Comment by usefulcat
4 hours ago
> Incandescents are 100% efficient in cold seasons (heater AND light).
That's resistive heating, which is the most inefficient means of heating. Worse than natural gas or heating oil, and much worse than a heat pump.
4 hours ago
> Incandescents are 100% efficient in cold seasons (heater AND light).
That's resistive heating, which is the most inefficient means of heating. Worse than natural gas or heating oil, and much worse than a heat pump.
> Worse than natural gas or heating oil, and much worse than a heat pump.
Worse than a heat pump, yes, but very arguable whether NG is more efficient. Arguably, NG powering central electric power generation and then used for resistive would be overall more efficient. Central NG will be more efficient and also there’s substantially less opportunity for NG leakage if piping was reduced.
NG is definitely cheaper (at least in the US), but that’s not really related to efficiency or emissions cost.
It doesn't take into account leaks, but modern NG furnaces are substantially more efficient than modern gas power generation.
I’m not sure that’s easily quantifiable. Yes, thermal efficiency of modern NG furnaces can be ~95% or whatever… but you can also run multi stage heat capturing NG power plants that have very high overall efficiency too. Not 95, but at 60-70%, it’d be a potential wash in terms of emissions if leaks are ~10% (especially considering how much worse unburnt NG is as a leak vs when it’s burnt).
Also, if you’re in the electric ecosystem, swapping to heat pump systems will obviously be lower overall power in basically every scenario, and it gives an easy transition path unlike NG.
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