Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
I completely agree. Every home in the world should using electricity to heat and power their homes. There are many different ways to get there, including using natural gas as a means to generate electricity. Fuel cell technology can make great use of natural gas and do so in a very clean way that has a very small impact to our environment. The potential is there, people just need to adapt. For that to happen, builders also need to offer these options and provide choice. To make that happen manufacturers need to start stepping up production of these products, but they won't until there is demand, and demand won't come until there is broad understanding. The vicious cycle continues.
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I fail to see how heating water and homes with electricity generated from natural gas makes any sense at all. You have conversion losses. In places where you get electricity mostly from renewable or hydro? Sure, it makes sense, and that's why homes in those situations are built that way. But it doesn't make sense to burn coal and natural gas just to turn it into electricity, then turn it back into heat.
And I disagree that consumer demand is the thing holding companies back. Its the cost and lack of technology deploy-able at large scales. These aren't easy "if you pay, they will make it" types of problems. These are really really hard to solve. If they weren't, someone would be throwing boat loads of money to make oceans of money from. The fact that a company like Tesla is throwing boatloads of money at it, and is still needing subsidies and is bleeding cash should tell you something about how hard the problem is. It's not like they are a poorly run company with a bunch of dummies. It's the smartest people in the biz struggling to make it work.