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Robert Gift · Apr 11, 2010, 08:57 AM

With all the devices and piping necessary for NG distribution, would it have been better to burn NG to efficiently generate electricity and use electricity for heating?

NG:
1) Requires flue for combustion gasses.
2) Now also make-up air
3) Water heater flue is drafting heat out of the house 24/7. Cool/cold air enters the bottom of the water tank cooling the water 24/7.
4) Furnaces, water heaters, stoves and ovens had standing pilot lights 24/7
5) Furnaces and water heaters were only so efficient. Mucheat lost up their flues.
6) Pipes leak.
7) Sometimes buildings suffer NG explosions.
8) People die from carbondioxide poisoning.

Electricity:
No pilot lights.
No flues drafting heat from house 24/7.
100% efficient.
No make up air chilling the basement.
No explosions.
No CO.

ebaines · Apr 13, 2010, 05:53 AM

Electricity is no where near 100% efficient. Where does the electricity come from? If from burning fossil fuel like NG or coal you have lots of inefficiencies in turing the heat energy of the fuels into electricity. And even if the electriciy is from non-fossil fuel sources like atomic, hydro, or wind - you still have to transmit it over wires to the home. Perhaps 10% of the energy is wasted as heat along the transmission lines (due to I^2R heating). Finally, electricity can not be stored, at least not in a practical way for large amounts of energy. Consequently you need enough power plants to support the peak demand at any time - which means a lot of capital investment that's really only needed a few days a year (for example when there's a heat wave and everyone has their air conditioning running). It will be interesting to see the political consequences of needing to build more power plants as more electric cars are introduced, requiring recharging at home.

Robert Gift · Apr 15, 2010, 01:43 PM

Are all the losses of natural gas greater than the creation and transmission losses of electricity?
I'm not even considering the costs of finding and producing NG.
I assume the burning of NG at powerplants is more efficient than burning that same natural gas in home water heaters and furnaces.

As a chimney sweep on rooftops at night and in winter, I am amazed at how much hot air is rising from the water heater flue even when it is not on.
When either furnace or water heater IS on, the lost heat is amazing.

ebaines · Apr 15, 2010, 02:20 PM

Modern high efficiency natural gas furnaces are 90-95% efficient, so they are perhaps a bit better (more efficient) than burning NG at the power plant and transmitting the electricity over a transmission line to the home. So an electrical resistance heating system (like the old electric base boards my parents had) would be somewhat lowr efficiency than NG being burned at the home. However, if you consider a modern electric heat pump - it can actually bring more joules of heat into the house than is expended to run the heat pump, so in a sense they are better than 100% efficient. Hence electric heating using NG burned by the utility and a heat pump at the home can be more efficient that NG burned at the home.

The real advantage of electricity is that it can be produced by sources other than NG, which means you can heat your house with atomic energy, coal, hydro, or wind power that is converted to electricity and delivered by the utility. There's no practical way for homeowners to match that.

Robert Gift · Apr 15, 2010, 04:00 PM

Yes. The new furnaces and water heaters are so much better.
Wish I could place a damper on my water heater to stop the tremendous heat loss while it is not burning.
Even better could be one water line to each bathroom and an electric heater to warm the water to the desired temperature. Then "instant" warm/hot water and not two pipes.

ballengerb1 · Apr 15, 2010, 05:45 PM

My dad was a union electrician and always told me that anytime time you make heat or cold with electricity its going to cost you severely. You can install an instant hot water "on demand" system with gas or electric, electric will cost you more to run.

Robert Gift · Apr 15, 2010, 08:31 PM

Wish they could make an electric heating element which heats the water right at the faucet. No need for a mixing valve. No losses of heat from a hot water pipe - no hot water pipe.
With all the losses of natural gas, would the savings not more than make up for the higher cost of electricity - especially now that NG cost is increasing?

ballengerb1 · Apr 15, 2010, 08:35 PM

And if they could make that type of heater it still would be using more energy than NG or LP. I recently installed a tankless water heater than absorbs so much of the heat it is exhausted via 2" PVC, it is cooler than a dryers exhaust. -:- Navien America -:-

Robert Gift · Apr 16, 2010, 05:01 AM

Originally Posted by ballengerb1

and if they could make that type of heater it still would be using more energy than NG or LP. I recently installed a tankless water heater than absorbs so much of the heat it is exhausted via 2" PVC, it is cooler than a dryers exhaust. ...

Wow! Co$t?
But you still must run two pipes to every hot water fixture. (We have some long runs from water heater to faucet.)

Wish I could remove our furnace and water heater flues and use the flue chase for a pantry next to the kitchen and on the second floor for a bidet next to the toilet.

Our basement is chilled because of two outdoor air pipes required for the gas furnace and water heater. One pipe opens near the ceiling, the other 1 foot above the floor.

