Interesting article about the future of gas stoves

nmassman44 · Feb 17, 2021

I have an ICD device and I had issues with the previous ICD and an induction cooktop where when I used it I had to stand away from said cooktop because the closer I got to it and if the power level was up past medium, I could could feel the energy in the leads that are screwed into my heart. The feeling is like having flutters , thats the only way to describe it, but in the heart. In 2017 I had the original ICD which was a Medtronic brand, replaced with a much updated ICD same branded one. That issue is gone. I can get near an induction cooktop with no issues at all. I can also have an MRI done with this one as well. And it does not set off metal detectors at the airport.
If one is wondering why I had the original ICD replaced was because it was installed back in 2008 and the battery was almost spent. The new ICD does alot more than I knew like mentoring water levels in the body, heart rate monitoring, pacing when needed and it has a much louder alarm that is very audible. I have the same leads that they reused because to remove the leads and replace they would have to actually do open heart surgery to remove it. Not something that I would even want to go thru and be opened like a book.

kskenmore · Feb 17, 2021

California

I'm very curious how California will solve it's electricity shortage issues going forward. They are determined to ban fossil fuel vehicles and appliances which utilize natural gas. Currently their power grid cannot support the demand in the summer time. I can't imagine how it could possibly support electric water heaters in every home, electric cars in every garage, etc when they currently cannot support the demands. The stability of their power grid will deteriorate every year going forward. Older power plants will drop offline as significant obstacles(regulatory) prevent new power plants from coming online.

Eventually cycling the grid will become the norm. I hope you were able to charge your car while it was your turn to have power, or else I guess you will be riding your bike to work.

henene4 · Feb 17, 2021

I guess one factor that I didn't think about before is that the power used in those pace makers is minute.

Your nerves "operate" in the single digit volt range and at microamps.

That comes down to fractions of a watt.

Any minor induction happening can break that barrier.

Given an induction cooker can put out over 3kW in fields, one millionth of that could be enough to cause sensation.

maytag85 · Feb 17, 2021

Our power grid has enough strain on it and doesn’t anymore here in California. Banning natural gas will simply put more strain since there will be more electric homes with 240 volt appliances that will be pulling a ton of power, and when you have millions of homes pulling a ton of power it will overload the grid and will cause blackouts to last for at least a few days. Banning natural gas will solve one problem but create 20 more in its place which isn’t solving anything at all.

cornutt · Feb 17, 2021

'California officially has a war on natural gas and that includes HVAC systems."

The ironic thing, which a lot of people don't understand, is that the electric power for the devices that they wan to replace them with is largely generated by burning natural gas. So now, they are burning gas to generate steam to spin a turbine to drive a generator to create power to transmit through maybe hundreds of miles of transmission line and several transformers, incurring losses every step of the way. It's more efficient to just send the gas to where it's used. The only thing that will make all-electric work, from an environmental standpoint, is nukes, and lots of them. Yet nearly every nation in the Western hemisphere is moving away from nukes and towards more baseline power generation using fossil fuels.

earthling177 · Feb 18, 2021

OK, let's introduce a few things that, for decades, we never heard people talk about because the "industry" likes to make a profit.

 

First off, people are very fond of talking about the transmission losses of electricity, which is fair, there are transmission losses. But, if we are going to talk about efficiency, which is also very fair, we need to talk about efficiency for everything. Gas does not show up at our doorstep unaided. In fact, pumping gas is way less efficient than people like to think about and one of the reasons why electricity became so common to power up machines.

 

Either we talk about how gas is "so efficient" at the point of use and we do the same for electricity, or we talk about "total cost" as it were.

 

But, if we are going to talk just "at point of use", we get into another problem: it's rare that we can use gas to heat up stuff without a lot of losses, because we need to remove the products of combustion -- for example, even though we use most of the heat of combustion in a clothes dryer (which is not true for example for a stovetop, where it's common to find out the flame under the pot transmits just a tad over half the output to the pot) the clothes dryer will exhaust about 200 cu ft of air per minute (if I remember correctly), which will need to be either heated or cooled when it's winter in the North or Summer in the South. That, also, has costs. (I'll tell you a secret, people don't like to talk about that because electric dryers also exhaust about the same amount of air unless they are condensation dryers or heat pump dryers.)

 

Let's talk about the point of origin. Most new gas-powered power plants use a gas turbo-fan engine, which is way more efficient than the older "boil the water to power the steam turbine". On the other hand, even though gas turbo-fan engines are much more efficient than regular internal combustion engines, we don't see pumping stations to boost the gas pressure along the way, or to pump gas around town using turbo-fans, they usually use internal combustion engines, which have the often-quoted "less than 33% efficiency". Not exactly sure why, but I'd be willing to bet we have old solutions to regulate the speed of the internal combustion engines, but turbo-fans are either less accurate or more expensive to regulate.

