Coal in a hard place.. expecte to produce < 30% of electricity by end of decade

Jason, because of the cost of the plant, with current fuel prices, natural gas electricity is less expensive than coal. If pollution costs are later added, this makes coal electricity even cost more. When you look at what costs really are instead of some estimates of prices of coal from the 70s it makes perfect sense to shift away from it. Better regulations would cause the shift faster, but many in congress want to continue favoring coal.

China is a different matter. They don't have the US's natural gas resources, which makes coal less expensive over there. The sky is full of pollution, go visit if you get a chance. The US should continue researching cleaner coal technology, but the share of coal in North America and its pollution should go down.

 

Easy to understand why. Older homes in NE and in both cases, difficulty in running new gas lines, impossible in AK in many locations.

Gas fired central heat is 97% efficient. Electric central heat is 97% efficient per DOE. Where central AC is needed, the electric system is better since gas requires an electric AC unit in addition.

They cut home energy use. Whether they directly cut oil use depends on if the home has oil heat or depends on oil fired electric utility. Idea is to cut overall energy usage and solar hot water heaters do that every efficiently. My mistake, hot water is 15% of a home's energy bill so solar hot water's total effect is cutting homes energy use by about 7%.

The payback is cutting US energy use by 7% overall which is quite an achievement. Add in the industrial mfg. and installation jobs with 5% less cost for US GDP overall (close to $1T per year savings for national economy) and that is a good national investment but not worth it for individual which is why it should be government subsidized.

To this thread, where people heat hot water with electricity from coal or oil or oil directly cutting that usage by 7% via solar hot water is a good investment for US national interest and planetary life support system.

 

Alaska makes perfect sense because of remote areas, and is a small percentage of the population of the US population. The North East is quite another matter. As I said originally the oil embargo was almost 40 years ago, but utility regulation in the north east still has not provided many with easy access to natural gas. In the 70s this was national politics, but since then those states have regulated in such away to hurt their citizens. It needs to end.

Geothermal electric is efficient, but expensive to add. Regular electric is generated then sent to homes. This is mainly natural gas and coal in the north east, and 95% of new power is natural gas. If you are going to burn natural gas to generate electricity then to compare efficiencies you need to look at the power plant. You are going to be less than 50% efficient going from the fossil fuel to home to conventional electric. Many in the south do electric because they don't need much heat, but this makes no sense at all in the much colder north east.

But here is why it makes no sense. Solar thermal takes up the same roof space as solar pv, but is only used part of the time. That 7% is only for a small portion of the population that has the home and the right climate. Most of these people have more than 70% of their homes energy needs in electricity, and with today's prices PV plus efficient appliances is simply cheaper than solar thermal. The math does not add up for adding solar thermal water heaters unless you are heating a pool. Investment in wind provides much more renewable electricity per dollar than solar, but if you are going solar on a house level only solar pv makes any sense.

 

Actually very similar in many cases as some other members have outlined in messages above.

Solar thermal takes up the same roof space as solar pv, but is only used part of the time. That 7% is only for a small portion of the population that has the home and the right climate. [/quote]

Solar hot water panels pretty much work all over US even in cloudy rainy high latitude Portland. PV is good also but costs a lot more going in so solar hot water is something that can be done easily and relatively cheaply no matter what the homes primary heating fuel. Quotes here for zero net typically include solar hot water heater and solar PV combos.

 

The north east has dense population, much denser than texas, and we have been able to lay out natural gas to the state quite well. I don't know one person that actually thinks natural gas can not be routed economically in the north east. The regulators there have simply continued to favor antiquated home heating oil. Who are the others that you think agree with you?

They work in a expensive uneconomic fashion. Why do you think they are relatively cheap? Spec out a system, then compare it to solar pv. PV does not do well in Portland mainly because electricity is cheap. PV is much better than a solar thermal water heater. People put in solar pv+solar water heaters are ripping you off or have no clue what they are doing.

 

Depends on the area. Several members posted about that situation in the NE. With the numbers being so small the last few homes using oil heat likely have various installation issues that present obstacles.

 

The obstacles are the governments there. There are no technical challenges. Its bad politics and bad government. As I said pennsylvania and ny changed utility policies and are homeowners are quickly converting as new gas lines are run.

Finally, run some numbers, don't post a pr piece for solar water heaters. The numbers look horrible compared to solar pv in most areas, and simply worse in others. You are pushing a dieing technology, that never was popular. Its like claiming how government really needs to stimulate the buggy whip industry.

 

True in the sense government needs to step up and subsidize the solar, weatherproofing and change to most efficient and least polluting fuel in national interest since it not enough in the homeowners financial interest.

 

Those governments do subsidize solar. If you have gas heat, the gas company provides insentives for weatherizing and putting in a more efficient heater, if you have oil they do not. In many areas you are allowed to have a leaking oil tank if its not leaking too fast, switch to gas, and you must follow environmental regulations and clean up that old oil tank. The states have slowed penetration of the gas companies as part of "fairness" to fuel oil. Its not fairness, its hold it up. Why do you keep up the non-sense, it is in the homeowners financial interestest unless they qualify for the federal government subsidies. If they get the federal $5B because the state makes it hard for them to switch, those states should pay. If they did they would quickly change policies.

