[HN Gopher] Heat pump sales outpaced gas furnace sales in the US...
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Heat pump sales outpaced gas furnace sales in the US in 2022
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 176 points
Date : 2023-03-31 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (electrek.co)
(TXT) w3m dump (electrek.co)
| jonatron wrote:
| I'm in the UK, and got an air-to-air heat pump (more commonly
| known as air conditioning). It made sense because of extremely
| high electricity prices, and I have an insulated house without
| gas, electric only. There's a lot of houses / flats similar to
| mine, that could switch from resistive to heat pump heating.
| Unfortunately, the government are focusing on very expensive
| retrofitting of air-to-water heat pumps in older uninsulated
| houses, which doesn't make a lot of sense.
| jansan wrote:
| I was not aware until recently that most air conditionings can
| produce heat really efficiently. For hot water, efficiency is
| quite low, so using a simple air conditioning for room heating
| combined with an electric boiler for shower water would achieve
| a lot at quite reasonable price.
| jonatron wrote:
| It's air to air, so it's for heating air only. I still use
| resistive heating for hot water.
| davidw wrote:
| I have been asking about this locally, here in Oregon, and it
| seems that in the US we're _likely_ to get some financial
| incentives. But nothing seems sure yet. Anyone here happen to
| know anything?
| mkozlows wrote:
| There are incentives in the IRA, but (except for ground-source,
| which is a straight up 30% uncapped tax rebate), they're
| limited by income and capped to certain dollar amounts.
| jdeibele wrote:
| https://www.energytrust.org/residential/incentives/furnace-a...
|
| Some of the incentives may be limited if you have too much
| income.
|
| I was able to get the latest Ecobee thermostat for $90 instead
| of the list price of $250.
|
| Fortunately or unfortunately, I started reading about how 3rd
| party thermostats can't talk to multi-stage furnaces or air
| handlers except in very blunt increments. Maybe as blunt as on
| or off. Each manufacturer has their own, undocumented protocol
| for doing fine adjustments. I tried running the fan all the
| time (now I do 10 minutes every hour) and it was quite
| expensive for that month. Anyway, I'm hesitating about putting
| in the nice Ecobee thermostat because it could conceivably cost
| quite a bit more in electricity.
| ben7799 wrote:
| We have had them here in Massachusetts for a while.
| $10,000-15,000 rebate depending on what the house requires.
| rainsford wrote:
| Oregon seems like a perfect use-case for heat pumps. It has a
| lot of renewable energy and relatively mild winter temperatures
| (at least near the coast where most of the people live), two
| things that make heat pumps a lot greener of a solution than
| natural gas heating.
| jandrese wrote:
| I recently learned from an NPR piece that only about 13% of US
| households have a heat pump.
|
| This floored me. One because in my mid Atlantic area nearly every
| house has a heat pump. When house shopping many years ago we
| never saw a listing that didn't have one.
|
| The other is that if you have central air then it seems like you
| should have a heat pump. You're basically just running the heat
| pump backwards to provide heat instead of air conditioning, but
| apparently the vast majority of central air installs are only set
| up to do cooling? This makes no sense to me. Even if you area
| gets too cold to be efficiently warmed by a heat pump in the
| winter you can still use it for several months out of the year
| and switch to gas only when you need to. It's not like gas is
| especially cheap.
| imglorp wrote:
| Misaligned incentives. A traditional furnace is a bunch of
| sheet metal, a burner, a fan, and a thermostat and that's it.
| Sold for thousands, it seems like enormous, criminal markup. Of
| course they'll keep selling that and price it less than heat
| pumps, which have an actual complex closed loop coolant system
| in addition to what a furnace has.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.rewiringamerica.org/ira-fact-sheets
|
| Progress is being made.
|
| > The 25C and 25D tax credits incentivize household
| electrification by lowering the total cost of qualified
| electrification upgrades. 25C provides a capped 30 percent
| tax credit for heat pumps, heat pump water heaters (HPWHs),
| qualifying electrical panel upgrades, select weatherization
| measures, and energy audits. For the first time, air source
| heat pumps for space heating/cooling and HPWHs will be
| eligible for a tax credit of up to $2,000 per year, and
| electrical panel upgrades installed in conjunction with a
| heat pump or HPWH will be eligible for a tax credit of up to
| $600.
| mrexroad wrote:
| Yep, grew up in that area in a house w/ a heat pump. However it
| also had oil furnace (aka diesel) to supplement as it'd get
| down in the teens during coldest parts of winter. Also stacked,
| dried, carried in and burned a fair amount of firewood growing
| up.
| vanilla_nut wrote:
| There are a lot of US households on places like New England and
| the Midwest where historically very very few houses have
| central air and most have a furnace running on oil, propane, or
| natural gas. The upgrade path is hard there: do you accept the
| multiple thousands of dollars to install a heat pump _on top_
| of your existing heating solution? For the couple of fringe
| months where a heat pump can actually heat your house, and the
| extra cost of cooling in the summer (money many don 't have)?
|
| It probably makes a lot of sense to just switch to a heat pump
| if you live in the south these days and give up any backup
| heating system entirely. But it is worth noting that only in
| the past 5 years or so did we finally get heat pumps that
| didn't totally suck at 0C. Until then, it made sense for even a
| lot of Southern households to stick with backup furnace +
| central air, assuming they already sunk money into the backup
| furnace for the 5 days a year they actually need it.
| jandrese wrote:
| Heat pumps have always had a built-in resistive heating
| element as a backup option for when it gets too cold out.
| This is terribly energy inefficient, but if you're talking
| about a few days a year at most it is fine, no need to
| install a second heat source.
|
| Besides, 0C is far too conservative an estimate for heat
| pumps. -10C was no problem even for 30 year old units.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Heat pumps have always had a built-in resistive heating
| element as a backup option for when it gets too cold out.
| This is terribly energy inefficient, but if you 're talking
| about a few days a year at most it is fine,_
|
| Won't it be a problem if heating becomes much less
| efficient across an entire city, just as demand for heat is
| at its highest?
| bbatha wrote:
| Counter anecdote. I just bought a house in the mid atlantic and
| 0 of the houses I looked at have a heat pump.
