It's much, much better to burn fossil fuels for heat than to burn fossil fuels t... | Hacker News

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		closeparen on Oct 30, 2016 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Powerwall 2 and Integrated Solar It's much, much better to burn fossil fuels for heat than to burn fossil fuels to spin turbines, transmit the electricity long distances, and then run it "back" through heating elements. Stages one and two are pretty lossy. Particularly when electricity is from coal and natural gas power plants, using it for heating is a staggeringly bad idea.

ZeroGravitas on Oct 30, 2016 [–]

True, but electric powered heat exchangers can give a 2-8x advantage since it's not generating the heat, just moving it from one place to another.

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