Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The problem with all electric houses, aside from the running cost, is sometimes the electricity fails.
The climate-change changes the politicians don’t want to talk about
Ross Gittins
Economics Editor March 1, 2022 — 4.29pmIt’s strange to think that both sides of politics are leading us to a policy-free federal election campaign at a time when we have so many problems we should be debating. Not that the parties won’t have policies written on a bit of paper somewhere, but that they don’t want to talk about them.
Why not? Because any policy you propose can be used by your opponent to spread scare stories about your intentions. Last time, for instance, Scott Morrison used Labor’s support for electric vehicles to claim it was out to destroy the weekend.
…
Gas has been declining as a share of Australia’s power supply since 2014, and this is likely to continue. “Gas will play an important backstop role in power generation when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing – but this role will not require large volumes of gas.”
In the home, people value being able to choose between gas and electricity for cooking and heating, but this can’t continue. They’ll save money and reduce emissions when all new houses are all-electric.
“The uncomfortable truth is that natural gas is most likely in decline in Australia, and achieving the net-zero target requires that to happen … Attempts to hold back the tide through direct market interventions, such as contemplated in [Morrison’s] National Gas Infrastructure Plan, will probably require ongoing subsidies at great expense to taxpayers.”
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Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/the-climate-change-changes-the-politicians-don-t-want-to-talk-about-20220301-p5a0mj.html
I’ve endured three electricity outages in the last decade, one of which lasted a week. I was able to keep the freezer, a fan, an electric light and the TV going with a gasoline generator. But electric cookers consume far more power than freezers and fans, that is why they are usually permanently wired into household electricity, to minimise the risk of accidents.
Most gas cookers just keep on working if the power fails. Maybe you need matches if lighting your cooker needs electricity.
Of course some greens have anticipated this rush to reliability – California is banning gasoline powered emergency equipment, including generators, because, you know, the government should be in charge of your energy consumption. People should be satisfied with what PG&E delivers, if and when it delivers, right? /sarc
The Democratic Peoples Republic of California would double down on stupid. CARB has been the residence of green lobbyists since the first Brown Administration. Afterburners on bakery ovens is the sort of action they are taking (VOCs from raised bread, you see).
Our house is all electric because I have seen the result of domestic gas explosions.
How about the aftermath of a space heater fire?
Run your space heater on the 750 watt setting instead of the 1500 watt setting. If you need 1500 watts worth of heat, then get two space heaters and run both of them at 750 watts.
The space heaters will last longer, and there is less chance of starting a fire.
I had two identical DeLonghi space heaters hanging on my bedroom wall. I ran one at 1500 watts and the other I never ran over 750 watts. The one that used 1500 watts at a time stopped working several years ago. The other one is still going. It’s warming me right now.
How about the aftermath of a space heater fire?
Been to a few of those. Near-total loss in every case.
Have you ever seen the results of a house fire?
Faulty wiring along with electric heater and appliance fires are FAR more likely to destroy a home AND cause loss of life than a gas explosion.
Did you truly choose electric for safety?
Almost all houses here on the canadian prairies are heated by gas
I cannot recall the last gas explosion
Only meth houses explode
Do you also not drive because people die on the roads?
The only fire I have had in my house was when my electric dishwasher went on fire.
The house across the road from me was very badly damaged from a fire caused by an electrical appliance.
And way back in 1988, Jimmy Reid, a well-known Scottish commentator, said that the most common cause of domestic fires in the Soviet Union was exploding television sets.
Wow, Didn’t realize that state owned, i.e., socialist, TV programming was that bad. At least not enough to explode your TV set :<)
Things being thrown at them, o suspect.
Ever seen a crashed boeing 747
I saw the aftermath of a natural gas explosion in a home on my paper route, when I was about 10 years old, and it made an impression on me. The whole house was flattened and scattered all over the street. The man who lived there was killed.
