Why do people use gas?
Electricity is more efficient, isn’t it?
Electricity does not put CO2 into the atmosphere?
The answer to the above questions is quite technical, and have some high-cost considerations.
People with large heating requirements or have space considerations often use gas and the installation cost is a big factor.
Each house has a 60 Amp cable, an electrician will allow about 40 of those to be used for heating but in most cases only 30 Amps. That is 9.6kW of output, but a lot of gas furnaces are 18-23kW some are 32kW. So you can see that gas is three times more powerful. A bigger home would need a lot of heat pumps to heat the whole home. The cost of which would exceed a gas installation by double or triple. Most people can cope with $15,000 of installation but not $30,000 or $45,000.
So where does the other 30 Amps go? On your oven and induction hob. Most are rated about 30Amps. Somewhere in there we have to find enough for the electric water heater and lighting. Hopefully you are not using the whole cooker. It is rare for 30 Amps to go on heating.
Three heat pumps is 15kW output and the whole house is still not heated unless it is a ducted system. Now your going to need 20-30kW. That is 2-3 times the price of a gas installation. The ducts are larger also so space to install it is an additional problem.
3 Heat pumps and a heat pump water heater and that is your 30Amps gone. If each house maxed out with electric heating the system would be in trouble. If it is at night and the wind is not blowing now we are in more trouble.
So you see each energy form has its efficiencies.
Electricity is more efficient??
When electricity is in short supply the price goes up a lot. We could be looking at electricity being 3 times the price of gas. So that energy efficient heat pump lower price is similar to gas or on a very cold day could cost more to run than gas.
But We Are Running Out of Gas – right?
The residential use of gas is 1% of the total market. Literally a dribble of gas and then there is biogas largely underutilised in New Zealand. Biogas is big overseas. I can be big here we have a lot of forestry slash, waste from the food industry and crop waste.
Currently our peak winter demand for electricity is topped up with electricity generated by dirty coal. So that heat pump is not so clean. Certainly not as clean as gas compared to coal, gas has little particulates.
Heat Pumps Are Cheaper to Install?
There are many gas appliances that happily do 5kW hour after hour. A heat pump will rarely do that on a cold day. And the gas appliance is cheaper to install. A heat pump rated at 5kW is only in ideal conditions. In reality its more like 2-3kW so it struggles to heat large areas so it has to run longer.
Do we have enough power?
With many people converting to electricity the country has not installed enough power generation to meet new heating demand. Add a low rain year to the mix and suddenly we do not have enough power. The price then spikes.
Are Electric Cars the Problem?
Most electric cars are charged at night when most people are not using power and we have to keep the generators going anyway, and at the moment there are not enough of them to cause a problem.
A number of them are charged with solar.
Can Solar fix the problem?
Whether it is commercial or domestic solar the sun has to shine and in winter it does not shine enough to meet a high winter heating demand.
Even if every house in New Zealand had a 10kW battery it still would not make a difference on its own. Our peak winter load is a lot higher than summer use.
Solutions
It will take a combination of, Big lakes and dams, big wind farms all over New Zealand or out to sea, or (cough) Nuclear they are a lot better now. All have huge consenting issues.
Or we pay a lot more for energy, and many will have to put a coat on like we did in the 1960’s.
One option is to encourage a lot of solar and allow our lakes to fill to the top in winter.
Solar is rapidly reducing in price batteries too and the collectors are a lot more efficient. The adoption would have to be extensive. We need to just use dams for winter use. Tidal flow is also an option.
How do we fund it? We seemed to do it in the 1960’s but then we were not spending so much on Social welfare or health or education.
How will our industries cope?
Some of our biggest industries use oil and gas. Steel making, food processing like canneries. Pulp and paper, wool, hides and meat processing to name a few. Without gas it spells large unemployment in rural areas. Once the industries have failed and we buy it all from overseas. Not much point in farming if you cannot process the output. To buy it all in would result in the NZ$ weakening meaning higher cost of imported goods and petrol.
Businesses do not invest without confidence. The government needs good advice and to set the scene for a very long term plan for big industries to invest.
Our industry largely funds our lifestyle.