I have to agree with Stuart Staniford on this one and think that using electricity to heat our house is reasonable. It's all in the details. Using heat pumps (especially with a ground source loop rather than an air source) is much more efficient than standard electric resistance heat. Perhaps the later is what comes to mind first when we think of using electricity for heat and readily discount it. Yes, electric resistance heat, for a whole house heading scenario is very bad (and expensive). If you combine a ground-sourced heat pump with added insulation, better windows, etc. you can make it very attractive. Anyway, how else is one to heat a house... with natural gas, propane, and oil which depend on non-renewable resources? Wood is not a good option since it is not a scalable solution. Passive solar is a good way to reduce heating load if you are building a new home AND can ideally position your house to maximize the passive solar effect. IMO, high efficiency heat pumps are the future especially when combined with a tight home and renewable electricity source, such as solar and wind. Michael Miles
---------------------------------------- From: "Karl S North" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, May 08, 2015 12:53 PM To: "Sustainability in Tompkins County" <[email protected]> Subject: Re:[sustainable_tompkins-l] Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 12:09 AM, Sustainability in Tompkins County digest <[email protected]> wrote: Subject: Re: Tesla's New Battery Doesn't Work That Well With Solar From: Shawn Reeves <[email protected]> Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 18:59:34 -0400 X-Message-Number: 5 I have yet to read a news article written by someone who understands electrical power and energy well, except of course in industry journals. And even industry experts fail to understand the political economics of the resource ?depletion that is already visibly impinging on our society. Not the experts fault - they get their economics from the mainstream economists, who reject the very idea of failing finite resources impinging on market prices or anything else. ?So Shawn is right - it is nuts to use electricity?, solar or other, to heat anything in your house, as will soon become painfully evident. And Dontcha just love Bloomberg's deceptive boosterism for Tesla batteries! The lead batteries in my solar electric rig put out the same 2kw as a Tesla wall pack, at a price of $2k vs $13k for a Tesla once their promotional discount ends. Although I feel no loss of quality of life using only 2 kw, according to Bloomberg-think 2kw is way too little to power the average home, but they say don't worry, battery prices will drop. Unfortunately dropping battery prices will soon end when they run up against a global economy permanently in decline due to resource depletion and an aging and unreplaceable industrial infrastructure. The shrinking economy in our energy descent era will simultaneously raise battery costs and reduce our incomes and ability to buy them. And Re: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-28/tesla-to-use-north-american-material-amid-pollution-worry -- more Bloombergthink. But hey, it's nice to see a smidgin of concern for the millions of Africans killed by our empire's wars of control over the Congolese cobalt Tesla needs for its batteries. Maybe next Bloomberg can find the courage to print an article on the endless lakes of radioactive toxic waste that are a "side effect" (but in China - so out of sight out of mind) of our "need" for iridium, paladium, platinum and rhodium, for our electronic devices. So enough already with the super-size malted milkshake mentality! It will soon be obsolete! -- Karl North - http://karlnorth.com/ "Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying "They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon. "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel." -Saudi saying For more information about sustainability in the Tompkins County area, please visit: http://www.sustainabletompkins.org/ If you have questions about this list please contact the list manager, Tom Shelley, at [email protected].