That made me a little leary of using natural gas, although it wouldn’t keep me from using it under certain circumstances.
Sorry Tom, but pragmatically speaking unless you are still under the age of 15 I feel you may have to move on from your past, no matter how painful and move on from obsolete building standards.
Don’t live in the past, cause Safety Regulations certainly don’t.
I’m not suggesting people not use natural gas in the home, they should just be careful and make sure everything is hooked up properly.
On average, less than one person dies each year due to choking on marbles, but the FTC once considered putting warning labels on them.
Our house is mostly propane because electricity isn’t anywhere near as reliable.
ever seen the View?
Hope you are also keeping an eye on your plumbing. I have seen the results of floods and those pipes are filled with deadly destructive WATER!
(also if it leaks into the carpet you never get the smell out of the underlay)
Removing Natural Gas from domestic use will exacerbate the impact of the “duck curve” on any electricity grid.
Ross Gittins never saw a socialist proposition he couldn’t get behind 110%.
Several years ago I was shocked to see the result of a gas explosion of LPG bottles supplying a house, the elderly owner apparently attempted to light a gas heater and the explosion demolished his home, his car was thrown over a fence into a neighbour’s yard and his remains were not many pieces. The blast badly damaged surrounding houses on three sides and the rubble blocked a main road for several hours until cleaned up after fire authorities declared the area safe.
LPG will settle to the ground and natural gas rises and dissipates.
That is why propane tanks and their associated relief valves are OUTSIDE a house. If he blew himself up IN his house with an LPG tank, he was not following the basic safety requirements for using LPG. If the furnace was in a basement or low area, he was not following minimum safety standards.
If he was SWIMMING in LPG fumes, which he must have been to get the results you mention, he should not have attempted to light the furnace. I can only imagine that at his age he may no longer have had a sense of smell.
To blow up the bottles, they would need to be surrounded by fire for some time, they don’t just blow up. The explosion, called a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion BLEVE happens when the vessel ruptures, the liquid expands and mixes with air then ignites.
Here is the ABC News report, I do not live where the house exploded but I was shocked when I drove past after the main road re-opened hours later;
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-15/fatal-blast-caused-by-gas-bottle-leak/4756236
I arranged for a fleet of company vehicles to be equipped with dual fuel LPG-Petrol and one Diesel-Gas injected LPG from 1980s onwards and we never had a problem, the vehicles were well serviced including the gas systems.
I have had both home town gas and home LPG systems in past years including gas heaters, cooking stoves and hot water systems. My caravan has LPG appliances: stove, refrigerator, hot water system LPG and electric options, and a barbecue.
I suspect that the home heater explosion was the result of lack of maintenance.
Like another in Adelaide 2 years ago, elderly men kept 9 kg gas bottles in the house.
This is common in some Asian countries, but well ventilated rooms. Sri Lanka had a spate of unusual explosions, 15, where one person died, last December. They get about 100 electrocution deaths a year.
Not sure that people doing stupid things should guide your judgement.
This from the news report,
“The cottage was largely made of asbestos and a wide area around it has been cordoned off.”
Sounds like LP gas wasn’t the only problem this old fellow had.
There are many older houses around Australia with timber frames and floors with fibrous (asbestos) sheeting cladding internal and external walls, and some have corrugated asbestos roofing sheets as well.
Asbestos building materials are not a danger unless broken and not resealed, and of course builders must wear protective clothing when cutting those old building materials which have not been sold here for a long time.
Sorry Dennis, abc.net.au isn’t a trusted media source.
Can you provide a better link?
WOW a gas explosion has jaded you against Gas in the house
What do these do about the alternative?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71cVhxG_v4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG353udgWXM
Avoid Batteries /sarc
In the UK we have houses destroyed by gas explosion once or twice a year. An event that makes it to the national news. More frequently (10 times perhaps) house fires from other causes which result in deaths of families or children.
Gas explosion in houses happen at about the same frequency as recycling plant fires.