|
| > The other is that if you have central air then it seems like
| you should have a heat pump. You're basically just running the
| heat pump backwards to provide heat instead of air
| conditioning,
|
| These days sure. But the cold weather compatible heat pumps are
| relatively new, electricity was and still is a whole lot more
| expensive than gas, running it as both an air conditioner
| decreases its overall life span, and finally a dedicated air
| conditioner can be more energy efficient especially on older
| models.
| jandrese wrote:
| When I was a kid in the 80s my house had an electric heat
| pump and the aux (resistive) heater coil didn't kick on until
| about 0F (-18C). You could tell because it smelled a bit when
| it happened, which was pretty rare. I guess it probably
| kicked in some more times overnight and I didn't notice, but
| overall the heat pump did the lion's share of the work.
|
| Heat pumps have become much more efficient since then. I
| replaced an old and rusty unit on my first townhouse and cut
| the electric bill by $100-$200/month in the middle of summer
| and dead of winter.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Natural Gas heating is surprisingly good in practice,
| especially in the days where we only had fossil fuels on our
| electricity grid.
|
| If you go fossil fuel, you have only 40% efficiency for Fossil
| Fuel -> Electricity, then Electricity -> Traditional heat is
| only 100% efficient. So 100W of chemical energy turns into 40W
| of electricity, and then turns into 40W of heating.
|
| ---------
|
| Today, a Heat Pump can be like 200% efficient, so you 100W of
| chemical energy turns into 40W of electricity, then turns into
| 80W of heating from the heat pump.
|
| Alas, a Gas Furnace is like 90% efficient (10% of the heat
| escapes in the steam / waste products that needs to be pushed
| out the chimney, but everything else turns into home heating).
| So your 100W of chemical energy turns into 90W of heating, and
| you're done. And that's why our infrastructure in the USA is so
| much around gas heating, because its better. Especially since
| we are very rich in domestic natural gas production.
|
| Yeah, we're getting to the point where Heat Pumps + Solar
| Electricity are coming. But... we're not there yet. On today's
| grid, Natural Gas heating is likely the most efficient option.
|
| EDIT: Got my units wrong. It should be 100J of energy, not 100W
| of energy. Watts are power. Though in USA, we don't use Joules
| for energy, but instead "BTUs". Whatevs.... I think my point is
| still clear :-)
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| But having a furnace means you also have central air. So the
| question isn't furnace or heat pump, it's furnace and one
| directional heat pump or just a heat pump. Yes, on cold days
| the furnace will be cheaper, but on most days the heat pump
| is cheaper and requires less maintenance since you're turning
| two appliances into one.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Many places in heating-dominated climates do not have
| central air.
| nfriedly wrote:
| FWIW, modern heat pumps can exceed 400% efficiency, so the
| math is starting to work out in their favor even for fossil
| fuels burned at a power plant.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| You lose a lot of heat due to improper insulation or in the
| case of northern california, no insulation whatsoever.
| cobertos wrote:
| > Alas, a Gas Furnace is like 90% efficient (10% of the heat
| escapes in the steam / waste products that needs to be pushed
| out the chimney, but everything else turns into home
| heating).
|
| And there exists even more efficient options today. Like high
| efficiency furnaces that use the heat from the flue in a
| second heat exchanger to bring it closer to 99%
| rainsford wrote:
| You're at the low end for heat pump efficiency, but more
| importantly, you're overlooking the fact that the fossil fuel
| usage of heat pumps benefits from the ability to use
| electricity generated by non-fossil fuel sources. In the US
| that's a significant fraction of electricity generation and
| in many places it's the majority of electricity. The ability
| to combine the electricity produced by chemical energy with
| nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, etc, gives heat pumps an
| significant advantage over directly burning fossil fuel for
| heat if what you care about is fossil fuel usage.
| xxpor wrote:
| >Today, a Heat Pump can be like 200% efficient, so you 100W
| of chemical energy turns into 40W of electricity, then turns
| into 80W of heating from the heat pump.
|
| This isn't true today. The absolute minimum COP is 3.1 in the
| US.
|
| https://www.pickhvac.com/heat-pump/basics/cop/
| ericpauley wrote:
| This appears to be the minimum for geothermal. The vast
| majority of heat pump installs would be air source, and
| while these can often get 3+ it's highly dependent on
| climate and local grid efficiency.
|
| It also depends on local prices. In Madison, WI our implied
| (not actual) electric grid efficiency based on prices is
| under 20%.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| You will not get the COP of 3 during most of the winter in
| the interior US with an air source heat pump. Their
| efficiency go down significantly once the temperature is
| below freezing, due to required thawing cycles, and because
| the bigger delta between inside and outside temperatures
| reduces pumping efficiency in general (efficiency is best
| when outside is not much colder than inside).
|
| Air source heat pumps are really good tech overall,
| especially because they also double up as AC in summer.
| However, in winter, in a head to head comparison, they only
| handily win in areas with mild climate, like eg. all west,
| or much of southern US. In the northwest or midwest, they
| are unlikely to beat efficient gas furnaces.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Not for air source.
|
| Source: your link.
|
| Air source heat pumps are a lot easier, so they are the
| majority of installs.
|
| I expect the national code doesn't give a minimum COP for
| air source because the performance changes with air
| temperature. The bulk of my heating cost occurs when it is
| 10-20 0F outside, where someone located in a warmer spot
| might have most of their heating at 35-45 or whatever.
| kevstev wrote:
| I'm in NJ just west of Manhattan and I could not make the
| numbers work at all. I have averaged about $1.05 a therm for
| gas and my heat bills are very low even in Jan/Feb. On the
| other hand I pay 16.5 cents /kwh for electric.
|
| I ran the numbers through a spreadsheet and I would be paying
| an extra $100 a month for heat and an initial cost of 10k more
| for the install, and the ac side would have a slightly lower
| seer than the best ac systems available.
|
| I would need a COP of 5 for a heat pump to be more efficient.
| They don't exist for air source. I live in a
| brownstone/townhouse and while geothermal is theoretically
| feasible ( I have a small yard) I called every installer I
| could find in the tristate and none would attempt it.
