The Energy Star Efficiency Myth - Page 11

 

<snip rest of blathering>

Very few people that have to heat there home for more than a week or so use
electric heat.  To the homeowner, the difference in cost between using a kwh
of electric (say, a 100 watt bulb for 10 hours), or the equivalent in
natural gas, solar, wood, even coal is substantial.

The savings to the environment is also there.  Using a kwh of electric
(directly, or indirectly) to heat your home uses about 3 kwh of thermal
energy.  Obviously, using a kwh of thermal energy directly is better and
burns less carbon.

You say the 'eco-writers' have focused too much on the bulb and forgotten
about the home as a whole.  Yet you seem to have focused on the home and
forgotten about the truly 'big picture' (the total amount of energy used
including the power plant).

Saving 6.57 billion kwh of electric means that about 19.7 billion kwh of
thermal input is saved.  Even if you had to replace all 6.57 billion kwh in
every home with the equivalent thermal input, that's still a savings of
13.14 kwh of thermal energy.  Still think it's a bogus idea?

And even in areas such as upstate NY or northern states like upper Michigan,
if you use the more energy efficient appliances in spring and fall, then it
delays/shortens the 'cooling' season to the point of not even needing A/C
installed in many, many homes.

daestrom

  Sudden Disruption wrote:

Why does your refrigerator run all winter when a small fan could suck in
cold air from the outside and exhaust it back out again? Yes the heat
from he compressor helps heat the house in winter but it's 'electric heat'.

 Snap Whipcrack.............. wrote:

Then you would need ductwork running from the outdoors to wherever your
kitchen is and back again. In many, if not most, homes, the ductwork
would have to be heavily insulated to keep from getting too warm before
it got to the fridge. You'd still need energy for the fan, and if
outdoor temperatures got much above freezing you'd still need a
compressor (or some method to provide additional cooling, anyway). In
summer you'd still need the compressor, and if you intend on having a
freezer you'd still need the compressor year round. I doubt you'd save
much energy, if any at all, and you'd almost certainly spend more money.

 R.H. Allen wrote:


"wherever your kitchen is"?  In the more than a dozen homes I've lived in,
the kitchen has had an outside wall in all but the 18th floor apartment.

I'm not saying it's a very workable idea, but the duct work is the least of
the problems (my propane fridge has the duct work, anyway).
--
derek

 Derek Broughton wrote:

About a third of the places I've lived have had kitchens without outside
walls, and nearly all of the rest have not had an outside wall suitable
for sticking a refrigerator (at least not without blocking a window,
door, or countertop). Oddly enough, one of the places with no outside
walls was one of the few places I've lived that had an oven hood that
vented to the outdoors, instead of simply pushing the smoke through a
filter....


Agreed, which is why I listed so many other problems. But even if it
were the only problem, I think it's enough of a complication to keep
people buying compressor-based refrigerators.