I'm jealous of your financial learnings. However, your model is not accurate as it doesn't factor in the 4 degree improvement in comfort and indoor pollution from propane furnaces: Propane furnaces can cause indoor pollution through the release of pollutants like carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (\(NO_{2}\)), and benzene, which are byproducts of combustion.
It also doesn't include the negative externalities because of tragedy of commons. Sadly, these kind of flawed 'financial' calculations are widespread.
What is inspiring from the OPs comment is that this is doable in harsh Canadian winters with negligible solar and it breaks even. Most of the world is living in significantly more sunshine, so it should work out a lot better financially for >99% of the population.
I've lived most of my adult life in houses with forced air furnaces (albeit powered via natural gas, not propane), and what you are saying is inaccurate regarding indoor air pollution unless your furnace is in need of immediate replacement.
A modern furnace works via a heat exchanger, where the combustion produced pollutants never mix with the indoor air being pushed through. All pollutants are expelled outside via a property functioning chimney. This is one reason why you should have the furnace (and chimney function) inspected annually. Aging heat exchangers will show hotspots before there is a possibility of air being mixed, giving plenty of time to plan for a replacement. Of course there is a possibility of failure, which is why you should have a carbon monoxide detector.
For externalities or immediate health benefits, heatpumps are pretty defensible. However, solar isn't a saint. Rare earth/mineral mining is hazardous plus only a fraction of solar panels are getting recycled properly.
> this is doable in harsh Canadian winters with negligible solar and it breaks even
It's doable alright. OP got subsidies (See comment re: risk free loan and grants). Talk about externalities, this is definitely wealth transfer.
Can you please share your definition of "whataboutism?" And explain how bringing up a single alternative (plus flaw) is addressing the critique and NOT changing the subject?
"Whataboutism", like "dog whistle", is a name for an imaginary discussion pattern that doesn't occur in real life, but is super easy to point out in most conversations, allowing one to cry foul and "win" the argument (or whole discussion) through violence instead of reason.
This is pretty much the same as accusing a colleague of insulting you through PR they asked you to review, because there's an added line that says:
class HOLEInstance ...
i.e. obviously they're calling you "assHOLE".
- "But wait, it's no such thing; it's a Handle for OLE component instances - it's part of support for COM stuff in those legacy reports..."
- "AHA! See also here, dear readers:"
class HOLEClientSite // TODO: : public HOEComponent?
"Surely, you see how bad my coworker is! They badmouth our customers too, and even call them public harlots! Don't believe their lousy defense that this was a typo, either!"
This is what pointing out "whataboutism" and "dog whistles" is. Artificial, cross-cutting pattern that match easily, but don't correspond to any real phenomena.
Adults don't talk like this. The parent shared they would be far less likely to have moved forward without the subsidies. Now, you implied that someone (me) pointing out a tradeoff of solar subsidies must be non-critical of O&G subsidies, yet you provided no proof that I wasn't ALSO critical of O&G subsidies.
Meanwhile, I would love to learn more about the financials of your non-profit, ChargeFoundation.org that has mailing to a residence in Austin, TX. I'm not seeing any 990s.[0] Can you please post your foundation's financial reports on your site?
I hope we can agree that fossil fuel consumption is something to be avoided. Subsidies are an effective means of incentivizing people to avoid fossil fuels.
If you believe the externalities of solar are a problem, what do you propose to do instead? Should we subsidize some other alternative? Redirect resources from oil to nuclear? Other?
You're making different/absolutist arguments. Even the most ardent electrification proponents agree that you can't replace downstream chemicals/materials.
As for subsidies, you're thinking too narrow if you feel it necessary to only spend limited government budget on energy to improve lives.
At no point did I make an absolutist claim. If I meant “fossil fuel use should be eliminated”, I would have used those words. Do you agree that it should be avoided and/or curtailed? If not, there is little point in continuing to discuss here, as we will likely never see eye-to-eye on this.
> you're thinking too narrow if you feel it necessary to only spend limited government budget on energy to improve lives.
I also did not use the word “only”. Governments are quite capable of doing more than one thing at once. Should governments not consider spending money on energy to improve lives?
Indoor propane furnaces exhaust outdoors in most cases. Space heaters that exhaust indoors are rare - more used for garrage heat than house. If you use them of course actount for it, but most are not.
Theoretically yes, in practice no. There is (according to my sensors) a fairly large CO2 increase inside a room when a modern furnace (with external exhaust) is running. I've confirmed this with several units (all made in the last 10 years), and it's not that the windows are closed - when the furnace turns off, the CO2 drops. And it's not that the exhaust is placed in a bad spot either.
Yes, fossil fuels are the best to keep pollution away, just need to installed perfectly, configured and maintained regularly, monitored to make sure everything is running correctly, and have additional properties lying around vacant just in case there are leaks, misconfigurations, poor installation, etc. But we must use fossil fuels, there are no other options!
I had a gas furnace that wasn't properly maintained as far as cleaning. Result: insufficient air flow for full combustion. Secondary result: CO build up in basement space. Tertiary result: asthma-like symptoms for me.
Your control for this test should be (and maybe was, you don't say) running the furnace circulation fan without running the burner. CO2 levels are unlikely to be uniform throughout a building, and thus mixing will change (raise, lower) the CO2 levels depending on where you're measuring.