|
| I was immensely disappointed but I cant be paying more upfront
| and ongoing. If I had solar it would be a bit better but last
| time I attempted it I only got 2 bids out of the 30 installers
| I called and then COVID hit. The numbers weren't especially
| encouraging. I can't get that many panels on my roof due to
| firecodes.
| surfmike wrote:
| If only someone made a good thermostat for them. Nest and Ecobee
| integration doesn't work very well since they need to go through
| a two-stage controller interface.
| rthomas6 wrote:
| I am using an Ecobee thermostat with a heat pump and it is
| working, for both heating and cooling. Is it doing something
| inefficient or wrong? What am I missing out on?
|
| Edit: Ecobee says they support heat pumps.
| https://support.ecobee.com/s/articles/What-types-of-HVAC-sys...
| cpncrunch wrote:
| Comfortnet works pretty well, and I can control it via an app.
| nfriedly wrote:
| I use a Nest thermostat with a 2-stage ground sourced heat pump
| (a.k.a. geothermal) that also has backup resistive heating. It
| works perfectly fine. It will run a single stage most of the
| time, or both stages if it's trying to change the temperature
| by more than a couple of degrees.
|
| I have mine set to treat the resistive heating as emergency
| backup, but I believe I could also configure it to treat it as
| a third stage and run it automatically.
| jmcphers wrote:
| I very nearly bought a heat pump for my house to replace (or
| augment) my natural gas furnace, but was dissuaded by the
| salesperson.
|
| He who pointed out that, while heat pumps are miracles of
| efficiency, the electricity in my area is primarily generated by
| burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. Due to
| transmission losses, it is cheaper, efficient, and greener to
| combust natural gas for warmth directly than to burn it at a
| power plant, feed the power into the grid, and use grid power to
| run a heat pump.
|
| Of course, running a heat pump allows you to take advantage of
| greener power sources when they become available, but his claim
| was that in a lot of places they don't really benefit the
| environment right now. Anyone have any numbers to back this up or
| refute it?
| maccard wrote:
| > Anyone have any numbers to back this up or refute it?
|
| Don't know where you are, but here in the UK right now the
| split is 34% wind, 29% gas, remaining <other> [0]. If you
| migrated from a modern condensing boiler with 90% efficiency to
| a heat pump with 300% efficiency (1 unit of electricity outputs
| 3 units of heat), then with the gas condensing boiler you're
| getting 0.9 units of heat per unit of gas, and with a heat pump
| you're getting 0.87 units of heat per unit of gas, _plus_ 1
| unit of heat from wind.
|
| Over the last year, the _majority_ of the time the split in
| generation sources looks like this. It's occasionly heavier on
| gas, but for 11 months of the year, it's a no brainer, and I
| don't think that outdoes the 1-2 weeks per year that you're
| using an almost equivalent amount of gas.
|
| [0] https://grid.iamkate.com/
| rainsford wrote:
| Whether or not that's true for your particular situation is
| going to be very location dependent, but I think the
| salesperson is fairly wrong in the general case in the US.
| Fossil fuel generation accounts for about 60% of US electricity
| and natural gas electricity generation is around 50% efficient.
| Another 5-10% is lost due to transmission, so say around 40% of
| the energy potential of a natural gas power plant makes its way
| to your house as electricity. Combine those and it means that
| every 1Wh of electrical energy generated takes the equivalent
| of 1.5Wh worth of natural gas.
|
| That doesn't sound particularly good, since new natural gas
| furnaces can be around 90% efficient, meaning that same 1.5Wh
| of natural gas could produce 1.35Wh worth of heating. Except
| heat pumps have an efficiency of around 2.5-3, meaning for
| every 1Wh of electrical energy they consume, they produce
| 2.5-3Wh worth of heat. That means producing 3Wh worth of heat
| with a heat pump consumes 1.5Wh worth of natural gas in the
| standard US electrical energy mix. Getting that same 3Wh worth
| of heat directly from a natural gas furnace would take over
| twice the amount of natural gas. Even if your electricity
| generation is 100% natural gas, the heat pump would be very
| competitive with natural gas.
|
| Now if you live in an area that gets really cold (meaning heat
| pump efficiency on average is lower) and all your electricity
| is generated by an old coal power plant (which is less
| efficient and dirtier), natural gas heating may actually be a
| greener option for now. But on average that's not the case and
| many places in the US have much better green fundamentals for
| heat pumps thanks to mild temperatures and/or lots of non-
| fossil fuel energy generation.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > natural gas electricity generation is around 50% efficient
|
| The real number is far lower for the majority of power plants
| using simple/single-cycle turbines which end up somewhere
| between 32% and 38% [1]. Combined-cycle can go up to 60%, CHP
| (heat and power) can be up to 80% efficient.
|
| [1] https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-
| plants/72369-comp...
| jeffbee wrote:
| Doesn't sound like this person is educated in thermodynamics.
| Which is why the law needs to step in and just outlaw or tax
| mineral gas appliances. Letting some petro-poisoned goof talk
| citizens out of buying electric heat pumps is suboptimal.
| ben7799 wrote:
| He's probably ignoring the externalities like the gas leaks on
| the way to your house or the power plant being able to have a
| huge scrubber that reduces emissions compared to what you can
| have at your house.
|
| The most important reason is there was probably a financial
| incentive from the manufacturer of the gas/oil furnace that
| made it more profitable for him to sell you that.
|
| Here we have such a massive state rebate on heat pumps, you
| have to literally have a lot of money and politics that equate
| to having your head up your backside to get a new gas/oil
| furnace. It's larger than an EV rebate and a much higher % of
| the total cost so you'd have to have a really good reason to
| stick with fossil fuels.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| > He's probably ignoring the externalities like the gas leaks
| on the way to your house
|
| Where I live (Sweden) and come from (the Netherlands) gas
| leaks tend to get fixed since they are both costly as well as
| dangerous. Let's assume that this is not a real issue unless
| you have some data which points out the opposite.
|
| > the power plant being able to have a huge scrubber that
| reduces emissions
|
| We're not talking about heating a house using coal - which is
| where those scrubbers come in - but with gas. Gas fired power
| plants do not need scrubbers since they do not produce fly
| ash or sulphurous oxides, nor do gas-fired heaters.
