Paracelsus
Active Member
Respectfully @brantse - it is that very focus you mentioned on upfront Capital costs over long term O&M by A&E firms on new construction projects that was my biggest battle to bring greater efficiency to buildings and facilities in my career. And I found this was even more prevalent on design-build projects, as it can allow for much greater profit for the Design Team IMO. And when you finally throw a quick Carbon Footprint calculation on top of a Capital Dollar-driven HVAC project in new construction that opted for boilers over heat pumps it can make your head spin.
More importantly, I would argue that the scale of the project should be directly proportional to a design teams efforts to find creative solutions for implementing heat pumps so that the largest facilities do NOT use boiler systems whenever possible. So what if you can get a $50K boiler system? What are the impacts to Long Term O&M - regardless of the Carbon Footprint? I led one project to replace fuel oil burners with heat pumps in a brand new, very recently commissioned Federal project that was designed with a couple fuel oil boilers to heat over 50,000 sq ft. The first year of operation guzzled fuel oil at the rate of 120,000 gallons per year. It was comical to me that the design team was sincerely attempting to get the highest LEED rated project possible and still included a boiler system. True, the boiler system was simple, and it almost always ran fine, and the design was probably easy enough to cut and paste from a dozen other similar projects. All of which helped bring down the initial project Capital Costs - to your point. But this was a federal project that was being built with a vision to operate for the next half century in that location. And after operating it for the first year or so it was clear that this project's massive boiler system could - and should - be easily replaced with a heat pump system, and it would justify throwing away the brand new massive boiler system to get there. At that time the transition to an all-electric heat pump system reduced energy costs by almost $400,000/year while massively decreasing the carbon footprint of the facility. I am literally disgusted by some of the projects I have seen that were operated and/or funded at the State or Federal Level at the expense of tax payers and Electrical Rate Payers through their Utilities that are massive energy sink holes and Carbon Footprints because they refused to explore the Art of the Possible.
I am sincerely interested in Elon's/TSLA's heat pump efforts and implementation trajectory. The average person has no idea how much energy and Carbon Footprint reduction is possible in the average commercial building - existing or new. Nor do they know how little is really being done to increase that efficiency. My personal belief is that efficiency implementation is only at the rate necessary to minimize any grid expansion. I am hopeful Elon will be raising some awareness to this as well, as it is not only an energy and utility problem, it is also a social unjustice IMO.
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