 

Then there's another wrinkle -- people like clean air and clean water, it keeps them from getting sick too often.

Pumping gas to my neighborhood (which I approve of, they had no trouble convincing me to give up a gas range, but I still have a gas fireplace, a gas water heater and a forced-air furnace that burns gas) causes two problems, the first one is that my equipment is way less efficient than the power plant gas turbo-fan engines, and also their installation happens to have the best pollution control the government can make them adopt, while my home just dumps all the pollution in the neighborhood air, which causes the nearby community to suffer much more than a well regulated power plant which can be farther from the city, and the second major problem, which one doesn't hear too much (I seem to be one of the only 2-3 people to ever mention it here, for example) is that methane is a greenhouse gas and pumping gas for home use causes a lot of leaking methane -- even when no one worried about greenhouse effects and pollution by "natural gas" back in the 50's or so, the gas companies still sent their little vans around to sniff for gas leaks -- first, because it eats into their profits by not being able to sell it to the end user, and second, because if a lot of it enters the basements of buildings, it has a nasty habit of exploding, just ask the folks in a building in the Back Bay here in Boston what happened to them in the mid-90's, for example.

 

Meanwhile, producing electricity has become more decentralized and cheaper over the decades -- new solar panels, for example, produce clean electricity for your home. It's still not cheap enough to produce everything your home needs, so you still need a grid, but it's getting better.

 

And then, there are news like this one, which appeared multiple times over the years in a bunch of places like the New York Times, Business Insider etc.

«People in Germany essentially got paid to use electricity on Christmas. Electricity prices in the country went negative for many customers — as in, below zero — on Sunday and Monday, because the country's supply of clean, renewable power actually outstripped demand, according to The New York Times.Dec 29, 2017»

Maybe people in Europe can confirm or deny that for us, y'know, we've been told over the past 5-ish years that there were so many cases of "fake news" and I have not had the chance to fact-check yet. (Link below, in the share box, Business Insider)

 

More links, this one from 2016, Fortune Magazine: https://fortune.com/2016/05/11/germany-excess-power/

 

May 2020, GreenTech Media: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/germanys-stressed-grid-is-causing-trouble-across-europe

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vacerator · Feb 18, 2021

Dave's 8.2 Litre

cast iron V8 powered land yagt got an avg. m.p.g. of 8 or 9 in the real world. Maybe 12 or 12 cruising at 55. Any gas appliance is and was more efficient.

maytag85 · Feb 18, 2021

Natural gas appliances are still more efficient but sadly there are people who won’t agree with that. Still miles cheaper to use natural gas here in Southern California.

foraloysius · Feb 18, 2021

Efficiency is not always the best reason to choose an appliance. ;-)

twintubdexter · Feb 18, 2021

Maytag 85

You got that right by 100%.

sarahperdue · Feb 18, 2021

Location, location, location

I'm generalizing so please correct me where I'm wrong, but it seems like appliance regulation standards are nationwide despite the fact that different areas have different resources and needs.

For example, it makes sense for dish and clothes washers to use less water and more power in drought prone areas. But here in Alabama where water is plentiful and much of our electric power is still generated by coal fired plants, it seems to make sense to have appliances that use more water and less power. Our Bosch dishwasher is a water miser with a regular cycle of 2 hours and 9 minutes.

Again, natural gas might be a better choice in areas with less population density or served by a coal fired power grid while electricity is better for densely populated areas that have air quality issues and areas that are moving towards zero carbon electric power. I think the same goes for electric cars.

I'm pretty OK with the dishwasher because the Bosch cleans like a boss! But I could be extremely biased when it comes to the clothes washing machine. I've seen a low water front loader at work. The thought of my clothes being repeatedly sloshed through 5 inches of water is disgusting. I'll stick with my water hogging Speed Queen, thank you very much.

Sarah

bradfordwhite · Feb 18, 2021

#13

"...Berkley has become the first city in California to ban natural gas in its new structures beginning in 2019."

That's good news. Excellent news.

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#23 "So now, they are burning gas to generate steam to spin a turbine to drive a generator to create power to transmit"

That is certainly better because the gas is not inside the home and

a residential gas pipe system is not installed in a neighborhood AND

it's much cheaper and easier to install one large commercial site like a power plant AND

a commecial operator has other safety precautions on site in the event of an leak or explosion so few lives will be affected.

