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Comment by throw_nbvc1234 | Hacker News Reader

NYC has more people then all of Norway. So any redundancy Norway has needs to be scaled to account for that.

I would be curious though; as where i grew up in the upper midwest USA, there were always concerns of ice-storms or blizzards knocking out power lines. I'd assume norway would have similar concerns so i wonder how the problem is solved there.

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Norway is approx 5.4 million people and NYC is about 8.8, so while the population is greater, it’s not by an order of magnitude or anything.

Norway is also much colder than NYC. I would imagine in terms of energy needed for heating, the two would be comparable.

300 sq miles vs 150K sq miles too…

Of course cooling NYC is what strains the electrical grid.

Burying power lines is a thing. I don't think it is cost effective to bury the big high voltage lines though.

If your power goes out you're not running a natural gas furnace anyway

Why not? Mine growing up worked despite power outages IIRC.

You need electricity for the blower motor to force the air through the ducts of your house

The original comment is comparing to radiator heat not forced air.

My boiler system has an electric pump. I'm not sure my boiler would run without electricity either.

~30% of the NYC area is still probably running steam heat which just uses physics to get where it's needed.

Depending on the system size a car battery and inverter can run a forced hot water system for a pretty long time.

Forced hot air is gonna be worse than that but the electricity to run the blower is still peanuts compared to a heat pump system.

Forced air natural gas furnaces need electric power for ignition and the blower motor that moves hot air out of the combustion chamber.

Most high efficiency gas furnaces use an electric ignition system and cycle on/off based on thermostat input. It does seem like they should have a battery backup or a way to manually ignite it in an emergency, but most don’t as far as I know. However if they’re just on already and continuously running rather than cycling, then they don’t need electricity. These furnaces are also typically coupled with a fan (a blower) to force the air through ducting and take air back through a return vent. Those also tend to be electric.

Gas furnaces can heat water or oil for radiators too, which requires no fan.

Water radiators often have a pump attached to force the hot water to move more than with a gravity system. A couple years ago, the pump on our radiator boiler went out. Only half of my house ended up with heat without it.

Great! That means NYC can get more economies of scale and be even more efficient!

Huge dense city like NYC would be a perfect place for district heating and cooling. No reason for apartments to have boilers, really.

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