And the panel upgrades are just the first domino to fall all the way up the power system; accommodating electrification of everything without requiring the doubling (or more) of the grid would be literal trillion dollar savings for rate payers.

Thanks for sharing and excited to read.

There are additional comfort benefits that @energysmartwv.bsky.social talks about with ASHPs; namely that the system is closer to appropriately sized for your heating load and thus runs more frequently than the bursty furnace, leading to warming of more than the air around the thermostat

Just T&D but Duquesne Light Company in Pittsburgh is private; debt is publicly held if that matters.

As with everything, it depends what you’re making. Fundamentally, pyrolysis makes solid C products with H2 byproduct at 1/3 the mass. So you must compare to the incumbent C process, many of which start with coal liquefaction and processing of that pitch (generally worth it where CH4 leaks are low)

And I’d add that the new guard of defense contractors is really trying to challenge that DOD status quo (for better or worse) by letting VCs and software profit margins subsidize the early serial numbers.

FEMP is doing a bit of this, encouraging folks to look at “underutilized” technologies in their decarb/resiliency programming. Obviously limited to where DOE or other agencies have direct buying power (that wouldn’t trickle out into eg electric rates from BPA).

Work is being done to evolve the utility business model to incent peak shaving and load shaping, but it will be slow to come through regulators.

Certainly hope so (though I wonder how cheap we can really get distribution), but that doesn’t really help today. Right now the switch is NPV positive for delivered fuels and resistive heat, only a few or low double digit % of the population.

More great data on heat pump performance, thank you! Unfortunately (for decarbonization, but good for customer budgets) utility gas is just above $0.03/kWh delivered and electricity is $0.18/kWh delivered. So economic break even is ~COP of 4 vs a 80% AFUE boiler.

Interesting. So it looks like you got a more efficient cooling system out of the ASHP install as well? Hence the summer time savings? We’re looking at ~80% heat load electrification as an economic win when you replace an old AC cooling load.

I work in innovation at the T&D utility serving Pittsburgh, PA. Focused on new products and services to accelerate adoption of electrification technologies.

Awesome, thanks for the reply. This tracks with our own analysis and aligns with NREL results on bill savings. Where we are struggling (as an electric utility) is on NPV of the capital. Really value your transparency!

This is fantastic data, thanks for sharing! Are you willing to discuss relative costs of the various system configurations? My assumption is that the fully decarbonized system is about twice the cost to run on those coldest days but that obviously depends on local utility rates.

Reformers with capture have to pick between Q and V; would assume the same would apply here.

Electrochemistry is eating the world? Yes, and: the world is eating electrochemistry!

Forgot to mention that this dude also swears off dishwashers? Which use much less water than washing by hand? We’re going to solve the climate crisis by leaving nobody behind. We’re going to massively increase energy efficiency but we’re not gonna solve the climate crisis with suffering & austerity.

DLA maintains a stockpile for critical minerals, but the issue I always remember was a question of what form to keep things in. Given we’ve exported our capabilities to do anything with almost any “upstream” mineral form, the quantities have always been small.