Gas explosions are often preceded by people smelling gas
Life isn’t risk free, just reduce risks. I have a DIY rule of leave gas and electricity to an expert because they can kill you. Also don’t store volatile flammable liquids in the house, as for Solar PV and power walls I’d class them in the flammable liquid category
Some of those appear to have been suicides.
It is interesting how readers react at times, noting the down marks above, and it makes me wonder if people read all of the words because not once have I suggested that gas should be avoided. In fact in a comment below I explained my personal experiences using town reticulated gas and bottled LPG.
I always have a mix gas and electric in houses I have owned because if the power goes out you can still cook and boil a coffee.
Convenience over virtue signaling always.
What happens to people who live in mobile-homes/trailer-parks etc? I live for two years in a caravan/mobile-home with a wife, two small children, a dog, cat, & two hamsters & two guinea pigs, we relied on LNG for heating, cooking, washing, never had a problem until the temperature plummeted & the gas became more liquid than gas, we ended using a couple of old tea-chests to keep the gas bottles in wrapped in sackcloth which seemed to do the trick, but still never a problem!!! LNG, a by-product of the fossil-fuel industry, thank you!!!
They are usually destroyed by tornadoes.
Yep, several years back a tornado walked down Main Street in a town in eastern Colorado. When it got to one intersection it turned left for two blocks then turned right to go through a trailer park. After wiping out most of the trailers it returned the two blocks back to Main and proceeded to follow it out of town.
Trailer parks cause tornadoes. I’m sure there is a CliSciFi grant somewhere in there.
Probably should apply.
Trailer parks are, by definition, filled with trailers, not your ISO/DIN standard domestic homes.
There must be a lot of low level differences between the low level air flow and heat losses. Different structural densities, different air flow paths. If these are significant enough to interact with local weather micro patterns I have no idea.
So, apply for the grant. If nothing else you might get to meet Greta and that could be good for a few stories down the pub.
“So I ever tell you the time I met Greta? I was at a CliSciFi convention. First she scolded me for 2 hours, then we went to the bar and did shots. Gotta admit, hearing her try and say “How Dare You” after a few drinks is piss funny!”
Did she explain to you how you get to earn millions £/$ through being a Socialist???
mobile-homes are known “tornado magnets”
Generally, here in the UK & many other countries they are seen as temporary homes, holiday campsites have hundreds of them of various standards dependent upon their age, etc. However, from first hand experience, they are pretty well built. I was once asked to carry out a quick design check for a local South-West England manufacturer of these mobile homes, as they’d landed a contract to supply some as chalets in Germany, they wanted to know if their product could take a 1.5 kN/m2 (32lb/ft2) snow loading on the roof, that is UK domestic floor loading, which is a fair old weight!!!
My wife likes to cook with stovetop gas and an electric oven. When we moved, I had to install a 230 V line for the stove. Contented wife over everything else, always.
Major amperage draws for home heating and cooking (now that incandescent lighting can be replaced with LED bulbs) will in a foreseeable future then be much augmented by electric vehicle charging as well. What could possibly go wrong in proposed exclusive dependence upon just as utterly variable energy generation (from of course that ‘free’ solar and solar-driven wind sourcing) with such hydroelectric resilience as may be found within a state renowned for recurrent droughts.
The question is: Are there any mature adults in the room who don’t realize how much fossil fuel/atomic sourced electricity must already be regularly be imported from neighboring states to sustain the virtue-signaling Californian fantasy? Or is there a companion scheme to soon regulate male emissions as well to assure a major population decline (naturally ignoring illegal immigration)? America would like to know.
You reminded me about The Australian Capital Territory where Canberra is located, the Territory Government claims that the ACT is now all renewable energy but that is based on a nameplate capacity calculation of theoretical continuous energy from wind and solar investments and ignores the electricity imported from coal fired power stations in New South Wales, and also ignores capacity factor for wind and solar.