 

But not enough to overcome the economic hurdle which is why so few homes have solar hot water or PV when ALL homes should have it.

Musk's Solar World is trying to answer that problem by paying for install and user paying them back over time out of the savings.

But government really needs to step in like Germany did and get it moving. Germany reaped the secondary (primary?) goal of building a solar energy industry and jobs by being very aggressive with government subsidy for solar power installs.

 

Our total natural gas consumption during months that were aren't heating the house runs 12-14 therms a month. That includes clothes dryer and cooking so hot water heating is considerable less than that. About 6-7 therms for the water heater based on some back of the envelope scratching. It's not worth much of an investment in a solar water heater to save 6 or 7 therms a month.

If a person did want to go all irrational greenie, a solar pre-heater with a 50-100 gallon tank inline before an instant on gas water heater might pay for itself. I saw villages in Turkey where as many as 70-80% of the houses has solar water heaters with attached tank on their roofs. Our tour guide said he had on on his house and they cost about $400 to $500, didn't have pumps or any electrical components but had a non powered thermostatically operated valve that drained the collector when there was danger of freezing.
Here are some examples of that type of solar water heater.
Solar water heating - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Wouldn't saving 6-7 therms a month be 50% of your energy?

As for the pay back, as the DOE site notes, it does eventually pay off but as you note, it is so long term most homeowners don't do it. It is just not in their short term economic interest. But saving 7% of US energy usage is in national interest big time so government should step in and aggressively subsidize it.

 

No, we use electricity too.

More seriously, it's small amount no matter what percentage of the total it is. It's not worth chasing.

 

Not individually but collectively it is worth pursuing. Even individually as DOE notes, we'd all save money, but collectively knocking US energy use down 5% is significant. Only 45% more to go and no more $1T a year oil wars, no $500B a year oil trade deficits and US 10% of the way toward 2050 goal of 80% CO2 reduction. It would be great first step, cheap and easy to do and put a lot of out of work folks to work using part of the $1.5T per year national pay back. US never seems to take the first small steps "just not worth chasing".

 

Cool. I didn't know they were that cheap in turkey. Isreal has a law that says you have to use solar water heaters on most dwellings. They claim it has saved about 3% of energy. Spain also has a law that all new dwellings must be built with pv and solar water heaters. Both Isreal and spain wrote the laws before the price of pv dropped so much, and they made more sense when they were written. Neither country has cheap natural gas as we do, which makes such a law a bad choice for the US. I have a gas stove and water heater and like you spend very little on gas except the few months I use it for heat.

Hey we don't want to buy your buggy whips. As I said solar water heaters are stupid in the US today. You just don't know how to read. Solar water heaters don't save any, zilch nada, oil versus natural gas. Solar water heaters will not improve the trade deficit or do any of the other magical things you think in your imagination mind. THe other fairy tale, the us is not going to cut CO2 by 80% by 2050, and if that was the goal, everyone would do geothermal heat pumps + pv. Spending money where you want to do it is a waste. Oh and by the way, germany has massive layoffs in their solar industry, and even with their large subsidies they only produce 4% of their power.

 

This really depends on what math you are using. If the solar exposure is limited and a choice between PV panels and limited water heating, then a lot of your point is valid. If the limit is capital expense, then depending on location (e.g. freeze protection needed) and house loads, a great many situations will favor direct solar heating for lowest overall lifetime cost. If you have four teenage daughters, each taking hour showers twice a day, I can assure you that the math absolutely favors the solar heating solution contribution. (PS. I just had one, but that provided a great energy calibration point)

 

yikes. 4 teenage daughters. I can't imagine that.

But dazzle me with you math.

How much was the solar water heater system? What percent hot water? and how much was the tax credit?

Do you have an efficient water heater? If so subtract the price of the new water heater. Buy solar panels and install them with the left over cash. Do the panels produce more power in a year than the solar heater saves? Let me know the math for where you are. Numbers produce much better production with the pv here.

 

The idea of using PVs to heat water was a new one for me. If I were going to go PV here though, I would send any excess electricity to the power company at peak daytime rates for credit against later use.

Several people in my community have extensive PV arrays, some say they have a net $0 electric bill at the end of the year.

 

The increased cost of coal is due to regulation - I understand that, it was exactly what I was referring to. The point I'm trying to make is that we are not reducing pollution, at best we are sending it halfway around the world - all while costing our economy massive amounts.

 

The main pollutants that the scrubbers attempt to get rid of are SO2, NOx, particulates, and mercury. All of these are unhealthy, and the bad health effects and destruction of property are mainly local. Mercury does travel far, and ghg are global. Currently we are under regulating the bad health effects, and that does cost our economy too. I do not think that what I pay for wind power is a large amount. Natural gas electricity is less expensive than coal with today's pollution regulation, and numbers look even better for it and wind when costs of pollution are taken into account.

I do understand the point of not hurting our economy with over regulation of ghg, as those are going to go up in china anyway, but current regulations do not add costs here.