The U.S. had the electric grid Before it had the gas grid. Also, the electric grid is more important than a gas grid.

If they had just focused on making gas power plants from the beginning(and other commecial installations) and NOT installing gas residentially, we'd all be better off.

There is no way I will live with gas in my home or near my home again.

If I bought a property with gas lines on it all gas appliances would be removed, the lines removed, and I would have the gas company remove the lateral. Then install heavy insulation, baseboard heating, and solar electric.

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What's Calif. going to do now that gas is on the outs? All new homes are required to have a solar array installed. Also, the new electric code requires all new homes to have at least one electric car plug in the garage. AWESOME !

Get rid of that stinky, dangerous gas. Just as previous generations have moved in, got rid of the horses and wagon, ditched the fireplace and coal, got rid of the asbestos octopus in the basement, stopped lighting their homes with candles, ....we continue the evolution.

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jamiel · Feb 18, 2021

Sarah, the situation is that you're in effect sentencing people to polluted home environments and multiplying the point sources by encouraging gas.

mattl · Feb 18, 2021

It's funny what makes us cringe. Some here have outright hatred for gas, for me the thought of electric baseboards makes me want to run in the opposite direction. Could not comprehend what it would cost to heat a large home.Gas for me is cheap cheap cheap compared to electric and even water. I am totally comfortable with my forced air heat -properly done. I like my gas cooktop but if not for cost would be amenable to induction, never conventional electric.

The solution for national energy plans will have to include all forms of energy as long as it's clean. Gas can power turbines and still be clean, and wind can wwork well in the cold - both just need to be properly designed and installed.

bradfordwhite · Feb 18, 2021

Matt I'm curious, you stated "...electric baseboards makes me want to run in the opposite direction. Could not comprehend what it would cost to heat a large home..."

Is it correct to say that the electric baseboards have you thinking of other alternatives because of the cost to use them?

Or is there something about the baseboard heaters themselves that you have an issue with?

If it cost half as much to use electric baseboards and get the same amount of heat you'd get from using gas, would you then want to use the electric baseboards?

It's certainly fair to be concerned about monthly costs. We all have to deal with.

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For me and an increasing number of other people, I know that in some regions, gas heat would be cheaper per thermal unit compared to electric.

For that matter burning scrap wood or coal may well be cheaper than either gas or electric, per thermal unit.

But I don't want any of those combustible heating types. That's based on safety concerns, pollution, indoor mess, indoor air quality, noise from equipment used to incinerate, and the hassle to maintain.

With electric just turn on a switch or thermostat and you have clean, quiet heat, indefinitely.

100% efficient too. I get all my moneys worth, nothing goes out a chimney.

No filters to change, no fan vibrating annoyingly, no heat exchanger to crack and leak poisonous gases in the house, no starter mechanism to fail in the middle of the night, no expensive computer control board to short out.

All these repair costs are just that. They are costs and it's not unusual for them to be thousands of dollars depending on what you can fix yourself.

Those costs COUNT.

earthling177 · Feb 18, 2021

«Natural gas appliances are still more efficient but sadly there are people who won’t agree with that. Still miles cheaper to use natural gas here in Southern California.»

People need to keep in mind that efficiency and cost are two completely different and independent things.

Something can be 100% efficient and more expensive, something may be very cheap and less than 30% efficient.

Just as one small example, it used to be very cheap to run a car engine which did less than 10 miles per gallon. Those engines were way less than 30% efficient, but sufficiently cheap to run no one cared. New engines produce either way more power for the same amount of fuel, or use way less fuel for the same amount of power, thus being cheaper to run. When fuel went from less than 50 cents per gallon to way more than 2 dollars per gallon, people noticed and it made a huge difference, and right now most people are in favor of more efficient stuff instead of just "eh, it's cheap to run".

That's to say nothing about how some things are very counter-intuitive to begin with: electricity, currently (no pun intended), is more expensive than natural gas, or gasoline, but it's still cheaper to run many electric cars because they can do stuff that a lot of vehicles powered only by fossil fuel can not do, like use a generator to brake the car and store the energy for future use. Some people, who are even luckier, get nearly free electricity from their solar panels too, so the costs drops even further.

Please, please, please, stop using cost in place of efficiency because after all the lies and half-truths we've heard in the last 5-ish years or so, people will stop taking you seriously if you conflate the two, or, worse, keep substituting cost for efficiency.

That's not how physics (or chemistry, or engineering etc) work.