Back in the Enron days Washington State was forced to sacrifice lakes and rivers to send hydroelectric power down to California.
Major amperage draws for home heating and cooking
You know, that just made me think of something:
How many of these houses being converted to all-electric are updating their wiring appropriately? 30 amps with 14-gauge wire is not good.
Don’t worry about California. They aren’t banning electrically powered generators. Of coure you will need a battery to run it when the power goes out.
As I have said before on here, what happens when a hospital suffers a major power outage, without the back-up diesel power generators there to kick-in at that crucial moment, I do hope a few greenalists are under the knife at that very moment, I can imagine the trauma affecting the medical staff having to tell the relatives that smack bang in the middle of open-heart surgery, the lights all went out, all the respirators failed, so your father/mother/son/daughter/ didn’t make it through, but he/she didn’t die in vain, they helped save the planet from warming by half a degree!!! I’m sure that would be of great comfort to grieving relatives!!!
Reminds me when I was a young doctor in Qld Australia. The militant local electrical union went on strike for covered car parks. I had a patient on a ventilator. We had a back up diesel, but it took at least 30 secs to kick in. The grand-daddy power fluctuations blew up the ventilator. We stopped operating theatres, too risky.
We hand ventilated that patient for hours until we could arrange a medivac. She survived. The old right wing Government immediately sold the power station (other reasons), and the Unions had to deal with private enterprise.
We now have a Left wing Green Government intent on eliminating coal generators. Long way to go to catch up with California, but already power failures are more common.
Be careful where you get sick.
Well done to you & your team keeping that patient alive through to survival!!!
As a POI, you doctors are real amateurs where lives are concerned, you guys & gals only kill in ones, we engineers, if we balls it up, kill in 10s, 100s, or even 1000s!!! 😉 HAGWE!!!
For the last year there has been an ever increasing volume of green/renewable/climate alarmist propaganda being published in Australian news outlets. Since just before the Ukraine invasion started the propaganda flood became a tsunami. It is just terrible now. It is as if John Kerry has started an invasion of our media with his recent climate alarmist statements. I wish it would all stop.
Tell me about it and they’ve really gone berserk with a Federal election in the offing. I pick a few of the ‘best’ of them to report here which is really the tip of their iceberg. Here’s a classic which was relevant to Kip’s post on the IPCC’s chapter on Small Islands-
‘A strange phenomenon’: new island in Papua New Guinea prompts territorial dispute (msn.com)
What’s that really about? It’s simply reporting well known coral island accretion with a side issue of tribal land claims but note how the whole climate catastrophe meme gets woven into it all. So much so even the selected locals are regurgitating the whitefella climatista culture nowadays but woke forbid this is Green Colonialism at work here. Watermelons don’t do irony.
Look at the fine print. The articles are paid for placements. KPMG alone must be paying a fortune to News corporation for it’s very slick misinformation.
Based on past history, News corp is risking it’s subscription numbers if they keep this up, promoting green washing effectively killed a dying Fairfax corporation and is causing problems for the Nine corporation. Not all us plebs support green-washing.
PG&E does a poor job. Having a HQ in San Francisco has consequences. Most of the rest of the industrialized world has far more reliable and lower cost electricity. Germany has been trying to catch up with California, but seems to be coming to their senses.
I like to burn meat sometimes. Doing it outside with propane works great.
For everything else, coal and nuclear energy are the obvious choice of fuel. Electricity is the only practical way to get it to my house.
Electric heat and electric stoves are the absolute worst use of energy ever, no matter what the source of energy – though if that source is combustion of natural gas, they are simply insane. Burning natural gas to drive a combined-cycle electric plant, suffering the thermodynamic loss (45% for a combined-cycle plant), and the electric transmission loss (about 10%) means that every BTU of heating or cooking energy requires more than twice that being burned at the source.