Looks pretty good to me over 25 years. Not many safe/guaranteed investments that will reliably return 8% these days. And as utility rates will no doubt rise over time, savings in future years will be greater.
Yes the people selling solar systems all factor in aggressive future electricity increases, it's best to also see how it looks with more conservative rate increases. By my calculation in a reply above with the interest free solar loan it's an 8% return over 14.3 years.
It will be interesting to see if this will make natural gas a more attractive source of residential heating as the price has remained relatively stable over the past 20 years.
The push for electrification seems like it relies on us metaphorically drowning in excess cheap electricity and want somewhere for it to go but right now the opposite it happening.
There’s also the argument to be made (this has manifested in other countries) that as gas usage wanes and more homes electrify, nat gas costs will increase as the infrastructure costs are spread among fewer and fewer people
> There’s also the argument to be made (this has manifested in other countries) that as gas usage wanes and more homes electrify, nat gas costs will increase as the infrastructure costs are spread among fewer and fewer people
This has kinda wonky incentives though - if your fixed costs for gas are high but your marginal costs remain low and for whatever logistical reasons you can't cut the gas connection entirely, then your motivations are to move as much of your heating load over to gas as possible.
I'm currently facing this dilemma when it comes to my new water heater purchase. The $/kJ actually delivered into the water difference is so significant despite gas being less efficient that I'm probably going to switch to gas. Electricity has gotten so expensive that even with an efficiency advantage it still loses on the order of $500-800 per year.
Is gas actually less efficient? I haven't had to work out the math myself yet, but there are some very salient variables - e.g. what's the energy source of the electricity? If it's a natural gas power plant, you're looking at like 30-60% efficiency of gas->electricity in the first place. Are you looking a at a heat pump heater? If so, how much of its energy would be pulling heat from the house that needs to be replaced by the home's heating supply anyway?
This is the kind of thing where a carbon tax is great for sorting out the pricing to match the externalities.
You might be right, I'm just talking about "last mile" efficiency. I get electricity at $/kWh and gas at $/therm and then an electric heater is x% at converting that electricity into hotter water and a gas heater is %y. From what I can find y < x for water heaters on the market. But even despite that my $/therm is so low that it still comes out ahead.
> ”Are you looking a at a heat pump heater? If so, how much of its energy would be pulling heat from the house that needs to be replaced by the home's heating supply anyway?”
Heat pump water heaters pull heat from the outside. Usually with a split outdoor unit, just like normal A/C and heat pump systems.
I’ve also seen models where the entire system (integrated storage cylinder for the heated water) is installed outdoors, but those are presumably meant for more mild climates.
In any case, they certainly don’t pull heat from inside the house.
Heat pump dryers don’t cool the room either because they work in a closed loop. There’s no external vent removing hot air to the outside like a conventional dryer. So they pull heat from the room but also put it back in the room, and the overall effect is to warm up the room slightly.
I skimmed the article (so forgive me if I'm off.) It appears to reference non-US markets and the parent was assuming US (my assumption).
AFAIK, the US has a mid-long outlook of gas oversupply. EU's market is broken and has 3x the price (c.f. Henry Hub v. TTF). I haven't seen any major forecasters predict reaching parity anytime soon. Hence, LNG export projects keep getting (over-)built to chase the arbitrage.
That doesn't make any sense. Bitcoin miners get wealth from people buying Bitcoin, not from electricity customers. Same for AI. It's a wealth transfer from electricity customers to electricity producers if anything.
Most likely most of the increase is just temporary though. Electricity supply will increase to meet the sudden and unpredictable increase in demand.
Which to me is funny, when the electricity prices will clearly not rise when there is solar energy production from said panels. But might in other times.
I think the argument is that on average people are buying heat pumps and EVs faster they are installing solar panels but it’s not completely convincing though, power stations can be added.
Further north where I am solar can only ever be a small component of total electricity generation due to the dark snowy cloudy winter months with close to zero solar generation for weeks on end.
The issue for me with batteries is that in the summer I can produce in a day much more than I can use, and in winter I consume a lot and barely produce anything. This is where net metering steps in- I can ‘store’ all of my excess summer consumption in the grid in summer and get credit for it in winter.
A cheaper smaller system right sized for summer consumption with a battery would have my second best option, but for me never showed any potential payback due to the fixed costs of installation and the extra battery costs.
The point of my original post was that I’ve seen a much greater ROI on my own heatpump than solar, even though I don’t regret the solar installation. I wasn’t making any claims about sustainability/scalability of solar, just showing how it worked for me.
My comment was regarding net metering policy, not solar itself. Solar is great, and even better (for you) if you have net metering. But it’s not sustainable or scalable for utilities to keep offering net metering, and ultimately it creates wrong/distorted market signals: an incentive to generate more electricity when it’s abundant and to use more when it’s scarce.
Yes the figures are my approximate bills so include net metering revenues.
You're right about the 8 year negative IRR for the heatpump, although I'm being very conservative about propane costs, it's likely much shorter. I was pretty conservative about the solar savings too, I generally go for the worst case in these estimates.
Your overall NPV calculation seems a bit off. It's ~21 years to zero NPV at 8% discount rate, spending $80 up front to save $8/year. Factoring in the 10 year interest free government solar loan makes it more like 14 years. My working:
Though, the returns are (edit: "not great") if the figures above INCLUDE net metering revenues.