In other news, Massachusetts’ Governor is still looking for the culprits that squashed two natural gas pipeline additions and reinforcements, in a region that uses, (wait for it) natural gas for home heating and electric power generation. She was going to ask OJ Simpson to help her look for these wanton criminals, but he slipped his mortal coils before she could get him on the case. In the meantime we rely on a mixed bag of supply. When it really gets cold NE ISO have NextERA fire up Wyman 4 just north of Portland, Maine. Then old paint hiccups a couple times 800MW’s of mixed fuel (mostly oil) generation roars on line. Last seen on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard the Governor was surfing on very large shards of a wind turbine blade that broke off during a prolonged calm at sea. Someday, New Englanders hope to return adults to their various legislative bodies, but in the meantime as the 1.3 Mariners and their shared tooth say, it’s 11 months of winter and 1 month of damn tough sledding.
If you look at a National Natural Gas pipeline map, there is almost nothing in New England. Over the hill in Pennsylvania and Ohio it looks like Charlotte's web.
We are something like 2 billion BTU short physically in New England. That imbecile governor in Massachusetts saw to it that it is unlikely any pipeline outfit will be back for a good while…
Ed unfortunately if all you have is a gas furnace you're not a lot better off. Fortunately you can run a gas furnace on a very small portable generator. My gas fireplace has a place I can plug in some AA batteries and get it fired up. The fans won't run without power, but at least I have some heat. I do have a whole house generator, but many do not.
My wood-capable fireplaces have manually lit gas log sets. No batteries needed. My gas rangetop can also be manually lit, not to heat but to eat. I also have a standby generator here in hurricane and ice storm country.
Of course, in a Net Zero world, there would be no small portable or standby generators. There would be no gas fireplaces. There would also be no gas rangetops.
Remember "Let the bastards freeze in the dark."? Happy "dunkelflaute!
I built my home in 2022, everything that can be gas is gas. I put in a 2psi gas service with regulators at the appliance drop offs. I even put a tap for the grill(s) on the back porch. For home value I did duel wire, so there is an unused 30 amp 240 dryer outlet, a unused 50 amp 240 volt range outlet, and I put a 60 amp EV charging receptacle in the garage I don't use. But having a big 240 volt outlet in the garage can be useful for other things too. Having all gas has saved me a ton of money!
Sounds like my setup except I had to convert the 240V outlet under the cooktop to 120V to operate the igniter for the gas lol. Other than my oven and AC compressors, we’re fully gassed out down here in south Louisiana - cooktop, drier, 2 furnaces, 2 water heaters, and a standby generator.
I’m not using that converter plug but that’s pretty cool! Mine was only a 2/C w/gnd so I didn’t have a neutral. Moved one of the hots to the neutral bus (marked with green tape) and then put in a regular 15A breaker and receptacle. I had to use wire nuts to drop the cable size from #8 to #14 to properly terminate in the receptacle but works like a charm.
If I had a 3/C where a neutral was present that little adapter would save a ton of time. Only downside is you’d have an oversized breaker at the panel and it would still be 2-pole. But would probably work fine.
As something for another piece, may I suggest you talk about heat pump efficiency curves. That's watts per BTUH delivered vs ambient outdoor temperature. If you look at the curves for most heat pumps, even CCHP rated heat pumps, that curve nosedives between thirty and twenty degrees F. Here is a link where you can look at curves https://neep.org/smart-efficient-low-carbon-building-energy-solutions/air-source-heat-pumps .
You are welcome, it's also interesting to look at how the BTUH output drops as it gets colder. The backup electric furnace runs way more than they admit.
I once lived in a home with electric heat. That was more than 30 years ago and the amount we paid back them is roughly what I pay now for heating oil. The idea that electric heat is more economical than natural gas (or heating oil) is absurd.
But you had an heat pump or resistance electric heating? The second one is worse than gas heating the first one can be cheaper depending on local gas and electricity prices, see my other comment for examples.
Another outstanding article. Shows the strong case for a Balanced generation portfolio with significant coal generation included in the regional mix of generation. Thank you
My paranoid brain is increasingly convinced that the effort to force electrical conversion on us is being waged on an indirect front now.
