Gas heating doesn’t work without electricity. Thermostat is electric, blower fan is electric. Modern furnaces even use electric ignition instead of running a pilot light.
That’s excessive compared to the extremely low risk of a blackout in developed countries (excluding the United States which has regular blackouts). To illustrate:
US households spent 5.5 hours without electricity on average in 2022. Excluding major events like hurricanes, the number drops to 2.1 hours.
German households spent a whopping 12.2 minutes without electricity on average in 2022.
A portable gas heater, blankets and a camping stove are completely sufficient for the average person considering most longer power outages last for a couple of hours at worst. Exceedingly rare longer blackouts will always have a government aid program, such as a heated gym with free food, near your location.
The only one’s who should really prepare for blackouts are:
the government
people who live hours away from civilization with very limited infrastructure connecting them
We were without power for almost a week during an ice storm a few years ago. There was no government shelter that I ever heard about. We had to stay at a friend’s house.
We’ve had a couple storms this winter. One of them I lost power for 4 hours, but a friend of mine in the next town over was out 4 days. And some didn’t lose at all, so it varies. Power outages like this aren’t too rare every year.
It doesn’t bode well for our freezers, but we don’t get cold enough to be anything other than cold and inconvenient. Easily remedied by temporary solutions you mentioned.
Yeah here in the Midwest my area lost power due to the polar vortex around the winter solstice a few years back. Did it suck? Yeah. But towels under doors, ready to eat food, candles, and lots of blankets made it merely unpleasant. You absolutely should have supplies for situations like that. At some point I’d also like to keep drinking water supplies. Your emergency preparedness kit is generally best to keep at “bearable” levels for a few days. The goal is to ride it out, not to experience full comfort.
Until you discover that the gas infrastructure and your home heather need electricity to function. You better have an old fashion gas stove as backup that you can use until gas pressure drops too much. You could get bottles of gas and a camping heater but every year people die because they use these indoors and get CO poisoning so be careful.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of generators? All the popular propane heaters in the US have CO shutoffs. There’s not really a point to using a heater outdoors in the first place unless it’s one of the huge ones that take a 20 pound tank and very obviously shouldn’t be used indoors.
Trust me, I would love to get ride of gas, but my stove does work fine without power. Also, utilities generally don’t go down because of weather, since they have backup power on site.
Normally they should have backup, but places like Texas saved a few bucks on backups and their maintenance so their gas lines went down too. That was in the 2021 power crisis. Deregulations and increasingly weird weather is a bad combination.
This is another one of those stupid feel-good statements where it feels good to say but completely hand waves away all the complexities of actually achieving this.
Never mind the massive financial barrier to get people to switch away from gas in the first place (which the majority of everyone is not going to be able to afford so how do you expect that to work?) where does this money come from?
But you now need to contend with electrical infrastructure changes to support that extra load. Where does this money come from?
Sure in theory this is a great idea I would love to switch to heat pumps as I’m sure many others would as well. However the cost is egregious ($30-50k). And unless it’s supported with massive government subsidies (remember the US government just cut all subsidies for these sorts of things) then it’s not going to happen because people just can’t afford it.
It’s not a “feel good statement”, it’s reality. Gas is terrible. It’s responsible for a significant portion of climate change and gas stoves cause myriad health issues. This is basic stuff. Of course the transition isn’t all sunshine and rainbows but electrification is far from some insurmountable ideal, and it can be quite cost effective.
The vast majority of HVAC equipment will be replaced on burnout, and when you do the economics of a new gas furnace (and almost certainly AC these days) vs an ASHP, it’s simply not $30-50k extra. There are state and local incentives, the federal tax credits, utility incentives etc., but I agree the IRA programs are on thin ice (even though Biden awarded funds before leaving). I bought a high end cold climate heat pump for just a few grand more than my neighbor who bought a furnace/AC with similar operating costs. You can get a cheaper ASHP and furnace for something in between cost wise. My state has tripled cold climate heat pump incentives and they are now very competitive with gas systems. I work in the industry and live this every day, it’s not some boondoggle, the grid updates necessary aren’t as dramatic as headlines imply and are already well underway to support vehicle electrification and load growth/resiliency. The PNW is quite mild and people are willing to pay for AC anyway due to heat waves (and wildfire smoke), so going straight to heat pumps is a very cost effective solution. Folks are cancelling gas service left and right and the remaining users will be left with rising fixed costs. Plus as I led with, gas is terrible for your family and the climate (and locally where the wells are).
It’s always the right time to switch to heat pumps and induction stoves. Gas is terrible.
Gas is terrible until the power grid goes down in the middle of winter.
Electric should definitely be the main go to but we should all have gas hookup for a backup heat source in my opinion.
Gas heating doesn’t work without electricity. Thermostat is electric, blower fan is electric. Modern furnaces even use electric ignition instead of running a pilot light.
