[Greenbuilding] Opinions on electric tankless HW heaters?

[Reuben Deumling]

On Thu, Apr 21, 2011 at 6:32 AM, Steven Tjiang <steve at tjiang.org> wrote:

> This is getting off-topic.

Maybe, or maybe not.

>
> But generally....we need to learn to pick our battles when it comes to
> saving energy as a society. Hot water systems that saves energy and provide
> the same level of comfort w/o user intervention will get wider adoption and
> hence ultimately save more energy in total, than something that might
> individually save more energy but receive little adoption.
>
The widespread adoption and hence cultural familiarity with thermostats in
the societies in which I've lived would seem to confirm your assertion, but
I would not want to foreclose the possibility that *greater* user
involvement could, for some, lead to positive feedback in terms of energy
conservation. I'm just not convinced that we can have our thermostat and
save it too. The automated/hands off/let the expert systems run my show
approach is based on certain infrastructures (grid, central boiler, liquid
fuels) and assumptions (progress = automation). This is not true for
everyone in all circumstances. See the rise in folks who have chickens in
their urban backyards, the popularity of farmers markets, putting up your
own food, the DIY movement, the thousand and one efforts underway to *do*
more than we may have grown accustomed to. I would not want to exclude user
interventions in domestic provisioning a priori just because culturally
we've been through an extended cheap-liquid-fuel-inspired phase where
automation carried the day.

Reuben Deumling
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.bioenergylists.org/pipermail/greenbuilding_lists.bioenergylists.org/attachments/20110421/49e594ac/attachment-0001.html>