While 'smart' uses will be very helpful in routine circumstances, they likely will not reduce peak demand all that much.
That is because in heating climates (Ontario will be one when heating is electrified) the peak typically comes in an extended period of elevated demand. This limits how effectively the peak can be shifted. It will reduce the absolute peak somewhat, but the excess energy required over the available is not going to change much as the 'smart' systems time shift over the course of a day or two, not enough to avoid the whole peak demand period.
Peak cold (woth low sunlight, and typically low wind at the kost extreem low temps) is the design case for temperate climate energy systems.
You said "All the engineers say we need hydrogen and nuclear and a massive increase in clean electricity supply." but it's definitely not all engineers.
The drive towards supply-side-only solutions, batteries, and other high-tech solutions is not coming from the engineering community. It is coming from the investor community. High-tech solutions and big capital projects are catnip to them, because they represent an opportunity to concentrate and capture profits.
More rational solutions - energy efficiency, demand management, weatherization - can provide far more climate benefit for far less money. But those technologies do not provide the same opportunity for concentrated profits or the high-tech sexy buzz (which is key to drawing in marks so that the VCs can unload their essentially useless startups onto the broader market) so they are ignored and remain underfunded.
We saw this ten years ago with "advanced" biofuels, which absorbed $billions but failed to produce even one scalable solution. We're seeing it again with hydrogen and carbon capture. Same song, different day. New con same as the old con. People are apparently incapable of learning the lesson that just because tech is shiny doesn't mean it's actually good or useful.
If you approach an engineering problem from an architectural viewpoint, you're going to sorely miss the mark. In the U.S. alone there are approximately 140+ million households (apartments and condominiums counted via individual renter-owners despite being multi-family housing units.) We're only building at ~1.5M units per annum—so as Lloyd points out, the majority of benefit from an architectural perspective is in retrofitting existing housing to higher standards of efficiency.
The problem is that it requires money to do so, and for the past 40+ years or so, real wage growth has been in a slow decline. Add to that a wide array of advancing technologies, all of which requires more energy both to produce and operate, and we easily see the demand for more energy is baked into the overall energy budget from a demand side perspective.
When your argument revolves around the ideological POV of "This is why we have to think like the 'less is more' demand-side people" ask yourself, WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE? Does it mean you have the freedom to do what you want, when you want, as much as you want? Or does it mean that all your activities are dependent on a limited quantity of energy meted out by a faceless entity in the form of a bureaucratic algorithm?
I know which side of the equation I want to live on.
Translation: Government is going to force you into a lower standard of living because Greenies have taken control of the levers of Government. With "Electrify EVERYTHING!", as Lloyd has said for years, he's basically saying the an "Energy Monoculture" is great even as he's said, in the past, that "agriculture crop monocultures" are bad. Sorry, the problem is "monocultures" no matter what you're talking about.
Now add mandatory 15 minute cities (which increasingly lowers your standard of living in other ways), the removal of all but government approved modes of transportation, one can think of this as an encroaching "wall-less prison" of how mandated living will be.
Just like over at Treehugger, I was always bringing up the idea of "what happened to the Western Classical idea of Liberalism" (that would be TRUE philosophical Liberalism and not the political label which has come to mean, in words and deeds, illiberalism). I do that today as well.
If your energy source is controlled by Government, if your movement is controlled by government, if your 15 minute apartment is no larger than a small closet (and I could go on for a while - just ask Lloyd), are you truly free?
Or is that some old-fashioned and trite notion nowadays? After all, the Slippery Slide does exist. Just look at the US and gas stoves and what's happening since that first Trumka announcement.
Good article but I felt like you didn’t elaborate on the Australian study or the possible implications of it specifically for water heating very much. We have a system operating here in NZ to control water heating and reduce peak demand and have had it for decades. It’s predicted to reduce due to regulatory changes to the electricity market and more adoption of distributed smart tech over time though. More in this report https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/eeca-insights/ripple-control-of-hot-water-in-new-zealand/
Overbuilding solar and wind will probably be much cheaper than trying to retrofit existing buildings up to anywhere near PH levels of energy efficiency. Obviously, for new buildings, high efficiency standards should be done.
If all new construction is done in compliance with the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code, we'd be in good shape. But enforcement is uneven, at best. To meet Code, most houses being built in most of the US must have blower door tests to establish that they meet the airtightness required of 3ach50. But that doesn't happen. Those houses also need mechanical ventilation. That doesn't happen either.
Not really. Hydro Quebec studied this years ago and abandoned the idea, as it was too risky from a health point of view. If the water temp gets too low, Legionella grows.
While 'smart' uses will be very helpful in routine circumstances, they likely will not reduce peak demand all that much.