|
| Total systems efficiency for a single-cycle gas-fired power
| plant lies between 32% to 38% for simple cycle gas turbines,
| most of those in the USA are closer to the first number.
| Combined cycle gas/steam turbines can run at up to 60% total
| efficiency which is about as high as it is possible to get
| using a thermal power generator [1]. The efficiency of gas-
| fired heaters lies somewhere between 70% and 95% or more, the
| upper range is common here in Europe. A good indicator for
| the efficiency is the fact that these appliances often use
| plastic flue pipes which is made possible by the fact that
| flue gas temperatures lie below 70degC. The effective COP for
| air/air heat pumps is highly dependent on the temperature
| difference between the hot and cold side, the colder it is
| outside the lower the efficiency. I don't know where the
| original poster lives so it is hard to calculate the expected
| efficiency. If it is anywhere where the temperature goes down
| below zero (Celcius) it is more than likely that the salesman
| was right since the effective COP ends up below 2 - and goes
| down to 1 or lower around -15degC to -30degC (depending on
| the model heat pump used, the amount of moisture in the air
| (moist air condenses and freezes on the evaporator which
| requires a thaw cycle which markedly lowers the efficiency).
|
| [1] https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power-
| plants/72369-comp...
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| > Let's assume that this is not a real issue unless you
| have some data which points out the opposite.
|
| US-wide estimates are 1.4% and recent studies suggest as
| high as 9% in tested areas.
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/2022/03/24/methane-leaks-much-
| wors...
| the_third_wave wrote:
| OK, those are production leaks, not transport leaks. I
| don't know how high production leaks are here in Europe
| but I assume them to be lower due to stringent rules.
| There is also quite a bit of natural methane leakage from
| swamps, wetlands and other similar sources as well as
| from agriculture. ESA has a satellite which can measure
| this [1], it shows methane leakage from landfills can
| also be quite large [2].
|
| [1] https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/
| Coperni...
|
| [2] https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/
| Satelli...
| pinkorchid wrote:
| All those leaks contribute to the externalities of
| natural gas. I don't know the relative contributions
| between extraction and distribution, but leaks in the
| distribution network are also a problem in Europe [1].
| It's certainly true that extraction leaks can be so
| substantial as to make shale gas worse than coal [2]
| (twice worse over 20 years!).
|
| Landfills (and agriculture) are big sources of methane. I
| think this is a pretty good start to figure out what the
| EU is doing to reduce all sources [3].
|
| [1] https://www.uu.nl/en/publication/scientists-discover-
| more-me... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/
| s10584-011-0061-5 [3]
| https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-
| releases/2022...
| mywittyname wrote:
| The USEPA claims about 1.4-2.3% of natural gas is lost to
| leaks [0].
|
| American is full of leaky gas pipelines. It's one of the
| major reasons people oppose to large gas pipelines going
| near where they live: they are an ecological disaster
| waiting to happen.
|
| [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-u-s-natural-
| gas-ind...
| jtchang wrote:
| What state?
| fghorow wrote:
| Not to mention the Carnot efficiency losses causing ~50-70% of
| the heat energy at the generator to go out its cooling system.
|
| Yes, It's not clear at all that heat pumps are always a win --
| depending on the energy source mix of your local grid. But with
| a COP of 3-4 (i.e. 3-4 times more heat is moved by the pump
| than is supplied as electrical energy) if there's a decent
| renewable contribution to electrical generation on your local
| grid, it might well be a win in terms of CO2 emissions. YMMV.
| kibwen wrote:
| Keep in mind that gas infrastructure is leaky, which means that
| between two to seven percent of the gas that is pumped to your
| home is lost to the atmosphere before it arrives (depending on
| the age and maintenance status of the gas pipes in your area).
| Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and this leakage can
| easily tip the scales back in favor of heat pumps, even with
| electric transmission losses.
| colechristensen wrote:
| But does it leak in a dose-dependent way?
|
| Is there a marginal increase in leakage if you pick a gas
| furnace over an electric heat pump?
| MrFoof wrote:
| The salesman could very well be correct. The reality is the
| numbers are incredibly contextual relative to specifically
| where you live.
|
| A great example of this exercise was Harry Metcalfe actually
| doing the digging and the math to attempt to objectively
| measure his impact, and whether an EV or PHEV made sense as a
| daily given where he specifically lives in the UK is primarily
| powered by coal: https://youtu.be/k15n6QAe8cE
|
| For him, right now, PHEV was lower impact, but he makes it
| clear that that will very likely change over time, and that if
| he lived elsewhere, he likely would've went EV.
|
| - - - - -
|
| This is a classic example of, "it depends." If you live in an
| era with lots of sustainable energy, it's likely a no brainer,
| but the math changes if you lived in an area powered by a lot
| of natural gas, or around Appalachia which is still
| predominantly coal. To answer the question, you have to get the
| information and do the math to understand what decision you
| want to make, given your requirements and goals.
|
| - - - - -
|
| For the record, Harry's Garage _(and Harry's Farm)_ is a gem of
| YouTube's car community. He doesn't need it to make money, so
| he just does what he wants and goes down a lot of very nerdy
| rabbit holes _(including sustainable energy, gov't farm and
| energy policies)_ , and actually USES his cars for REAL trips
| -- like taking his Testarossa through the Sahara, etc. Harry
| was basically an "eccentric super car owner" in the 80s/90s
| _(and ghost wrote articles in UK car mags for a while as an
| "anonymous /eccentric super car owner")_ that ultimately
| founded EVO Magazine, helped influence a lot of the cinematic
| direction for the Top Gear reboot in the early 2000s, and was
| the inspiration for "Clarkson's Farm."
|
| He's a nerd's nerd, and an absolute treasure.
| ackfoobar wrote:
| The math of heating is different from turning a motor though.
|
| All energy use ultimately becomes heat. You can burn it
| directly, then 1J of fuel becomes 1J of heat. Or you can turn
| it to electricity and use that to locally decrease entropy.
|
| If you mine bitcoin with the electricity, then 1J of fuel
| becomes 0.5J (approximately, of course) of waste heat in the
| power plant and 0.5J of waste heat in your GPU.
|
| If you use the electricity in a heat pump, then then 1J of
| fuel becomes 0.5J of waste heat in the power plant, 0.5J of
| heating in your house. AND 1.5J of heat is moved from air
| outside.
| grey-area wrote:
| He's also wrong, or at least wrong for anyone considering the
| question now.
|
| The UK is phasing out coal completely in the next few years
| and aggressively pursuing renewables.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal-
| fired_po...
| jonatron wrote:
| Yep, the youtube video at 21:25 contains a screenshot of UK
| electricity generation mix over a 4 week period in 2020,
| which was 0.3% coal.
| komadori wrote:
| Coincidentally, one of the UK's remaining three coal
| plants, West Burton A, apparently ceases operation today
| (31st March 2023).