That’s excessive compared to the extremely low risk of a blackout in developed countries (excluding the United States which has regular blackouts). To illustrate:
US households spent 5.5 hours without electricity on average in 2022. Excluding major events like hurricanes, the number drops to 2.1 hours.
German households spent a whopping 12.2 minutes without electricity on average in 2022.
A portable gas heater, blankets and a camping stove are completely sufficient for the average person considering most longer power outages last for a couple of hours at worst. Exceedingly rare longer blackouts will always have a government aid program, such as a heated gym with free food, near your location.
The only one’s who should really prepare for blackouts are:
We were without power for almost a week during an ice storm a few years ago. There was no government shelter that I ever heard about. We had to stay at a friend’s house.
I agree, though here’s my anecdote from the PNW.
We’ve had a couple storms this winter. One of them I lost power for 4 hours, but a friend of mine in the next town over was out 4 days. And some didn’t lose at all, so it varies. Power outages like this aren’t too rare every year.
It doesn’t bode well for our freezers, but we don’t get cold enough to be anything other than cold and inconvenient. Easily remedied by temporary solutions you mentioned.
Yeah here in the Midwest my area lost power due to the polar vortex around the winter solstice a few years back. Did it suck? Yeah. But towels under doors, ready to eat food, candles, and lots of blankets made it merely unpleasant. You absolutely should have supplies for situations like that. At some point I’d also like to keep drinking water supplies. Your emergency preparedness kit is generally best to keep at “bearable” levels for a few days. The goal is to ride it out, not to experience full comfort.
Breaking news: some countries have higher and lower population densities.
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https://xkcd.com/1138/
If only there was some sort of invisible power we could harness from a large ball of fire 🤔
Oh like a nuclear reactor? Wish those where still a thing…
he is talking about fusion reactor, specifically not fission.
Well why can’t we have both? Lets make boiling water sexy again.
On a winter’s night?
There are these things called batteries, and they don’t have to be made from Lithium.
Also, you could take it literally and burn wood to harness the warm energy surrounding it on a winter night.
Batteries are expensive, and having a solar array and battery bank large enough to power your home all winter would be prohibitively expensive.
This is why we ideally have a wide range of energy sources. It’s usually raining and windy in winter.
Until you discover that the gas infrastructure and your home heather need electricity to function. You better have an old fashion gas stove as backup that you can use until gas pressure drops too much. You could get bottles of gas and a camping heater but every year people die because they use these indoors and get CO poisoning so be careful.
Are you sure you’re not thinking of generators? All the popular propane heaters in the US have CO shutoffs. There’s not really a point to using a heater outdoors in the first place unless it’s one of the huge ones that take a 20 pound tank and very obviously shouldn’t be used indoors.
Trust me, I would love to get ride of gas, but my stove does work fine without power. Also, utilities generally don’t go down because of weather, since they have backup power on site.
Normally they should have backup, but places like Texas saved a few bucks on backups and their maintenance so their gas lines went down too. That was in the 2021 power crisis. Deregulations and increasingly weird weather is a bad combination.
This is another one of those stupid feel-good statements where it feels good to say but completely hand waves away all the complexities of actually achieving this.
Never mind the massive financial barrier to get people to switch away from gas in the first place (which the majority of everyone is not going to be able to afford so how do you expect that to work?) where does this money come from?
But you now need to contend with electrical infrastructure changes to support that extra load. Where does this money come from?
Sure in theory this is a great idea I would love to switch to heat pumps as I’m sure many others would as well. However the cost is egregious ($30-50k). And unless it’s supported with massive government subsidies (remember the US government just cut all subsidies for these sorts of things) then it’s not going to happen because people just can’t afford it.
It’s not a “feel good statement”, it’s reality. Gas is terrible. It’s responsible for a significant portion of climate change and gas stoves cause myriad health issues. This is basic stuff. Of course the transition isn’t all sunshine and rainbows but electrification is far from some insurmountable ideal, and it can be quite cost effective.
The vast majority of HVAC equipment will be replaced on burnout, and when you do the economics of a new gas furnace (and almost certainly AC these days) vs an ASHP, it’s simply not $30-50k extra. There are state and local incentives, the federal tax credits, utility incentives etc., but I agree the IRA programs are on thin ice (even though Biden awarded funds before leaving). I bought a high end cold climate heat pump for just a few grand more than my neighbor who bought a furnace/AC with similar operating costs. You can get a cheaper ASHP and furnace for something in between cost wise. My state has tripled cold climate heat pump incentives and they are now very competitive with gas systems. I work in the industry and live this every day, it’s not some boondoggle, the grid updates necessary aren’t as dramatic as headlines imply and are already well underway to support vehicle electrification and load growth/resiliency. The PNW is quite mild and people are willing to pay for AC anyway due to heat waves (and wildfire smoke), so going straight to heat pumps is a very cost effective solution. Folks are cancelling gas service left and right and the remaining users will be left with rising fixed costs. Plus as I led with, gas is terrible for your family and the climate (and locally where the wells are).