Doesn’t anyone else see this? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills…
Electric heat and electric stoves are the absolute worst use of energy ever, no matter what the source of energy
Not quite as induction cooktops and heat pump aircon have changed that equation significantly although the latter has its limitations but not in my Mediterranean type climate-
Adelaide, Australia – Average Annual Weather – Holiday Weather (holiday-weather.com)
You need to differentiate here between greenfield installs and nonsensically shutting down gas with existing pipework infrastructure. In that sense everyone needs electricity but not necessarily gas and although the Greenies are legislating against gas installs in new burbs in places like Victoria I doubt there’s much economic case for it now anyway.
In milder climes it makes economic sense for me to be all electric with induction cooking and RC aircon and use rooftop solar on resistance heating HWS. That’s the cheapest form of solar storage all things considered as FIT drops to zero and there’s even talk of monthly charges for that privilege and rightly so-
Victoria slashes rooftop solar feed-in tariff by another 22 per cent – One Step Off The Grid
Horses for courses but with snow and ice I can understand why you wouldn’t want to be without your gas and talk of taking it away.
Cost A$30k to A$50k (before credits/subsidies) for SolarPV+batteries (yes multiple batteries to keep you going). Not enough capacity to disconnect from grid nor last worst week. Duck curve means SolarPV is worth $0 during peak sun+wind. Come winter, your system doesn’t supply enough. Cost & practicalities, YMMV.
How long will it take to be zero emissions? Well you’ll have to find an area to plant trees because your system starts with a positive CO2 balance that doesn’t reduce by itself. The system looks better than the alternative on paper but those credits/subsidies have to be paid by someone. If it takes 10yrs to benefit environment, is it really worth using it to avoid the current climate emergency?
Some lithium batteries will burn or fail once submerged in flood water. All these houses & systems will need checking by technicians after floods no matter what they use.
I guess we’re all supposed to know that SMH stands for the Sydney Morning Herald right off the bat.
Smashing My Head is the accepted translation.
I can tell you that if I had to cook my eggs on an electric stove, the climate in the house would be intolerable.
Maybe you should be addressing the elephant in the room – the massive scale of the rainfall affecting Australia and its likely cause: climate change.
4th such event within a year globally…
“… So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush. If that trend continues then I think we’re going to have serious problems, particularly for irrigation. …”
Former climate commissioner Tim Flannery, in an ABC interview.
They now worship Greta when about the time the grown-ups were admiring their Stevenson Screen handiwork a hundred years ago a 15 year old schoolgirl was telling them what to expect out of them-
My Country – Dorothea Mackellar
Subsequently in 1921 we were warned what to expect from the Gretaheads-
Said Hanrahan – Wikipedia
The Guardian (1st March) report on the flooding in Lismore, NSW, mentions that the previous worst flooding in the region occurred in Feb 1954 when waters rose to 12.27 metres and another flood in March 1974 saw the river rise to 12.15 metres.
But it also says that the towns levee has a capacity for roughly 10 metres.
My question is why hadn’t the authorities increased the height of the levee if it had already been exceeded twice in the past?
It’s like this griff. The doomsters don’t accept weather records in Oz before a reasonable Stevenson Screen rollout around 1910 and in any case whitefellas only rolled up in sailing ships in 1788 and it took a while to work out what’s what. Now the usual suspects are always banging on about how long the aboriginals have been here and how lovely it all was but when it comes to weather forget about them and their history only begins with those Stevenson Screens and rainfall gauges and the adjustoscene.
The weather doesn’t care about our puny sparse Stevenson Screens or our averages and statistical machinations or our belief in 100 or 50 year events as it’s a close coupled chaotic system with that glowing ball in the sky. So moving right along from 1788 here’s a current pic of Lismore-
54776415-10562435-Lismore_in_northern_NSW_is_the_most_flooded_postcode_in_Australi-a-29_1646094223771.jpg (634×356) (dailymail.co.uk)
What do you deduce from that griff? Here let me help you with a map of Lismore where you can pick up the meeting of rivers and move the map to the west across to Ballina on the coast which is being evacuated as we speak-
(2) google maps lismore nsw – Search (bing.com)
Do zoom out and have a look at the lay of the land and what’s built on it now and then back to that watery pic and just which residences and businesses are currently concerned about all that rainwater runoff. As for Ballina get out now folks.