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-
| nottinghamshire-65127874...
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| Salespeople are often ignorant af.
|
| I have both a heat pump and a gas furnace.
|
| I program my thermostat with:
|
| - Electric cost per kWh
|
| - Gas cost per therm
|
| - Heat pump afue
|
| - Furnace efficiency
|
| It does the math and runs whichever is cheaper.
|
| This past winter, the heat pump was cheaper down to 5 degrees
| Fahrenheit.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >Salespeople are often ignorant af.
|
| Or so much worse; they learned something for one specific
| situation/time and now apply it to everything because they
| don't realize that's not how it works.
|
| Sounds like this one might at least be aware of the
| complexities and nuance of the situation though.
| koolba wrote:
| > I program my thermostat with: ...
|
| What thermostat let's you input all these data points?
| electric_mayhem wrote:
| Trane xl1050.
|
| Requires getting into technician config mode, which I'm
| pretty sure could result in rendering it inoperable if I
| screwed with the wrong settings.
|
| But it's doable; I go through the process whenever my
| utility company changes their rates.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I would just use heat pump for convenience alone. Not having
| monoxide and NOx risks around the house is another one.
| ars wrote:
| He's kinda wrong unless you live in the northern part of the
| country.
|
| A heat pump is a multiplyer - it takes that incoming energy and
| can get a multiple of heat (the exact multiple is the rating of
| the pump and varies).
|
| That's where the part of the country comes in - in the north
| the multiplyer is lower, in the south it's higher. With a nice
| high multiplyer it's a great deal.
|
| I wish though, that they had natural gas based heat pump - now
| THOSE would be really efficient!
| jeffbee wrote:
| You can buy propane-fired refrigerators so I do not see why
| you couldn't make such a thing. You can also buy heat pumps
| where propane is the working fluid, which is vaguely ironic.
| marssaxman wrote:
| That can't be right. Heat pumps are commonly 2.5x-4x more
| efficient than direct heating.
|
| "The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates
| that annual electricity transmission and distribution (T&D)
| losses averaged about 5% of the electricity transmitted and
| distributed in the United States in 2017 through 2021."
|
| https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3
| nkurz wrote:
| I downvoted you for your overconfidence. Your conclusion
| might be right, but it's not as straightforward as you
| suggest. You're right that the transmission losses aren't
| large, but you seem to be missing the much bigger losses
| involved in generating electricity from coal.
|
| Currently, the average coal fired plant produces electricity
| at 33% efficiency:
| https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems.
| That's average, so there are probably plants out there
| producing at 30%. If we assume another 5% loss for
| transmission, this takes us down to 25% efficiency as
| delivered to the consumer.
|
| If a heat pump is 3x the efficiency of resistance electric
| heat, but you are burning 4x the coal to generate the
| electricity, are you still certain that a 95% natural gas
| furnace is never the better choice for efficiency? I'm not. I
| think the heat pump is probably more efficient in many cases,
| but I wouldn't eliminate the possibility that there are cases
| where the natural gas wins.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Sorry to have been unclear - my comment was a response to
| this specific claim, which only considers power generation
| via natural gas, not the grid as a whole, nor coal:
|
| "Due to transmission losses, it is cheaper, efficient, and
| greener to combust natural gas for warmth directly than to
| burn it at a power plant, feed the power into the grid, and
| use grid power to run a heat pump."
|
| This statement does leave itself some wiggle room with
| "cheaper", but in terms of "efficient" it cannot really be
| true, because the average efficiency of a natural gas power
| plant is 45% - and if I'm reading this document correctly,
| that figure already factors in transmission loss:
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44436
| irrational wrote:
| Power is like real estate. Location. Location. Location.
| Where I live all/most electricity is generated from
| hydroelectric. I feel like everyone commenting should post
| where they live or how their electricity is generated.
| dandandan wrote:
| Why the focus on coal? California as a whole only sourced
| 3% of its energy from coal in 2021, and some regions were
| at 0%. It only made up 20% of the entire US' consumption in
| 2022
|
| https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3
| markus92 wrote:
| This is definitely the the worst case, but in how many
| places is coal the only thing on the grid? If I look a bit
| randomly at electricity maps there's barely any place left
| where it's just coal on the grid.
| jandrese wrote:
| The problem is in the future when you decarbonize how are
| you going to do it with a gas furnace? Bio-gas is extremely
| niche and shows no sign of picking up anytime soon.
| Meanwhile your local power plant already switched from coal
| to natural gas, but in the future the grid is going towards
| wind, solar, and battery storage.
|
| You can even install solar panels locally to cut down on
| transmission losses.
| ncphil wrote:
| As someone who has owned or rented homes heated with oil,
| gas and heat pumps (the latter two in the SE US), my
| experience has been that the gas and heat pump systems
| cost about the same same to operate. But when the gas
| system in our current house had to be replaced about 5
| years ago, I went the path of least resistence and got
| the recommended gas unit. I really regret that decision
| now, especially given the small difference in installed
| price. Same with the tankless water heater (although
| there, gas was all that was available on short notice).
| The momentum in favor of gas is still enormous, and at
| least around here strongly influences what installers
| recommend. Maybe better educated consumers will change
| that. Unfortunately, I'm going to be stuck with gas into
| the next decade, with the only consolation being that at
| least I'm done with oil (the last two oil burners I ran
| were from the 50s, for steam heat, and cost a fortune to
| run: one winter in the early 00s about $600 a month).
