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Comment by testfoobar | Hacker News Reader

California is running on 38.0% natural gas right now.

http://www.caiso.com/todaysoutlook/pages/supply.aspx

With renewables making up 32.7%.

When the sun drops by late afternoon, CA will be making electricity on natural gas.

Heating at night will almost be entirely natural gas. Even if you have an electric heater, the electricity will be generated using natural gas.

So what is exactly the benefit of ripping out natural gas from homes?

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And in 10, 20 years, these statistics will change.

If new buildings being added to the building stock are built with gas, then people will still be reliant on gas to cook. If they are added with electric/induction stoves, then everyone will benefit from the grid's shift away from natural gas.

There is no night time renewable supply at California scale without nuclear power. For nuclear power to be available 10-20 years from now, those proposed plants would need to be going through approvals now. None are.

California will be burning gas 10 to 20 years from now.

Wind can blow at night. Also batteries can be developed (in the broad sense including dams,flywheels, gravity rocks, etc)

Winds die down at night. No battery tech today can store the energy needs of millions and millions of home during the night. We do not have dam capacity to build water batteries at the scale needed.

Without nuclear or dramatic battery innovations, we will always burn natural gas for night time energy.

> winds die at night

How sure of that are you? I’m not so sure but quick google says maybe not as true as you imply: https://slate.com/business/2015/09/texas-electricity-goes-ne.... Maybe région dépendant? Is that a deal breaker given power can be transported between regions?

> Battery tech

I see part of the point of this legislation is to drive innovation. We’ll never get change if we just say “it’s impossible so we have to burn fossils.” I don’t dispute any of your points really except if the policy is gradual enough it will force us to adapt and that is a good thing IMO.

This legislation won't drive innovation. It'll just move the burning of fossil fuels out to the electric power plant instead of at the consumer level.

Burning natural gas to produce electricity to power electric heaters at home is actually worse from a CO2 perspective than burning natural gas directly for home heating.

It’ll move SOME burning. Some burning will be replaced by other fuels sources, and as more alternatives are ramped up less and less of that moved gas will be burned. Whereas if it’s a stove, you’re committing to 20+ years of 100% gas burning on that stove. If you think ÇA can’t make a dent in gas consumption in 20 years then we just disagree about that.

If you have unlimited clean energy, what's the difference if you provide it to an induction top, or use it to run the Sabatier process and let people cook how they are used to?

Only if the buildings aren’t wired for 240V electric anyway, which I assume they are. You can always replace with electric at your leisure.

Requiring a 240V drop in the kitchen I could see. Makes the replacement of a gas oven with electric easier, if the homeowner wishes and an easy requirement for builders to meet.

Banning an NG connection limits choice today and is based upon a forecast for the future that may not occur in the timeframe you are expecting.

We know how to supply electricity cleanly, even if we aren't doing it yet. That means that these homes can eventually not contribute to carbon pollution.

Night time energy needs cannot be met with renewables.

Sure they can.

1/5th or so of California power is from Hydro, and that could increase if the water supply was increased.

Using daytime solar excess to pump water uphill lets you get double duty out of the hydro and looks to be about the right amount of after hours energy use.

Similar gravity store: https://aresnorthamerica.com . Also flywheels, molten salts.

Sure, but hydro is pretty unique in that the hydro dams, generators, and grid connections already exist and it can store well enough to not recharge just for hours/days/weeks, but even months.

Isn’t existing hydro already utilized? I don’t get how that helps us scale it up to replace fossil fuels?

Not really, it's typically water limited and not run full out. If water was pumped up during sunny (or windy) days when there's a surplus you could reuse the same water over and over again.

Apparently, there is a much higher risk of chronic respiratory issues in children in homes that cook with natural gas.

Here is a cite:

https://www.thoracic.org/patients/patient-resources/resource...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3500516/

Switching to electricity makes the supply much more flexible. When a power plant spins up or shuts down, that affects the CO2 output of every customer on the grid. It's much easier to quickly bring more grid-scale solar and wind online than to retrofit millions of houses with new stoves after the fact.

What happens at night when solar and wind are not available?

Wind is often available at night. Currently, there is not enough renewable capacity to handle everything, but that is changing. As storage gets cheaper and more common (in electric cars for example), it will get more practical.

Storage is getting cheaper but the growth curve doesn't have the right exponent because we don't have the battery science or the battery technology to meet grid scale energy needs.

You need energy storage at scale at night. The only solution at night after batteries (chemical, stored water, gravity, etc.) are quickly depleted is natural gas.

Modern nuclear reactor designs could easily fill the gap. Public sentiment and the risk of building in earthquake prone geography has prevented investment in nuclear.

nothing is ripped out because it's only a ban for new construction, which is pretty rare in most of ca actually. In LA in particular, homes are never torn down and rebuilt because there are so many restrictions that apply to new construction but not grandfathered homes.

If the rate of new construction is low, then hopefully renewables plus batteries will be able to keep up with increased nighttime demand.

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