the homes running heat pumps still are more efficient and burn less NG. (Note efficient doesn't mean they are sufficient to warm a house adequately in some colder winter climates that don't include ours)
You're forgetting the losses at fossil gas power plants, which only have 30-60% thermal efficiency, and then you lose another 5-10% during transmission. It takes way more than 1 kWh of heat to produce 1 kWh of electricity. It's still better to burn the gas at a power plant but only if the heat pump's COP is high enough. This is generally not the case when it's below freezing outside. The heat pump still beats electric resistance heating of course but that's the least efficient form of heating there is.
4) Diablo nuclear will be replaced with more than an equivalent of offshore wind power. The Morro Bay and Humboldt regions have reliable high winds.
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6) Onshore wind is growing rapidly in the US and massive wind farms in Wyoming are trying (desperately) to connect to CA.
This stupidity needs to stop immediately. Wind and solar are never a substitute for firm generation. Where do they plan to source energy from when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow?!? Wind and solar allow you to use less firm generation on average but are never a substitute for it. :rolleyes:

And each urban area should be capable of generating all of the electrical power it consumes, just in case a Carrington style CME or natural disaster or anything else cuts the long distance transmission lines. Maui has a ton of solar and wind power (especially at the Kaheawa Wind Farm) but they haven't reduced the capacity of the oil burning plant at Ma‘alaea because they might need it if the wind stops and the sun doesn't shine (but on most days, when the wind does blow and the sun does shine, there's not much coming out of the smokestacks at that plant). Maui can't ask neighboring areas for any electricity so it has to be able to generate all it uses. California can, but the assumption should always be that you're going to get nothing and if you can get power from other areas, that's a bonus but you should never, ever rely on it. Don't expect to use the firm generation very often? Fine, build the peaker plants cheap and allow them to be inefficient. But they'd better be there because you don't shut down your economy if the sun doesn't shine, the wind doesn't blow, or the precipitation doesn't fall.
 
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Here is the COP for our home central air-sourced Heat Pump at 17°F. Never got remotely that cold here, but beats 100% grid CCGT every time.


F7991BE0-9F09-435F-AAED-AAD43A97CC9D.jpeg


https://www.shareddocs.com/hvac/docs/1009/Public/06/25VNA4-02PD.pdf