| sokoloff wrote:
| The combustion efficiency of the fossil fuel electric
| generation must also be considered. If that's 40% efficient,
| a heat pump with a CoP of 2.5 is very close to a 95% AFUE
| gas-burning unit.
| cjrp wrote:
| > Due to transmission losses, it is cheaper, efficient, and
| greener to combust natural gas for warmth directly than to burn
| it at a power plant, feed the power into the grid, and use grid
| power to run a heat pump.
|
| That would certainly be true for a classic electric (element)
| heater, but I thought the point of heat pumps was that they're
| not generating heat just... pumping it.
| benj111 wrote:
| I'm not convinced either a heat pump has a cop of ~4. A
| thermal power plant is ~50% efficient and transmission isn't
| losing 50% of the energy. This also ignores any greening of
| the grid, present and future. And the fact that a
| furnace/boiler isn't 100% efficient.
| groestl wrote:
| > A thermal power plant is ~50% efficient
|
| For electricity alone, I'd want to add. With heat coupling
| and district heating, thermal power plants can reach ~90%
| efficiency.
| lizknope wrote:
| My unit has both a heat pump and gas furnace. Of course the heat
| pump is used for cooling in the summer. In the winter the
| thermostat is set to use the heat pump for heating until it is
| below 40F. Below that and it switches to natural gas. The company
| that installed it and maintains it said that was the best
| crossover point for efficiency and cost. I didn't look at any
| specific cold weather heat pumps that are still efficient below
| freezing.
| cpncrunch wrote:
| All heat pumps are generally still efficient at well below
| freezing, and will have a COP (efficiency) above 1 even at
| -15C. The problem is that they don't generate a huge amount of
| heat at those ambient temperatures, so you need a backup source
| of heat. A heat pump should be able to keep your house at room
| temperature when the outside temp is around freezing, but it
| will take a long time to heat up your house if you let the
| temperature drop overnight.
|
| 40F seems unusually high for your aux heat set point, unless
| you have expensive electricity and cheap gas.
| kemiller wrote:
| I tried to get a heat pump but asinine local regs require five
| full feet of setback from property line to the edge of the
| external condenser. I'm not willing to spend $15k upgrading my
| connection just to get electric resistive heat, so I had to get a
| new gas furnace instead.
|
| Also, why are heat pumps so hideously expensive? I was quoted
| $35k, not including the electrical upgrades. A plain AC is half
| that but it's virtually the same mechanical equipment.
| dashundchen wrote:
| Unless your house is ridiculously large I think you were given
| a sky high quote because the contractor didn't want to the job.
| I paid less that half of that for a full ground source geo heat
| system a few years ago.
|
| Heat pumps are typically more complicated to install and size
| properly. You can throw an oversized gas furnace in any house
| for fat profits and no real HVAC design.
|
| Contractors that aren't wanting for business can give you
| ludacris estimates for jobs they're not interested in. If you
| take it, great, they make a lot of money, if not they can
| schedule someone else or push you into an easier job for them.
|
| I ran into this with a concrete job I needed done recently. The
| contractors were all booked a year or more out, and were
| quoting $20k+ for a normal concrete driveway. I found a paver
| installer who seemed much less busy, was able to do a full
| paver job for way under the slab pourers!
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| That price is ridiculous. I just had a combo high efficiency 4
| ton heat pump with backup natural gas furnace in an Illinois
| property for $17k.
| avodonosov wrote:
| How significant is Earth cooling speedup due to heat pumps? Is
| this practice ecological? (I assume they pump the heat from under
| ground?)
| kibwen wrote:
| Some heat pumps use underground pipes (and those units have a
| great advantage in avoiding the efficiency loss due to extreme
| temperatures), however they're much more expensive to install,
| so the vast majority of heat pumps are air-based, same as any
| traditional air conditioner you've ever used.
|
| As for whether ground-based heat pumps would cool the Earth's
| crust, the answer is no (in any measurable sense). Consider
| that heat pumps are used for both heating in winter _and_
| cooling in summer, so in a temperate climate you 're just as
| likely to put as much heat into the ground (in summertime) as
| you extract from the ground (in wintertime).
| avodonosov wrote:
| Thank you
| ltbarcly3 wrote:
| If we could get a mini split installed in every house in the
| country it would save around 1 trillion dollars of energy costs
| over the next 20 years. That's just the savings in kwh of
| electricity, it also means less energy produced, less carbon,
| less grid capacity needed, less production facilities, etc etc.
| api wrote:
| Our gas furnace has a few years left then we will be getting one.
| It's kind of a no-brainer.
| the-alchemist wrote:
| There's an amazing video on heat pump from Technology
| Connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto
| nfriedly wrote:
| That's the right one to start on, but he's posted a few
| followups with updates and more information:
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZd...
| MrFoof wrote:
| In 2008 I moved into my first apartment with a proper air-to-
| water heat pump. Granted, the place clearly also had a smart
| architect, and was built to very high efficiency standards (was
| rated LEED Platinum). It was installed in a small void between a
| living room and the bedroom, adjoining an exterior wall. Had an
| access panel. You'd only barely hear it initially start up.
| Because of its location, the total length of the ventilation
| ducting was maybe 1.5m, so air didn't really change temp before
| it was delivered to its destination.
|
| Nowadays I rent a floor in an old Victorian home converted into a
| duplex, still running a boiler (single loop for both floors)
| going to radiators and convectors. Real noise from the basement
| from the pump, banging of pipes, and the air quality monitors
| clearly show VOCs rising -- sometimes to really crazy levels
| (250+, sometimes 400-600!) if upstairs cranked the heat to hell
| and back.
|
| Where I live now has mediocre insulation at best, and an
| uninsulated three-seasons room on the 2nd floor that might as
| well just be open to the outside air. In 2017 when I left, my
| electric bill was only about $45/mo _(1BR, all electric
| appliances, though elec was half the price back then)_ , and that
| included in-line water heating _(with 3gal tanks for the bath and
| kitchen)_. Meanwhile, my landlord currently pays about $7000
| /year in fuel oil to heat this duplex and its water.
