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Tue Mar 04, 2025 2:59 pm

heimlich wrote: One word: Reliability.

I've never seen any ash. I lived a mile from a coal plant.

We have a lot of wind here too.

Gas, shale gas, is my favorite. It provides really good energy. I want a shale gas powered car but that never came to fruition from the 90's. Now we have wind and solar. I wonder if it will die the same government mandated death.

I think the next wave will be home systems where we don't need the grid anymore. I see a lot of this in Europe. They made the electricity so unreliable and expensive there.

The ash isn’t in the air, it is the residual solids after burning coal, kinda like the ash in your wood stove, but a lot more of it (a lot more power being made). The stuff is kinda a pain to deal with, though modest amounts have industrial uses.

I always wanted to shovel shale into my car. :lol: Natural gas is not a natural for motor vehicles. High compression storage is inefficient and the typical range is low. Natural gas at 2400 psi has only 18% of the power compared to an equal volume of gasoline.

[edit to add link]

Tue Mar 04, 2025 3:25 pm

EVfun wrote: heimlich wrote: One word: Reliability.

I've never seen any ash. I lived a mile from a coal plant.

We have a lot of wind here too.

Gas, shale gas, is my favorite. It provides really good energy. I want a shale gas powered car but that never came to fruition from the 90's. Now we have wind and solar. I wonder if it will die the same government mandated death.

I think the next wave will be home systems where we don't need the grid anymore. I see a lot of this in Europe. They made the electricity so unreliable and expensive there.

The ash isn’t in the air, it is the residual solids after burning coal, kinda like the ash in your wood stove, but a lot more of it (a lot more power being made). The stuff is kinda a pain to deal with, though modest amounts have industrial uses.

I always wanted to shovel shale into my car. :lol: Natural gas is not a natural for motor vehicles. High compression storage is inefficient and the typical range is low. Natural gas at 2400 psi has only 18% of the power compared to an equal volume of gasoline.

Oh that ash. We have a lot of uses for it here. Mix it in with the tar for the roads or make cement from it. Theres companies who buy it from the coal plants. They also take the limestone too.

Tue Mar 04, 2025 8:29 pm

EVfun wrote: heimlich wrote: zerotofifty wrote: We may run out of electricity before we run out of gasoline.

All the push for electric for homes, cars, trucks, AI servers, Meanwhile electric plants closing, while replacement plants are at best expensive and part time.. solar panels or windmills. It is a crazy world.

Come to Texas home of the greatest EV - Tesla. We have plenty of electricity and gasoline.

The electric plants closing are because of the government. We've had to deal with them closing our excellent coal plants. Lots of coal in the ground to be dug up and burned. China has 1,161 coal plants and is still building them. We need to be more competitive.

Texas is the largest installer of solar electricity in the USA. Why dig up coal and deal with ash when the sun shines for free? Solar and wind generation, with backup storage, is becoming less expensive.

The issue is that the sun is not shining bright much of the time. and wind, it aint always blowing. These green power sources are not all that green, and they tend to cost a lot more than normal power production.

Wed Mar 05, 2025 6:07 am

raygreenwood wrote: baldessariclan wrote: oprn wrote: So what you are saying then is that any heat pump system that fails to be adequate in the winter is just simply undersized?
Well, that's one possible reason I suppose. The same could happen if you installed a too small gas-fired furnace for your house, or a central A/C system without enough tonnage of cooling capacity -- the unit obviously needs to be sized adequately for the square footage that it's trying to heat or cool.

This conversation has piqued my curiosity at bit more about heat pumps and their performance, so late yesterday I called and spoke w/ my uncle who lives up in NW Iowa, and uses a heat pump system to heat and cool the family farm house up there. It's a bit older one (installed over 10 years ago, IIRC), and is tied in with a horizontally-oriented geothermal well system.

