Gas furnaces achieve about 96-98% efficiency. Heat pumps achieve 300-400%. So you have to factor that in.
There’s still a cost difference but the hope is for governments to start supporting serious nuclear energy to drive down electric costs. It’ll take time but natural gas will become less economical as decades go on especially with investments.
Its partly due to how you are measuring efficiency. It mainly moves heat rather than creates it.
Another fun way to get more heat is condensing, a dehumidifier gets over 100% efficiency if you were to use it as a heater. Heard of evaporative cooling right? Well condensing is the opposite, you get extra heat from that.
Refrigeration cycle can get crazy efficiencies like that because it is transferring energy from one side of the system (indoor unit) to the other (outdoor unit). The amount of energy that is transfered is greater than the amount of energy required to push the refrigerant through the system.
If you take 100 joules of electrical or chemical energy, and then direct them to a heater in a house, it’ll create about 100 joules of heat. That’s 100% efficiency.
But if you use the 100 joules of energy to run a heat pump, it might bring in 300 joules of heat into the house. That’s 300% efficiency, when measured locally at the place you actually care about (inside the house). Zoom out and laws of thermodynamics still make it impossible to create more energy than was put in, but if you look at just the part you care about, it’s possible locally.
Gas furnaces achieve about 96-98% efficiency. Heat pumps achieve 300-400%. So you have to factor that in.
There’s still a cost difference but the hope is for governments to start supporting serious nuclear energy to drive down electric costs. It’ll take time but natural gas will become less economical as decades go on especially with investments.
Newly built nuclear would do many things, but it wouldn’t drive prices down.
Wind and solar would do that though.
How does something achieve 300-400% efficiency?
Its partly due to how you are measuring efficiency. It mainly moves heat rather than creates it.
Another fun way to get more heat is condensing, a dehumidifier gets over 100% efficiency if you were to use it as a heater. Heard of evaporative cooling right? Well condensing is the opposite, you get extra heat from that.
Refrigeration cycle can get crazy efficiencies like that because it is transferring energy from one side of the system (indoor unit) to the other (outdoor unit). The amount of energy that is transfered is greater than the amount of energy required to push the refrigerant through the system.
If you take 100 joules of electrical or chemical energy, and then direct them to a heater in a house, it’ll create about 100 joules of heat. That’s 100% efficiency.
But if you use the 100 joules of energy to run a heat pump, it might bring in 300 joules of heat into the house. That’s 300% efficiency, when measured locally at the place you actually care about (inside the house). Zoom out and laws of thermodynamics still make it impossible to create more energy than was put in, but if you look at just the part you care about, it’s possible locally.
Eh, I can see a resilience based argument for why we need nuclear, but building new nuclear is never going to be cheaper than solar or wind.