|
| Granted, it's far from an apples-to-apples comparison as where I
| lived for ~9 years was ultra-modern construction with no corners
| cut, and I didn't share heat/hot water with neighbors that have a
| far more demanding "standard of comfort". If only I lived here,
| might only be $2000/year since my standard of comfort is a lot
| lower than upstairs, but it really shows the difference that
| construction, insulation, maintenance, HVAC system choices, and
| just lowering your standards a bit makes.
|
| House across the street just sold. Had vents and forced air, but
| still a boiler. New residents haven't moved in yet, but they
| IMMEDIATELY removed a fairly new boiler, plus the 375 gallon fuel
| tank. Putting in a heat pumps and a hybrid water heater. Don't
| blame them for both the long-term savings, plus reclaiming floor
| space in the basement.
| kibwen wrote:
| Yes, the question of furnace vs. heat pump should always be
| deferred until after your insulation is up to snuff.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| Something that readers may not know is that they are now heat
| pumps on hot water heaters. An added benefit is that the fan on
| the heat pump will exhaust cold air. That might be a benefit for
| some folks!
| nimajneb wrote:
| Can you clarify what you mean? There's only ~2 fans in my
| system, the one on the heat pump outside (looks like an AC
| unit) and the one in the air handler in the basement. To me
| sitting in my dining room this system is no different than any
| other forced air system.
| ars wrote:
| The air for a hot water heat pump could be entirely indoor
| air, the entire unit is located inside.
|
| Unlike an A/C which is split, with the compressor located
| outside.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| He's saying that instead of a gas or electric hot water
| heater - you can now buy a heatpump version. It works the
| same as a normal heat pump, but it takes ambient air in your
| basement or garage or wherever, and then moves that heat into
| the water which provides a slight cooling and dehumidifying
| effect for your indoor climate. They make a lot of sense in
| the US South.
|
| https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-water-heaters
| bombcar wrote:
| To be precise the heat pump water heaters are electric -
| they just use latent heat in the air around them as much as
| they can, but they'll fall back to electric when that isn't
| enough.
|
| They also cease working when the power is off, of course.
| ars wrote:
| They exist, but are really only good in the southern part of
| the US.
|
| In the north the incoming water is cold which really slows down
| the hot water creation (recovery) rate, and that cold exhaust
| then needs to be warmed up by the heat.
|
| If you have low usage (i.e. less than 40 gallon/day of hot
| water) you could get away with it, but that's two showers - so
| if your usage is more than 2 showers per day I would avoid
| them.
|
| But in the south they are a much better choice, since the
| recovery rate is much better and the cold air helps with A/C.
| fghorow wrote:
| I have (air source) heat pump water heaters in two different
| basements. (Don't ask.)
|
| A big win for me is that I no longer need to run a dehumidifier
| in those basements. The cold air output from a water heater
| alone is good enough to keep the humidity down. Again, YMMV.
| randito wrote:
| Lot of discussion here => Heat pumps of the 1800s are becoming
| the technology of the future.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34397715
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I tried to get a quote on a heat pump here (Ontario, Canada) last
| week because the gov't has incentives up to $5000 on them right
| now. My gas furnace doesn't need replacing (9 years old) but the
| AC does. So I figured I'd ask them to quote on a hybrid
| configuration in a way where the furnace could maybe be swapped
| out later when it hit EOL, and in the meantime just be used for
| very cold temps.
|
| Problems:
|
| Gov't incentive only applies to a full replacement, existing gas
| furnace would have to be ripped out. Seemed wasteful.
|
| High pressure sales guy wouldn't give me a straight answer on
| pricing, or even proper spec sheets, but sounded easily like
| $25,000 CAD would be about the price for a system. And that was
| on a "medium range" system. That's gotta be at least 2 times more
| than a new gas furnace + AC. Maybe 3x.
|
| I'm on a rural property, and have the space to do excavation for
| ground source heatpump, which I suspect would get me an even more
| efficient system. Sales guy was clueless about them, but it also
| seems like nobody around here really does them.. still? (My
| parents have such a system in Alberta, for over 10 years)
|
| Also kind of suspect that gov't incentives just get turned into
| price increases by the suppliers.
|
| Unfortunately just very frustrating. I'd love to do the right
| thing here, but it seems at this point that pricing still favours
| natural gas heating. At least for renovations/replacements? Guess
| I'll wait for the furnace to die.
| supernova87a wrote:
| I don't know if anyone else is following this as an issue, and
| maybe in the grand scheme of our housing "demographics" it's a
| small thing.
|
| But if you live in a medium or large sized condo or apartment
| building, it is _extremely_ hard to get legacy systems like gas
| furnaces or hot water boilers replaced by a new technology like
| this.
|
| Not because of lack of desire, but because it involves incredible
| amounts of:
|
| -- legal questions on whether you're allowed to do such things as
| an entity (will the owners agree to do it)
|
| -- who will pay for the new costs of the thing itself, as well as
| the ongoing maintenance, any changes to insurance costs, etc.
| (how will current people who have to pay shoulder the costs of
| future benefits)
|
| -- (sometimes) how to divide up or give up space from existing
| ownership stakes to fit the new hardware into what was never
| expected to be modified in the building ever again
|
| -- electrical, plumbing, power, heat, requirements that may
| change the performance or costs of your building (how will you
| swap a 300 pound furnace with 1200 pounds of condenser units and
| not have the roof collapse?) Technical feasibility not matching
| the policy goals.
|
| And then on top of this all, the local city wants their say to
| block or make it very expensive for you to do all this. (yet at
| the same time their city councils are charging forward in
| requiring the phase out of natural gas while not fully
| understanding the inability or cost to real people of not having
| the ability to affordably implement those mandates)
|
| For some kinds of buildings, this is a very big problem stopping
| people from being able to change things. There needs to be some
| enabling legislation to cut out these roadblocks, or somehow make
| things easier.
|
| Contractors know this so well they apply probably a 10x discount
| factor in the number of calls they receive to the number of
| projects that actually proceed to being started.
|
| Single family / single owner homes have a much easier time just
| getting it done. And new build.
|
| It can be really very difficult to displace existing technology,
| for very real and legitimate reasons.
| tootie wrote:
| Contrast this to cities like NYC that are explicitly phasing
| out gas infrastructure. New buildings will be banned from
| installing gas hookups in units and will require electric
| stoves (induction or otherwise). They haven't banned gas for
| central heating but the incentives may start to nudge that
| direction.
| ars wrote:
| NYC has not thought this through.
|
| You still need gas for heat and for hot water. NYC is cold,
| heat pump versions of those work, but not very well
| (especially not well for hot water).
|
| And for apartment centralized heat and hot water? That would
| be _really_ hard - these units are much later than the
| centralized ones they replace.
|
| The amount of electricity it would take to do this though....
| I hope they plan for this to take decades, because that's
| what it would take for them to upgrade their wires.
| kibwen wrote:
| 80% of buildings in NYC are heated by steam, not gas,
| generated by a boiler in the basement. I assume most of
| those boilers are themselves gas-burning, but I also assume
| that any refit to these buildings would just replace the
| gas-powered boiler with an electric one. When it comes to
| boiling water, induction stoves are already more efficient
| than gas stoves, so it doesn't seem infeasible.
| ars wrote:
| > would just replace the gas-powered boiler with an
| electric one
|
| With resistive heat? That would be a horrible idea.
|
| And creating steam with a heat pump would be less
| efficient than gas.
|
| So like I said, they have not thought it through.
| jakevoytko wrote:
| My NYC co-op is going through this now. All of your
| guesses are basically right. We're having separate
| systems installed for replacing in-unit hot water and in-
| unit heating and cooling. I believe the new electric hot
| water system is being installed in the basement and the
| condensers for the in-unit control panels are being
| installed on the roof and routed through the pipes used
| by our old radiator system.
|
| Pros: units can control their own heat and will no longer
| need in-window A/C units. Cons: it's really expensive,
| even for a building with good finances and access to
| reasonable financing options.
|
| We're only doing this because our boiler is probably a
| few years away from failing already (it's well over 50
| years old), and we're super close to the building size
| threshold where we would be fined for not complying with
| the law (so any adjustments to how they calculate
| building size or dropping the law's fine floor would
| certainly push us over).
| rcme wrote:
| Heat pumps have the same footprint as, and can replace, AC
| condensers. So if you already have central air, you should be
| able to retrofit a heat pump. You might need a new air handler,
| however.
| supernova87a wrote:
| Yes, that's true. I was just focused on another case of for
| example, trying to turn a large building's hot water boiler
| into an electrical / heat pump one. That is where the set of
| huge new condensers comes in, replacing like 1 previously
| dishwasher sized boiler.
| ttul wrote:
| Never mind being a renter. There isn't much incentive for
| landlords to previous feeding cost for their tenants.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| My previous apartment was built in the 80s and used only
| electric resistive hot water heating in an apartment with
| quite literally gaps in the windows and outside door sealing,
| in a climate that is below freezing for at least a month of
| every year.
|
| That shit should be considered criminal. But noooooo
| landlords provide so much value! Think of the poor struggling
| landlords! The landlord is a company in boston running
| hundreds of the units in this city, across multiple
| companies.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It is the well-known "split incentive". The only solution
| is regulatory. A governmental agency needs to step in to
| either mandate the efficiency investments or require that
| the landlord pays the energy costs.
|
| http://cbei.psu.edu/split-incentives-and-green-leases/
| ttul wrote:
| Agreed. Where I live, the government has a very
| progressive approach on climate change. There is a large
| carbon tax. Home owners can get a large credit to
| retrofit their home with a heat pump. Yet in this market,
| there is a shortage of rental housing, so landlords have
| little incentive to renovate in any way, let alone to
| reduce heating costs for tenants.
|
| Like Boston, renters suffer with leaky windows and
| exorbitant heating bills while home owners tap climate
| change refit incentives and reap the considerable
| rewards. Need I also remind everyone that, during the
| pandemic, almost no home owner had to pay their mortgage,
| whereas there was no such abatement for renters.
| lnsru wrote:
| Sorry for the source in German:
| https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-03/bundesregier...
|
| Meanwhile Germany banned gas furnaces and oil heaters. Green
| fascism has won. Unbelievable. Old real estate just lost
| EUR50k-100k in one night. Let me tell, that 0,4EUR/kWh is more or
| less normal electricity price here.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| I wouldn't go so far as to call it green fascism, but where I
| live right now we have to fire up our generators regularly and
| sometimes the power will go out for several days during winter
| storms. So forcing us to switch to electricity is risking the
| lives of some of my neighbors because it's not a reliable
| source of heat for us.
|
| If we're going to be required to do this, they should require
| the public utility to maintain the lines to the degree that
| they can survive the frequent windstorms and snowstorms that
| happen here.
| lnsru wrote:
| It would be ok having sane timeline for heat pumps conversion
| for coming decade. But now it's fascism just telling, that no
| gas furnaces anymore starting next year. There is no plan,
| there is no strategy. Just pure ideological nonsense. Close
| nuclear power plants, ban gas furnaces. Bun coal and run heat
| pumps on coal power. Great plan!
|
| Edit: and yeah, I just lost EUR100k tonight. That's rough sum
| for house insulation, ventilation system and heat pump
| installation.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| There are plenty of supplemental heat heat-pumps that have a
| gas burner for very cold days or extended power outages.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| What systems don't need electricity? Growing up, my oil fired
| furnace still needed electricity to spark it and pump it.
| Blowers don't run on oil. If you live in a place that gets
| cold, you should probably have enough insulation that
| occasional power loss isn't life threatening.
|
| In fact, we once lost power all of christmas morning, before
| we had even turned up the heat for the day. We snuggled in a
| bed for a while. Just keep blankets and jackets around. The
| human body produces about 100w of heat at rest. Usually food
| and water become bigger problems first.
| favsq wrote:
| >Green fascism has won. Unbelievable.
|
| Unbelievable that in Europe the government tells you what to
| do? If anything it would be unbelievable if you could whatever
| you desired.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| [dead]
| jansan wrote:
| I would not call is fascism, but totalitarianism is not far off
| the mark. Luckily the liberal democrats (a party in Germany)
| finally grew some balls and stopped at least the most extreme
| demands of the greens.
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