If one could do it over from the beginning, would it be best to not pipe natural gas to homes? Especially if water could be sufficiently electrically heated at faucets and shower.

InfoJunkie4Life · Apr 16, 2010, 07:02 PM

Electricty:

Fuel > Heat > Absorption > Conversion > Transmission > Conversion > Heat > Absorption

You have too many places to loose with electricity, sure things are becoming far more efficient, but I have never seen electricity beat gas.

Gas:

Fuel > Transmission > Heat > Absorption

There will always be loss, the trick is to minimize it. On top of that, sure electricity may be 100% great at converting to heat, but there are massive losses while converting heat into electricity.

I'll show you the math...

Lets say gas > electricity > heat

Gas to electricity could be as high as 90% of heat used (I think it is quite a bit less) is not lost but converted to electricity. 10% or more is lost in transmission. Then you loose another 10% of that while trying to absorb the heat into your water again.

E (starting energy)

E x 90% = 0.9E

0.9E x 90% = 0.81E

0.81E x 90% = 0.729E

That means with electricity you're only at a max of 73% of what you started with. Even if you lost 10% during transmission of gas (monetary and physical reasons in the pumps) you still have electricity beat by 8.1%.

This is where calculating initial cost vs. applied usage comes into play. I can get such and such for more, but it is more effective vs. such and such for less that's less effective.

Until we consider more of what Tesla had to say, I think electricity will always be at a disadvantage.

BTW, a little ingenuity on the consumer's end will go a long way. My grandfather used to burn wood. Noticing how much heat was lost the chimney and how the laws of thermodynamics worked, he came up with a few ideas and put them to practical use. He took a 55gal barrel and welded it to the chimney pipe and then the remainder chimney pipe to the top of the barrel to increase the surface area of the hot smoke to achieve a more efficient heating. By doing this, he was able to heat the room quicker, more surface area for the surrounding air to absorb heat from, and also allowed the smoke to cool more before it left the building.

Also, I re-insulated my water heater. It was gas, and cheap, but throwing an extra blanket of insulation on it (even though there was no noticeable heat coming off it) saved me about 15% on my gas usage. A basic understanding of what you own and a little creativity will allow you to get the most out of your product.

Sorry For the Rant...

asking · Apr 16, 2010, 10:55 PM

Electricity generation is only about 50% efficient. If another 5-10% is lost in transmission, depending partly on distance, you get a total efficiency of only about one third and that's before it gets to the appliance.

I will go with on demand hot water heaters in the future. Natural gas prices are really low right now.

asking · Apr 16, 2010, 11:01 PM

There is a push to fund research on batteries, and also to explore making artificial (non fossil) fuels, using them to store energy from wind farms and similar.

We aren't going to run out of fossil fuels. They will just become so expensive, we will save what little is left for specialty uses. Conservation, alternative energy, and new ways to store energy are inevitable.

Robert Gift · Apr 17, 2010, 05:16 AM

Thanks, Junk.
I leave the blanket off to allow the minimal lost radiated heat into the basement. So it really is not "lost".
The worst problem is the convective airflow cooling the water 24/7.
That air going up its vent pipe creates a vacuum pulling more cold air into the basement. So I am losing heat from the water AND chilling the house. (I am considering enclosing water heater and furnace in their own tiny room sealed from the basement. But that still leaves convection cooling the water.)
Wish I could install a damper on the water heater vent. At least warm convective air will flow into the basement.
What the flues are drafting from the house 24-7 is the real problem.
With electric heat we could turn off rooms we do not use and heat floors to warm us better. And if my instant hot water faucet were possible that would be nice, too.

Robert Gift · Apr 17, 2010, 05:35 AM

Just saw new posts.
Thank you.

Well that is discouraging. Thought power generation was far morefficient and line losses less.
So if you were to build a brand new city, you would intall a natural gas system?

asking · Apr 17, 2010, 07:01 AM

Near Denver? Every building would be passive solar AND have solar panels and there'd be a wind farm.

I had friends who built a house in the high desert that was passive solar and when it was 17 outside, their living room was 85. They had to open the windows when they got home from work to let it cool off. I visited someone in Denver recently and was amazed that the house was not insulated. Also, sort of anti-passive solar. There was no way for sunlight to help heat the house.

I don't know about a natural gas system. It would depend on how close you are to supplies, how long they are likely to last, when the price will go back up and what that will do to your plans...

InfoJunkie4Life · Apr 17, 2010, 09:34 AM

Robert,

Technically its going towards heating your home, but it still leaves you at the disadvantage. The amount of energy it takes to heat 1 cubic foot of water is massively many times more than one cubic foot of air. So it may be warming your house, but you are still cooling the water allowing it to be reheated quicker. Unless you have a boiler/water heater then you probably want to leave warming the house up to the furnace.