I've been thinking about how to get homes to electrify. I work in clean energy and care about climate change, yet it's been a slow slog for my Bay Area home because it's all so darn expensive. We've managed to get solar and electrify everything except our furnace (including our hot tub heater, now a new heat pump), but that item will run us at least $18K, so the $2K IRA tax credit hardly makes a dent. And forget about batteries. How can we incentivize electrification to make it happen at the speed and scale we need?
Say you are a developer that is building a bunch of single family homes on a tract of land and your goal is to provide clean, cheap, and reliable energy for all the residents. What kind of infrastructure and technologies are you putting in?
What if you are building multifamily housing instead, or a new single house in an existing neighborhood? How do your solutions to this problem change at different scales, and what advice would you give to developers who care about decarbonization as far as how to get the best bang for their buck?
This is a great question that I'd love to hear more about as well. Here's one of my favorite explanations of the housing and density components - with some of the costs explained as "utility sausage"! It doesn't specifically tackle energy - that'd be a great update.
"Do townhomes drive down housing costs? Social science has an answer"
My question is about ebikes. I love riding mine around - I've put 4,300 miles on mine since buying it two years ago.
I was wondering: Is any work being done on standardizing ebike charging? For now, the charging situation sucks. Every bike I've seen seems to have some variation of an underpowered no-name brick with a barrel connector that can only add about 5 miles of range per hour of charging. Good for filling up overnight, but not so great when you're on the go.
I would love it if we had a standardized connector, the way EV's (generally) do. If I can really daydream for a minute, maybe future ebikes could also accept NACS, and have battery cells that could handle more charging current.
Might even be a full episode idea, but what are the obstacles to retrofit multifamily solar and electrification, and who is working to combat them? The IRA doesn't have as many incentives in the space, and sometimes utilities can be a barrier (example below).
I'm in Chicago and a two-flat landlord (owner occupied) in our neighborhood tried to get solar and have one meter for the building, so the tenant gets the benefits too (landlord pays all the electric, solar covers most of it over the year), but ComEd said that wasn't allowed, and the solar doesn't pencil out if it's only going towards the energy use of half the building. Plus, for net metering reasons you wouldn't want to split the solar and have half of it go into a tenant's meter, because any credits would get lost if the tenant changes over. It's a whole headache that goes against the city and state's climate goals, and the same issue comes up if you want a heat pump system with mini splits in the tenant units but billed to a central landlord meter, so that heat is included. We're looking into it more, but we _think_ it's an issue with state municipal policy.
You've mentioned before studying philosophy back when you were in university, which philosophers or philosophical topics did you most enjoy learning about back then? And which have most influenced your worldview since then as an adult?
All else being equal (which it usually isn't) do you think restructured or vertically integrated states are doing a better job with the energy transition? On the one hand deregulated states can in some ways be more dynamic and on the other integrated states have more long term planning capabilities through their IRPs.
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Hope you feel better soon, David!!
I've been thinking about how to get homes to electrify. I work in clean energy and care about climate change, yet it's been a slow slog for my Bay Area home because it's all so darn expensive. We've managed to get solar and electrify everything except our furnace (including our hot tub heater, now a new heat pump), but that item will run us at least $18K, so the $2K IRA tax credit hardly makes a dent. And forget about batteries. How can we incentivize electrification to make it happen at the speed and scale we need?
Say you are a developer that is building a bunch of single family homes on a tract of land and your goal is to provide clean, cheap, and reliable energy for all the residents. What kind of infrastructure and technologies are you putting in?
What if you are building multifamily housing instead, or a new single house in an existing neighborhood? How do your solutions to this problem change at different scales, and what advice would you give to developers who care about decarbonization as far as how to get the best bang for their buck?
This is a great question that I'd love to hear more about as well. Here's one of my favorite explanations of the housing and density components - with some of the costs explained as "utility sausage"! It doesn't specifically tackle energy - that'd be a great update.
"Do townhomes drive down housing costs? Social science has an answer"
https://www.kuow.org/stories/does-density-drive-down-housing-costs-science-has-an-answer
(there's an even longer version of it linked at the bottom - recommended!)
I wish you a speedy recovery, David!
My question is about ebikes. I love riding mine around - I've put 4,300 miles on mine since buying it two years ago.
I was wondering: Is any work being done on standardizing ebike charging? For now, the charging situation sucks. Every bike I've seen seems to have some variation of an underpowered no-name brick with a barrel connector that can only add about 5 miles of range per hour of charging. Good for filling up overnight, but not so great when you're on the go.
I would love it if we had a standardized connector, the way EV's (generally) do. If I can really daydream for a minute, maybe future ebikes could also accept NACS, and have battery cells that could handle more charging current.
Might even be a full episode idea, but what are the obstacles to retrofit multifamily solar and electrification, and who is working to combat them? The IRA doesn't have as many incentives in the space, and sometimes utilities can be a barrier (example below).
I'm in Chicago and a two-flat landlord (owner occupied) in our neighborhood tried to get solar and have one meter for the building, so the tenant gets the benefits too (landlord pays all the electric, solar covers most of it over the year), but ComEd said that wasn't allowed, and the solar doesn't pencil out if it's only going towards the energy use of half the building. Plus, for net metering reasons you wouldn't want to split the solar and have half of it go into a tenant's meter, because any credits would get lost if the tenant changes over. It's a whole headache that goes against the city and state's climate goals, and the same issue comes up if you want a heat pump system with mini splits in the tenant units but billed to a central landlord meter, so that heat is included. We're looking into it more, but we _think_ it's an issue with state municipal policy.
This may be of interest to you: https://allumeenergy.com/us/. Here's a Canary Media article about the company: https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/solar/this-startup-has-a-smarter-way-to-make-solar-work-for-apartments.
You've mentioned before studying philosophy back when you were in university, which philosophers or philosophical topics did you most enjoy learning about back then? And which have most influenced your worldview since then as an adult?
All else being equal (which it usually isn't) do you think restructured or vertically integrated states are doing a better job with the energy transition? On the one hand deregulated states can in some ways be more dynamic and on the other integrated states have more long term planning capabilities through their IRPs.