Update: Obviously the NSW Premier has been consulting the Rainbow Serpent Dreaming and now we have it on good authority it’s a 1 in a 1000 year event-
A ‘one in 1000-year’ flood (msn.com)
Unfortunately griff that smashes your new kid on the block theory that current extreme rainfall is all down to plant food and the Industrial Revolution if you know your history. Or aboriginal cooking fires and traditional burnoffs to flush out game with that earlier one you reckon?
That still logically means there has been equal or larger floods occurring every 1000 years, roughly. No long-term trend to more frequent flooding, in other words.
Remember the flood discussions happening today, and think back two years to the drought and wildfire discussions. Welcome to Australia.
I fear you are in danger of suggesting that these events have happened before!!! Scandalous & outrageous suggestions!!!!!
Uhhhh…. weren’t we told last year that “the new normal” was drought?
Oh wait, that’s right, “climate change” causes EVERYTHING.
First of all it was “a small section of the east coast of Australia”, not “(all of) Australia”.
Second, from AR6 (the WG1 report, from last September), SPM, page SPM-15 :
Who are you going to trust ?
The IPCC or some anonymous Internet poster ?
It’s known as ‘the wet’ in that summer rainfall climate.
That’s no Elephant…It’s a Red Herring
Yeah, the Herring would probably fair better than an Elephant in such conditions!!! 😉
There is an old expression I haven’t heard for some time, but is quite apt in reference to your hairy-scary pronouncement of a weather event down-under, it’s called “Sh1t happens!”.
Still waiting to hear from you, & those two so called Climate Scientists (two years plus now) to advise me of a period in the last 4.5 billion years, when the Earth’s climate stayed the same & never changed, no joy so far, I wonder why???
I hate to do this to you bucko, but, err, it’s so difficult to say this, but err, the climate changes every now & then, always has done, always will do, & there is nothing you fruit-loops can do about it, unless you want to indulge in the more whacky suggestions that have arisen from the loony greenalist camp, of pumping chemicals into the atmosphere to block out sunlight to prevent global warming, you know, polluting the atmosphere to prevent pollution happening, or some other such bovine faecal idea!!! I’d hate to see peeps like yourself Griffy, in charge of the world, the savage, mass slaughter & butchery that would ensue following your dystopian ideology ideas!!! You mean well I am sure, but then again, the 20th century saw plenty of well intentioned madmen kill & maim to achieve their ideals!!!
Where I live (US midwest) some of us were forced by an artificial shortage of hydrocarbons, to buy all-electric houses a few decades ago. We have largely converted heat, hot water and cooking to gas. At our own expense,
Burning natural gas in the home is more efficient that burning natural gas in a powerplant. Burning natural gas in the home should be encouraged.
Oil works too maybe not as efficient as gas but still pretty efficient
Back to the future. The “all-electric house” was one of the ideas pushed in the US in the 1950’s and 1960’s. That was a different era: natural gas was far less common and there had been recent winter hardships in New England resulting from fuel oil shortages. Electric generation was mostly coal with some hydro, so it was thought much less subject to supply shortages than oil. A lot of all-electric housing was built, continuing into the 1970’s. People assumed that nuclear power would make electricity plentiful and cheaper.
I lived one winter in a rented all-electric condo in southern New Hampshire in 1979. After seeing the first month’s electric bill I bought a kerosene space heater. People I worked with at the time had winter electric bills over $400/month. That’s about $1,550 in 2022 dollars.
Needless to say, people got away from all-electric housing as fast as they could.