I remember the house as always being nice and warm whenever I've been up there in the winter. And he confirmed that the heat pump has always worked fine and been able to keep the house heated comfortably, even when they get into the -20° F range or worse on occasion. Note that the house is of fairly modern construction (built in the early 1990's), and so has reasonably good insulation, windows, etc., which probably helps a lot.

Anyway, he told me that his heat pump system does not use any sort of auxiliary electric or gas-fired heating -- it's basically a "stand alone" type of setup. He did say he was aware of some similar systems that use an auxiliary electrical heating element, but that it normally wasn't employed/activated when it was really cold out, but rather would only come on to speed the heating of the house when the owner was trying to rapidly change the internal temperature over a relatively large jump (e.g. house left at 50° F while people are away, and then thermostat set back up to 70° - 75° F when they return).

He also mentioned that while you really do still need a geothermal well for heat pumps to be practical and efficient up in the northern parts of the country & continent, as you get further south the latest heat pump systems supposedly really can be used to heat a house efficiently in the winter, using only air-transfer of heat (no geothermal well required) - ?!? Interesting...

For the record, we still heat with natural gas in our house, plus our water heater, kitchen stove, and gas hearths use it as well, and I'm perfectly fine with all that. But when our current furnace and/or central A/C unit finally gives up the ghost, I'll probably do a bit more studying up on if a heat pump system might be practical (both performance-wise and economically) here or not - we'll see...

I just moved back to Oklahoma from Iowa 6 years ago. What is commonly used depends on the area in Iowa and the age and size of the house.

Certain areas on Iowa have strata that make them ideal for geothermal. A lot of people in Davenport that I know say geothermal works well there. In Des Moines....not so much.

The other issue is not that heat pumps are undersized per-se.....it's that American houses are oversized....and it has as much to do with the airflow and du t design inside the house and the inside heat exchanger as it does with the heat pump.

Very quickly you can end up with a heat pump size that might be ideal for a 1500-1800 sq. Ft home....being far too small for a 2000 to 2300 square foot home. But the next one up can generally be too large.

Both issues mean the same thing. In the case of the too small pump, it has to run almost constant. If also the house design (lots of windows, northern surfaces and crack loss) is not ideal, or if the frost line is deeper than the footings.....you can lose heat almost as fast as you put it in. So you have two electric motors running at 85% when the temp gets cloze to freezing or below. It's expensive. Far more expensive than turning on the gas furnace at 35°F and running only the gas and one circulation fan.

In the case of too large of a heat pump. Again, it has two larger electric motors running anytime it runs. While it runs less than one that is too small, if you also have the same common heat loss issues.....it still runs too long and costs more than you want to pay.

I found it odd when I moved back here that houses of the era that my mom and dad's house were built in (1999)....all of them around here from what the HVAC guy said....have this set up.
One heat pump for each floor and a gas furnace for each floor......I lived in Oklahoma for all of high school and college.....and virtually none of the houses from the late 70s through the 80s were built this way. They all had heat pumps. They all worked. Some had gas furnaces but many did not.

The hvac guy pointed out....that for square miles around our neighborhood.....you are not likely to find many....if any...houses below 2800 to 3000 square feet with stupid huge Balloon roofs, big attics (an ugly style from the late 90s to mid 2000's)....and far too many HUGE windows no matter whether they are double or triple pane or not.

It's probably not so much that heat pumps are not quite as efficient in every locale as they should be....it's also that they are being pushed past their calculated limits. You also see this in the fact that it's common that a heat pump anymore does not last much past 7-10 years.

Ray
The installation I was referring to may well be undersized as he is heating a shop as well. I don't know how many thermowells he has but he lives in a milder part of our country where -20*C is about as cold as it gets and the frost line is in the 2 to 4 foot mark.

Where I live the frost line varies year to year at the 6 to 8 foot depth and on occasion a bit more. Temperatures of -20*C is more the winter average with a week or two at a time in the -35 to -40* range. One fellow an hour north of us just did the thermowell/heat pump thing on a new home in town. I was told he drilled 20 wells on his property to accommodate it all. I have no idea the depth but it is a pretty small lot! That would only be 5 hours north of the 49th parallel so there is a lot more of Canada that is colder and more northern than we are!

