Society should replace electric heaters with GPUs running folding@home.
At least put that electricity to scientific use while it's making it warm.
A regular electric heater is a crime.
@matoakit only if you get magical gpus for free that don't cost any energy to produce
@noiob Sure, it's a cost to change over, and it'd probably be better to go to heat pumps, but just swapping to even really old GPU's for electric heat would be a relatively easy swap in most homes.
It's not the destination, just a halfway step.
@matoakit also yeah it matters a lot! 1500W fossil fuels sucks because you could be burning those directly and get much more heat, 1500W from renewables is fine (with asterisks)
@noiob I'm just talking about making better use of the power they'll already be burning.
Obviously renewables would be better, but I'm just talking changing how you use the power, not changing the power plants that do it. That's a whole other issue.
If someone's house is heated by electric, they don't really have a choice of where the electricity comes from, they just have to brr the heater to make warm.
Just optimize that part.
@matoakit of course you have a choice where you buy the electricity? wait, does the US not have that/
@noiob In the US you don't usually have a choice of electricity provider or type of energy used. They're monopolies almost everywhere.
Texas is a weird exception where you can pick different companies, but they still use the same power grid to deliver it, so you can't choose green over coal power.
@matoakit yeah of course it's the same power grid but you pay for different kinds of power
doesn't matter which electrons you get lol
@noiob In Texas it's probably just coal and gas, they are pretty hateful of renewables.
I've lived in California, Michigan, and Washington and none of those had any choices for power company or the source of that power, you just get what you get.
@matoakit yeah Europe has basically a single power grid
@noiob It'd be nice if we could pay only towards renewables, even if it was a higher charge, but that just isn't available here.
@matoakit my city supplier switched to renewables-only a few years ago, without even altering prices, but obvs the electricity market here makes it easier
@noiob I think the best we can do here is move where there are more hydroelectric dams or renewable projects and you'd get higher percentages of renewable energy used.
We still have a single large mostly interconnected grid, but local power generation is usually cheaper than importing it from other states.
@noiob Doesn't really matter where the electricity comes from if you're going to be burning the same electricity for an electric heater anyway.
1500w = 1500w of heat
or
1500w = 1500w of heat + SCIENCE!