That is because in heating climates (Ontario will be one when heating is electrified) the peak typically comes in an extended period of elevated demand. This limits how effectively the peak can be shifted. It will reduce the absolute peak somewhat, but the excess energy required over the available is not going to change much as the 'smart' systems time shift over the course of a day or two, not enough to avoid the whole peak demand period.
Peak cold (woth low sunlight, and typically low wind at the kost extreem low temps) is the design case for temperate climate energy systems.
You said "All the engineers say we need hydrogen and nuclear and a massive increase in clean electricity supply." but it's definitely not all engineers.
The drive towards supply-side-only solutions, batteries, and other high-tech solutions is not coming from the engineering community. It is coming from the investor community. High-tech solutions and big capital projects are catnip to them, because they represent an opportunity to concentrate and capture profits.
More rational solutions - energy efficiency, demand management, weatherization - can provide far more climate benefit for far less money. But those technologies do not provide the same opportunity for concentrated profits or the high-tech sexy buzz (which is key to drawing in marks so that the VCs can unload their essentially useless startups onto the broader market) so they are ignored and remain underfunded.
We saw this ten years ago with "advanced" biofuels, which absorbed $billions but failed to produce even one scalable solution. We're seeing it again with hydrogen and carbon capture. Same song, different day. New con same as the old con. People are apparently incapable of learning the lesson that just because tech is shiny doesn't mean it's actually good or useful.
If you approach an engineering problem from an architectural viewpoint, you're going to sorely miss the mark. In the U.S. alone there are approximately 140+ million households (apartments and condominiums counted via individual renter-owners despite being multi-family housing units.) We're only building at ~1.5M units per annum—so as Lloyd points out, the majority of benefit from an architectural perspective is in retrofitting existing housing to higher standards of efficiency.
The problem is that it requires money to do so, and for the past 40+ years or so, real wage growth has been in a slow decline. Add to that a wide array of advancing technologies, all of which requires more energy both to produce and operate, and we easily see the demand for more energy is baked into the overall energy budget from a demand side perspective.
When your argument revolves around the ideological POV of "This is why we have to think like the 'less is more' demand-side people" ask yourself, WHAT DOES THAT ACTUALLY LOOK LIKE? Does it mean you have the freedom to do what you want, when you want, as much as you want? Or does it mean that all your activities are dependent on a limited quantity of energy meted out by a faceless entity in the form of a bureaucratic algorithm?
I know which side of the equation I want to live on.
“design for intermittency.”
Translation: Government is going to force you into a lower standard of living because Greenies have taken control of the levers of Government. With "Electrify EVERYTHING!", as Lloyd has said for years, he's basically saying the an "Energy Monoculture" is great even as he's said, in the past, that "agriculture crop monocultures" are bad. Sorry, the problem is "monocultures" no matter what you're talking about.
Now add mandatory 15 minute cities (which increasingly lowers your standard of living in other ways), the removal of all but government approved modes of transportation, one can think of this as an encroaching "wall-less prison" of how mandated living will be.
Just like over at Treehugger, I was always bringing up the idea of "what happened to the Western Classical idea of Liberalism" (that would be TRUE philosophical Liberalism and not the political label which has come to mean, in words and deeds, illiberalism). I do that today as well.
If your energy source is controlled by Government, if your movement is controlled by government, if your 15 minute apartment is no larger than a small closet (and I could go on for a while - just ask Lloyd), are you truly free?
Or is that some old-fashioned and trite notion nowadays? After all, the Slippery Slide does exist. Just look at the US and gas stoves and what's happening since that first Trumka announcement.
Added: Kinda hard to run a biz with intermittent energy: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/06/18/grid-asks-factories-to-use-less-energy-next-winter-under-blackout-prevention-plan/
Good article but I felt like you didn’t elaborate on the Australian study or the possible implications of it specifically for water heating very much. We have a system operating here in NZ to control water heating and reduce peak demand and have had it for decades. It’s predicted to reduce due to regulatory changes to the electricity market and more adoption of distributed smart tech over time though. More in this report https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/eeca-insights/ripple-control-of-hot-water-in-new-zealand/
They had this in New Zealand decades ago, it was called ripple control.
Overbuilding solar and wind will probably be much cheaper than trying to retrofit existing buildings up to anywhere near PH levels of energy efficiency. Obviously, for new buildings, high efficiency standards should be done.
If all new construction is done in compliance with the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code, we'd be in good shape. But enforcement is uneven, at best. To meet Code, most houses being built in most of the US must have blower door tests to establish that they meet the airtightness required of 3ach50. But that doesn't happen. Those houses also need mechanical ventilation. That doesn't happen either.
I once rented a downtown Toronto townhouse with neighbours both sides and experimented with how long I could go without turning on the heat.
First week of December due to passive heating from neighbours.
Not really. Hydro Quebec studied this years ago and abandoned the idea, as it was too risky from a health point of view. If the water temp gets too low, Legionella grows.