Cheap Heat...

[rep308]

Thermodynamics for Dummies:

1) you can"t get out more energy than you put in

2) you really can't even get out close to what you put in.

 

[Boghog1]

So I built a little one of these this weekend since lowes only had 4 and 6" pots available, I used 1 votive and saw no real heating effects, I am going to try a couple of tea lights tonight. as an FYI I finally turned on my heat this morning because the house hit 52°f I figured it was time.

I have electric heat

 

[terraformer]

True, when you look at the big picture.

Ecology aside, I am most interested in how much I am paying per actual BTU of heat achieved in keeping me warm, rather than in the worldwide consequences of supply chain losses.

The two are interrelated. This (what I wrote above) is why heating with electricity is so much more expensive and why ethanol (and any bio fuel based on harvested commercial crops) will never be a commercially competitive fuel (to make ethanol, you need to use fertilizer which is made from fossil fuels...). The only thing that keeps the obsession with battery operated cars (which also have massive energy costs for mining the minerals used in the batteries) from being a fools errand is the fact that a internal combustion engine converts only about 20% of a fuels stored energy into useful work.

That said and the ICE notwithstanding, typically, getting as close to the source of a fossil fuel's stored heat (or electrical bonds in the case of fuel cells) is generally the most efficient use of that resource. It's also why fuel cells stand to change the equation on cars. But anything that requires batteries is at a major disadvantage in a true head to head comparison, hence the absurdity of the .gov subsidies in these areas. But ethanol is also subsidized as well as fossil fuels (in the form of military intervention to keep access to supplies open) so dollars are not always an accurate measure of true efficiency either.