Wed Mar 05, 2025 9:07 am

You only have to go about 5-10 meters down to pick up 15-20C constant temperature and thats plenty for a geothermal

Wed Mar 05, 2025 10:05 am

heimlich wrote: zerotofifty wrote: We may run out of electricity before we run out of gasoline.

All the push for electric for homes, cars, trucks, AI servers, Meanwhile electric plants closing, while replacement plants are at best expensive and part time.. solar panels or windmills. It is a crazy world.

Come to Texas home of the greatest EV - Tesla. We have plenty of electricity and gasoline.

The electric plants closing are because of the government. We've had to deal with them closing our excellent coal plants. Lots of coal in the ground to be dug up and burned. China has 1,161 coal plants and is still building them. We need to be more competitive.

What would be the point or benefit in being more competitive in burning coal?

As to competitive in EVs....well the current administration has pretty much guaranteed Chinese supremacy in that domain for the foreseeable future as they'll be able to lower production costs and expand their markets while we back off because EVs are too woke or whatever.

Wed Mar 05, 2025 10:28 am

Koeppler wrote: heimlich wrote: zerotofifty wrote: We may run out of electricity before we run out of gasoline.

All the push for electric for homes, cars, trucks, AI servers, Meanwhile electric plants closing, while replacement plants are at best expensive and part time.. solar panels or windmills. It is a crazy world.

Come to Texas home of the greatest EV - Tesla. We have plenty of electricity and gasoline.

The electric plants closing are because of the government. We've had to deal with them closing our excellent coal plants. Lots of coal in the ground to be dug up and burned. China has 1,161 coal plants and is still building them. We need to be more competitive.

What would be the point or benefit in being more competitive in burning coal?

As to competitive in EVs....well the current administration has pretty much guaranteed Chinese supremacy in that domain for the foreseeable future as they'll be able to lower production costs and expand their markets while we back off because EVs are too woke or whatever.

Reliability is the reason. Coal is reliable. If CA doesn't want coal that is fine. But TX shouldn't be stopped from having it.

EV's should never have been pushed on the market. There should never have been subsidies. China builds a very nice EV. If it was in the USA it would cost $11,000 for sale. It has nothing to do with the current administration. China has been caused by global trade, many administrations, and cheap products.

I personally don't want to pay $7,500 for someone to buy an EV. I don't want subsidies at all, anywhere. We should not subsidize EV's or anything so a consumer can get a better deal. I wouldn't be surprised if we subsidized people to buy EV's in other countries.

Wed Mar 05, 2025 10:52 am

Koeppler wrote: well the current administration has pretty much guaranteed Chinese supremacy

um, not even close

China doesn't...and never did give 2 fucks for environmental or labor issues therefore they will always be "supreme" in terms of knocking shit out faster than we can...weather it's quality or not...them not giving a shit will always keep them "ahead"

Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:22 am

I could have sworn that I was driving behind a Tesla on the way home last night but it had a Honda emblem on it.... I can't remember seeing any new Honda's with a similar design but now I know that it was a Tesla in disguise!

The market for Aftermarket Auto OEM Logos and Emblems has just jumped.... The Tesla with the Audi emblem and other scripts almost fools ya!

"Tesla owners are finding creative ways to distance themselves from Elon Musk. They are now removing Tesla logos from their vehicles, replacing them with badging from other automakers, and even using projections on a Cybertruck in one case."

https://electrek.co/2025/03/03/tesla-owners-get-cr...rojectors/

Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:26 am

They like Tesla so much they are unwilling to sell it. So they keep it and put another name on it. Sounds to me like Tesla makes good products. It's hard to boycott a product that is made well because you don't like someone that owns a very small percentage of the company.

Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:29 am

heimlich wrote: They like Tesla so much they are unwilling to sell it. So they keep it and put another name on it. Sounds to me like Tesla makes good products. It's hard to boycott a product that is made well because you don't like someone that owns a very small percentage of the company.