Thank you.

earthling177 · Feb 18, 2021

«I'm generalizing so please correct me where I'm wrong, but it seems like appliance regulation standards are nationwide despite the fact that different areas have different resources and needs. »

The problem with "localized" codes is different for farms, suburbs, cities, which can (and probably should) take into consideration local climate and resources availability, as opposed to manufacturing, where economies of scale make things much different.

It's not economically viable to produce just a few cars, for example, for California, which needs a much more stringent pollution control than, say, Massachusetts, and even MA needs a better pollution control than some random sparsely populated place like Wyoming or Montana.

This is one of the reasons that cars, washing machines, computers etc are getting more efficient, and even if that's not the most important thing for people who live in places with more/cheaper resources, it benefits the entire nation (and the planet too) for everyone.

I, for one, appreciate the fact that I can have more efficient equipment and save my dollars for retirement because people in other places needed it more than I did.

Please note, just because an appliance takes longer to complete a task, it doesn't mean it uses more power. In fact, in using less water, for example, clothes washers and dishwashers actually cut the amount of power they use way down.

Heating the water is the most expensive thing washers need energy for, so, cut the water usage in half, you cut the energy use in half.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the motors for newer more efficient washers are also less powerful than the older systems, so, even if the wash cycle takes longer, it still uses way less energy.

earthling177 · Feb 18, 2021

«It's funny what makes us cringe. Some here have outright hatred for gas, for me the thought of electric baseboards makes me want to run in the opposite direction. Could not comprehend what it would cost to heat a large home.Gas for me is cheap cheap cheap compared to electric and even water.»

I can't speak for others, but I do not have a hatred for gas. I specifically chose a home to buy/move into because it was connected to the gas piping in a neighborhood that was long established and had it for decades.

I just happen to think that science is important, and we should use it to our advantage.

Just like pumping water around (which I like and approve of, I like running water being available, I also chose my home location because it was also connected to water and sewage and I wouldn't have to deal with a well or a septic system) is expensive and energy-intensive, pumping gas is not free, it takes a lot of energy to do.

So, all things considered, what stops people from using natural gas and start doing things with electricity is the cost not anything else. If aliens landed on Earth tomorrow and gave us free clean "blue energy" like they say in Sci-Fi books/movies/TV, we'd drop fossil fuels faster than the proverbial hot potato.

Another thing stopping energy-efficient homes is banks/financing. It's very hard to finance building a home which is extremely energy-efficient, because bankers get leery of places which do not need a heating plant, for example.

There are homes which are essentially capable of getting all the heat they need in the coldest time of winter by turning on a hair dryer, they literally need less than 1,800W to stay at 70F/21C even when at -40F/-40C outside. They couldn't get financed, so the owner just added a furnace to the home to pacify the bankers -- it rarely turns on, which they don't mind because then they don't need to turn on a hair dryer or space heater, which are way less safe.

Things are improving a bit because places like Denmark, Germany, Netherlands etc gave a huge incentive for net-zero homes and now whatever they call homes that generate more energy than they use ("net-positive"? "positive energy"?) are making the concept more popular but we need to change some regulations to banking if we want to see change for the better in this area too.

A long time ago, people were quick to say that installing more insulation in their homes was not a "good investment", because they had quick/cheap access to fuel, but that is not true anymore -- not only we know that fuel is now a significant expense, but we also know that when we burn fuel at home (as opposed to a "centralized" plant which has expensive pollution control) we spread products of combustion which are harmful to ourselves and our neighbors. Even when it looks "clean burning" with a "well tuned blue flame", gases still get produced which are harmful.

While I'm very sensitive to the cost (we do not have endless amounts of money, and we'll need to save for retirement, for example) I'm also all for making things better for everyone else too, because the folks who make less money than we do also deserve a good life and a healthy life.

mattl · Feb 18, 2021

My aversion to electric baseboard heat is simply the cost. My gas forced air heat is great. I have 95%+ furnace, variable speed blower, my thermostat circulates the air every 15--20 minutes so I have no cold spots in the house. I used to do continuous circulation but found the intermittent method work almost as well at lower energy cost.

Cost-wise without heat- using summer as a base line- I pay about $20/m for gas. That is for my gas water heater set to a high temp, gas dryer, gas cooktop and gas grill. I do not believe I could get anywhere near that cost with electric appliances.

I feel lucky to have a very stable utility service. Rare to have an electrical outage, gas never goes out. and when there is a problem it's quickly resolved. Perfect -no. but better than many areas of the country.

maytag85 · Feb 18, 2021

Reply #34

Didn’t ask for a reply. Thank you.

Interesting article about the future of gas stoves

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