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by rightbyte 1277 days ago
> we're putting all our faith in a system that is routinely knocked out by errant tree branches.

Ye ... one would have thought that JIT delivery would have gone out of fashion after Covid messed everything up.

With e.g. wood pellet heating the energy is stored in your home already. No amount of tree branches falling in the wrong places will make you freeze to ice.
1 comments
pasttense01 1276 days ago
"Do pellet stoves use a lot of electricity? They also require electricity to run fans, controls, and pellet feeders. Under normal usage, they consume about 100 kilowatt-hours (kWh) or about $9 worth of electricity per month. Unless the stove has a back-up power supply, the loss of electric power results in no heat and possibly some smoke in the house."

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/wood-and-pellet-heating

In other words the same situation as when you have a natural gas furnace: the electricity goes out and your furnace no longer operates.

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tomohawk 1276 days ago
We have a dual fuel heat pump / oil furnace set up. The heat pump is ok above freezing, but you can see the efficiency drop off starting at 40F.

Friday night, we had a several hour power outage as the temps dropped to 10F.

So, fired up the diesel generator (runs off the same fuel as the oil furnace) and had no problem heating the house. Our neighbors with their heat pumps spent a very chilly and uncomfortable night, which could have turned deadly had the power not been restored when it was.

Heat pumps require a considerably larger and more expensive generator, well outside of the reach of most people to buy and keep in good service.

Wood, gas, and oil are all much better than heat pumps in this regard, as even a solar battery can provide enough power so you can survive events like these.

Heat pump are good on average, but have really bad failure modes in this regard.

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rightbyte 1276 days ago
Sure. But you can put pellets in a cage and burn them manually in fire stoves.

A pellets heated water system will need power to circulate the water so that won't work.

The gasoline power generator needed to power a pellets furnace is way smaller than for a heat pump system. Like 200W vs 10kW.

I meant more inline with "you got the energy in your house already".

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