...or it's their only vehicle and they don't want their Tesla vandalized before they can offload it.

Wed Mar 05, 2025 11:31 am

What's great is that Elon Musk doesn't care about boycotts. It's just wonderful to see a man stand up for his principles. I wish more people that worked at corporations would do that.

Wed Mar 05, 2025 8:01 pm

Elon is a fair weather friend at best and I trust him like a wet fart.

87 kids from 71 different women is pretty fucked up for all parties involved, especially the kids who at this point are a fuckin meal ticket to their shitbag mothers and let's face it, he ain't much of a looker.

That said, like him or not his cars are by far the 'industry standard' and at this point are pretty much unmatched.

I hope with all this budget cutting they reopen mental institutions because there are a LOT of fuckin unstable people out there

Wed Mar 05, 2025 8:25 pm

I know a few folks with teslas. they all own normal cars for use on long trips. They know the electric car is too limited for long trips.

Thu Mar 06, 2025 4:13 am

skills@eurocarsplus wrote: Elon is a fair weather friend at best and I trust him like a wet fart.

87 kids from 71 different women is pretty fucked up for all parties involved, especially the kids who at this point are a fuckin meal ticket to their shitbag mothers and let's face it, he ain't much of a looker.

That said, like him or not his cars are by far the 'industry standard' and at this point are pretty much unmatched.

I hope with all this budget cutting they reopen mental institutions because there are a LOT of fuckin unstable people out there

Musk is a complete squid whose legacy will end up a bad Wikipedia entry. Enjoy your four, Elon, nazi salutes don’t get forgotten.

I shorted Tesla and am extracting wealth ftom his pocket each day

Thu Mar 06, 2025 5:12 am

zerotofifty wrote: I know a few folks with teslas. they all own normal cars for use on long trips. They know the electric car is too limited for long trips.
I have wondered if anyone out there actually owns an EV as their only car. I believe it would be possible for those that never leave the urban bubble, those that believe the world ends at the last street light.

I saw a Tesla drive past here two days ago and I thought "Is he lost?" Pretty brave unless he has done the research on available charging stations. It would be pretty easy to run out of juice in our neck of the woods, kind of a "hop scotch" exercise. We have to be careful even with some gasoline powered cars.

Thu Mar 06, 2025 8:13 am

heimlich wrote: What's great is that Elon Musk doesn't care about boycotts. It's just wonderful to see a man stand up for his principles. I wish more people that worked at corporations would do that.

Principles like having 14 kids with 4 women?

Thu Mar 06, 2025 9:39 am

l don't see what that has got to do with principles.
you meet a woman, she wants kids, so you have kids.
it doesn't work out, you meet another she wants kids, and repeat.
AFAIK you want and hope that this is it, when you meet someone.
it's not like he's unable to support a whole country full of kids.
my reasons for believing he's an a$$ is not allowed to be written on these boards.
if l was given a tesla and told l was not allowed to sell it, l'd probably crash it.
crofty wrote:
Principles like having 14 kids with 4 women?

Thu Mar 06, 2025 9:57 am

heimlich wrote: What's great is that Elon Musk doesn't care about boycotts. It's just wonderful to see a man stand up for his principles. I wish more people that worked at corporations would do that.

Please enlighten me on the principles you admire as the only thing I can see is that every decision is driven by either the need for power or just straight out greed, basically narcissistic tendencies. But maybe I'm missing something....

Thu Mar 06, 2025 10:04 am

crofty wrote: heimlich wrote: What's great is that Elon Musk doesn't care about boycotts. It's just wonderful to see a man stand up for his principles. I wish more people that worked at corporations would do that.

Principles like having 14 kids with 4 women?

Well he could have aborted them. I am sure he can afford them. What is wrong with so many kids? We have a declining birthrate here. Need to keep the numbers up, maybe he likes to keep it up? :wink: