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Texas EV Tax: Please Comment

Discussion in 'Prime Main Forum (2017-2022)' started by mr88cet, May 26, 2021.

  1. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    It only triples under the assumption that basic restrictive heaters are installed. As stated heat pumps are vastly more efficient. If the home is going to have central air, an air source heat pump won't cost much more. It might even be cheaper than A/C plus restrictive heater. There is also units that supply hot water.

    Plus, there may even be incentives to install heat pumps.
     
    #61 Trollbait, Jun 19, 2021
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  2. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    Texas has broken water pipes about once every ten years, they also tend to break the mains since they barely burry them.

    Better code would help them in many ways


    An electrically heated home (even using a air to air heat pump) still consumes an order of magnitude more power than a typical BEV.
    Power needs increase at a much faster rate as the temperature drops outside compared to gas which is close to linear, below zero you go under COP2.

    If we supposedly don’t have an adequate grid for BEVs we damn well can’t have universal electric heat without major updates beyond the scope of supporting EVs
     
    #62 Rmay635703, Jun 19, 2021
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  3. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    So you can now run an EV on 500 kWh or even 50 kWh/year? What is that, 24 or even 240 miles per kWh? Wow, I didn't know they'd leaped forward that much!

    From what I heard, TX didn't even worry about keeping its natural gas wellheads and pipes from freezing, let alone the electric generators. So that had gas shortages too.
    I'd like to see a source for that.

    A good combined cycle natural gas plant driving a modern high efficiency electric heat pump, should put out just a little over half as much carbon as burning the gas for home heat.

    From what I'm seeing, the baseline guidance presumes heat pumps, not electric resistance. Considering the CA electric prices I've seen, energy cost alone should drive people away from resistance heaters and towards heat pumps.
    With a modern combined cycle plant, shouldn't that be 2.2 lbs of CO2 for direct electric? But then put it into a heat pump instead of electric coils, getting it down to 0.7 to 0.8 lbs of CO2 for that heat.
     
    #63 fuzzy1, Jun 20, 2021
    Last edited: Jun 20, 2021
  4. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    If TX builders are working on that assumption, then they must also believe that Global Warming is not only real, but has also already vanquished the severe cold snaps that have occasionally plagued their state ever since weather records have been kept.
     
  5. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    I see that you are still dissing air source heat pumps based on outdated generations of equipment. The new generations are better than that.

    Natural Gas Furnace Vs. Heat Pump ? | PriusChat
    Natural Gas Furnace Vs. Heat Pump ? | Page 2 | PriusChat
     
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  6. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    I don’t believe this is accurate.
    Our home is electrically heated. No nat gas, no wood burning, nothing else.
    We don’t use air source heat pumps, but do use heat pumps extensively.
    We drive two electric cars. The two, combined, use less electricity than the rest of our house (which is all electric).

    ASHP will be less efficient, but not by that much in many environments.


    We don’t have an adequate grid. No qualifier needed. Texas issues would be present with or without BEVs.
    The grid needs updates everywhere. Obviously, major upgrades in some areas more than others.
     
    #66 Zythryn, Jun 20, 2021
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  7. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    How do those compare to solar and wind subsidies on a per-unit of produced energy? And are these real subsidies, or the bizarre definition of subsidy that includes "we didn't take enough of your money at gunpoint"? I'm genuinely curious.
     
  8. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    I track my BEV energy Use and due to my commute use 6kwhrs on average for “driving” each day (averaging out trips into the mess))

    Even in my efficient tiny home if I were to convert my heating energy use over to electricity (heat+water heater) It still dwarfs my driving usuage in the heating season and per the government I’m in the zero or first percentile for home energy use to start with (99+ other homes use more energy) so I can only imagine what someone with a normal sized home that isn’t super insulated (r100) would require
     
  9. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    I'm talking about converting electricity to heat with 100% efficiency. Are you telling me that a heat pump can generate more than 3412 BTU per kWh?
     
  10. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    I also track my BEV energy use, as well as all the other energy use of my house.
    Average size house, R40-R80. Both our cars use less energy than our house and all of that energy comes from renewable sources.

    I suggest your imaginations about other people’s homes are not accurate.
     
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  11. Rmay635703

    Rmay635703 Senior Member

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    I used 10kwhrs last month and $1 of natural gas
    (Admittedly my summer usuage isn’t likely fair but it averages out the winter)

    I do not have solar or geothermal, my utility has sent letters about exceptionally low energy use in the past, (usually after trading out my meter a few times) my water use has been below 50 gallons a month which I’m told is low.

    no imagination needed here
     
  12. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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  13. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    That reminds me of repeated battles I had with the City of Los Angeles when I lived there over low water use.

    The way they calculate their sewer charges is based on taking a winter billing period and applying a use factor. The assumption is that people don't water lawns as much in winter so you could estimate that 80% (for example) of the water they draw from the system goes down the sewer.

    This presented a real problem for me because I had a drought-tolerant California native plant landscape. You can't water those plants in the summer or they will die. They often don't need water at all, but if it's a really dry year you supplement in the rainy season (winter here). What would happen is they'd calculate my sewer fees based upon the billing period where I used the most amount of water of the year so that for the rest of the year I would get bills showing 2 hundred cubic feet of water used that month and a sewer bill for 6 hundred cubic feet. I spent four years battling them, and despite reassuring them that I wasn't trucking in 3,000 gallons of water every month to dump down the sewer they never did correct their system or credit my bill.
     
  14. Zythryn

    Zythryn Senior Member

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    Apologies for any confusion.
    The imaginings I was referring to was your statement about:
    I was not questioning your knowledge of your house, I was questioning your assumptions of how other people’s houses would work with a different heating system.

    That electric use is fantastic, the water, by what I’ve heard, is great as well. Well done!
     
  15. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    Hell yes. That is the whole point of heat pumps when used for heating instead of cooling.

    "HSPF is defined as the ratio of heat output (measured in BTUs) over the heating season to electricity used (measured in watt-hours). It therefore has units of BTU/watt-hr."

    My Fujitsu minisplit has an HSPF rating of 10, meaning it puts out 10,000 BTU per kWh over the average seasonal profile used in the rating definition. It will put out even more in warmer climates, less in really cold climates. But a newer generation of cold climate models with even better performance, is now available.

    Heat pump water heaters have similar performance.
    California's overall grid is closer to 0.5 lbs CO2/kWh.

    For natural gas, run it through the better combined cycle generating plants, for about 60-ish% conversion efficiency to electricity. Then run that electricity through a heat pump, for about 300-ish% heat transfer efficiency. That will end up netting about 180% heat output, compared to the 100% cap of burning it at home for heat.
     
    #75 fuzzy1, Jun 20, 2021
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  16. PiPLosAngeles

    PiPLosAngeles Senior Member

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    So what's the typical heat production per kWh? To be competitive with CO2 emissions from natural gas heating in California it will have to exceed 12,500 BTU/kWh.
     
  17. Leadfoot J. McCoalroller

    Leadfoot J. McCoalroller Senior Member

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    I don't know that I can answer that properly. I do know which way the wind is blowing though... gas & oil subsidies are likely to be curtailed, and solar/wind/etc are likely to be increased. Neither is guaranteed in my mind.

    I can't say whether it could ever work as a simple substitution though, so I personally expect that gas & oil costs will rise more rapidly while electricity costs will rise more slowly as a net effect on my family budget. I still heat 70% of my home with oil, but I am very likely to switch in the next 10 years. My house is a mile or so past the end of the town gas grid so that was never an option.
     
  18. fuzzy1

    fuzzy1 Senior Member

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    See edits above. With the better combined cycle natural gas generators driving modern heat pumps, heat delivery should be not quite double that of simply burning the gas at home.

    And in a warmer climate such as most of CA, heat pumps should do even better. Their HSPF ratings are built around less friendly heating climates.
     
  19. Trollbait

    Trollbait It's a D&D thing

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    They include things like below market lease rates for government land.

    Like air conditioners, heat pumps don't generate heat, they move it around. Moving available heat from outside is more efficient than burning a fuel, or electric in resistive heating, inside.

    Since most of California has mild winters, using heat pumps are even more efficient with more available heat outside.
     
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  20. Leadfoot J. McCoalroller

    Leadfoot J. McCoalroller Senior Member

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    When I said they were closing in on 4x power factor up thread? This is precisely what I meant.

    The minisplit I put in will use 1kWh of electricity to make 3.6 kWh worth of heat in best conditions, and there are even more efficient systems available.
     
    #80 Leadfoot J. McCoalroller, Jun 20, 2021
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