IDK about New Hampshire, but here in Maryland they haven’t abandoned all electric homes. They absolutely should have, but they didn’t. Back in the 80’s and continuing to this day, just about every housing development (save for those in areas where there is natural gas available) consists of nothing but electric appliances. Reason being, for the builders, it is the cheapest option, though not necessarily for the homeowner. The builders don’t have to run gas or oil lines, and don’t have to fool with tanks for LP or oil. And perhaps the sight of an LP or oil tank sitting in the back yard might mar the look of the new home, save for when the new residents get their electric bill. Oil tanks can be placed in basements, but again, too much cost and effort for most builders.
Me personally, I’d never live in a house (in this area) without LP, gas or oil heat. I can deal with an electric water heater or stove (I have oil heat and hot water and electric stove now).
Maryland isn’t NH with regard to temperature averages in winter, but it gets far too cold (especially at night, average in the low 20’s F) in winter for heat pumps to work. And heat must switch to an alternate source, usually electric resistance.
Also, it seems that those who buy these homes are none the wiser…apparently they think high winter electric bills are normal as is tepid (or worse, cold) air coming from registers when it’s cold outside. However, I’ve seen some of these fairly new homes suddenly sport LP tanks, so it seems that some are not content with electric for cooking or heating.
Of course, California won’t need any of those electric generators after the “Big One”
I have gone through a week long and a two week long electrical outage in the winter heating my house by filling the bathtubs with just hot water that was heated by NG. I put my perishables out side if frozen and in the garage if just needed to be kept cold. Was not 70 F but stayed above 55 F. Just keep the drain closed while taking a shower.
If your house floods, it doesn’t matter what form of energy it has – you won’t be living in it for months.
If the EV parked in your garage and charging overnight spontaneously combusts it doesn’t matter what form of energy your house has – you won’t be living in it for months.
If the scooter you have plugged in downstairs charging over night while you sleep suddenly erupts, it doesn’t matter what form of energy your house has – you won’t be living in it for months.
If a 2 ton meteorite falls on your house it doesn’t matter what form of energy your house has – you won’t be living in it for months
If any of an infinite number of perils befall your dwelling, it doesn’t matter what form of energy your house has – you won’t be living in it for months
And in some cases you won’t be alive anymore to be living in it after the months are up
Geez Griff what a moronic argument
Bryan A, I sorry to advise you but Griff doesn’t do common sense, probably some form of brain atrophy due to CC!!!
All electric houses will not be viable in our brave new renewables world. There simply isn’t enough renewable energy, never will be. Our Governments are promising to get rid of coal, blackouts and brown outs are our future.
As a model for the future I offer this as a microcosm of the future for the Australian grid.
We live off grid in an off grid community, one of a small number in some stunning semi-remote spots in Australia. (there are no mains, probably never will be, too remote). I calculated we couldn’t afford to run an electric stove or electric hot water system. No one else in our community can either, the electric stoves and heaters kill the batteries, whatever type.
It’s LPG bottles for cooking & hot water. Great cost efficient energy density. Toast is a delicacy for midday’s only. Solar/battery for lighting, TV’s, wireless network, computers. As the climate has cooled in the last few years, the winters in this subtropital region are getting colder for longer (beautiful days, but at night down to 7 deg C, gasp!). So a wood burning stove for warmth at night, although most use outside fire pits, some neighbors use kerosene.
Oh, and back up generators for when the sun doesn’t shine. Despite good coastal winds, wind power is a waste of time, and local domestic wind turbines are being pulled down.
Funny though. Almost all Green environmentalists stay way away from our little community. It lacks the inner city comforts powered by the regions coal generators that renewables enthusiasts take for granted……
And when we grow old, with sadness, we have to leave, because our little systems are high maintenance and very expensive.
Conclusion, all renewables enthusiasts should be forced to put there own money towards going fully off grid. They NEVER do.