In Austin, the gas provider, The Texas Gas Service, recently raised their "delivery charge" to the point where gas now costs 60% more than it did a little over a year ago.
The Austin city government cried some crocodile tears and claimed they would look into a different provider, but three years earlier they had tried to pass a municipal gas ban and were headed off by the Texas Legislature. It sure looks to me like the fix is in.
If you can't ban gas directly, just let it be so expensive folks can't afford it.
Of course, when they made/allowed the increase they claimed it would about a 10% increase in bills.
What competition? Most Austin City Councilor members seem to run unopposed or the opposition wears an even thicker tin foil hat.
Doesn't matter though. I'm out voted on every proposition. The population here votes and votes and votes to spend more money. Every spending proposition, no matter how foolish, passes. Even with viable alternatives for CC positions, the morons in Austin would vote for the California transplants.
The only reason Austin doesn't look like San Francisco yet, is that sometimes the Texas Legislature deigns to restrain what the Austin City Council is allowed to do.
Great analysis. We clearly need more interstate pipelines as the gas consumption for electricity around the U.S. continues to grow especially East of the Mississippi River where there is limited wind.
On the home heating side, simply put gas home heating is twice as efficient of use of natural gas as converting natural gas to electricity to home heat. In the deep South, not a big deal as cost of two systems can offset, but in northern climates, natural gas heating a great answer.
Absolutely. I own an apartment building in my home town that has electric baseboard heating. I can attest that the Upper Midwest is hardest hit by electric heating bills.
If you combine gas for electricity and heat pump for heating you get better returns from your gas power!
You go to 40% in making the electricity ( worste case) but then you use to move ambient heat with the heat pump and you get around 3,5 more heat energy than electricity you put in ( average case) which leads to 0.4 x 3,5 = 1,4 .
Ofcourse this is worse the colder it is but it is better the more you insulate your home .
On average the combination of gas for electricity and heat pump for heat could lead to lower electricity prices and so an even lower cost for households
Keep it in the ground! Then the undesirable people die. And we don’t have to worry about famine from all the farmland we are converting to use for solar panels and windmills. So obvious.
I wish we could have a discussion of energy without feeling the need to pick a side. Anyone who thinks global warming is a problem should be all for adding natural gas pipeline capacity into New England. At the same time the coefficient of performance of a heat pump is greater than one and the cost to extend a natural gas pipeline just a few houses will take a very long time to recoup. I get it that there are advocates. Anyway, thanks for publishing.
I have a whole house a/c that needs to be replaced. Whether an air source heat pump can be used instead of the a/c is something I need to figure out. Backup heating is still needed for cold temperatures, that would just be my existing furnace.
Exactly! There will be down in the weeds capital allocation decisions (I’m looking into a heat pump for my house) but from a big picture policy perspective it shouldn’t be controversial.
Yeah I too looked into one but there was not enough benefit. It would have been cheaper to run but it would have drained all my power during the worst days in winter so I revolver to wait until I better insulate it. How is your house situation?
To me gas and heat pumps are great allies ! Using gas for electricity is 0.4 the heat pump is around 3.5 = 1.4 on average leading to lower cost of heating for houses and more gas for power generation which will lead to lower electricity prices and so on
Very interesting and relevant info. I like your "Peak Gas" graph. Something for people to understand is this shows averages (day?). If you look at peak gas rates on a minute-to-minute basis, they can be significantly higher.
The 5-min data is only available a relatively short period before it is averaged out into longer durations. I download the data I am interested in a couple of times a month.
I track data for several grids and generate key indicators.
Texas KPIs are available at: https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/texas-ercot-sep-2025-the-path-to. Check out Figure 2 which shows hydrocarbon generation in 5-min intervals. You can really get a good idea of the variation which is driven of course by part-time Wind & Solar.
One issue with California is that much of their W&S Firming is by imports. There is no measure of which of those imports are High-Carbon, but we can make assumptions based on longer term averages. Not as precise as Texas, but directionally correct.
Windmills shut in when it gets -22 F is very interesting. I just spent a couple weeks in North Dakota hunting. It seems completely ridiculous there is a single windmill in the Dakotas , Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and those are just states I’ve been too and have seen them. How is this not completely ridiculous?
It’s ridiculous to give them any capacity value because they don’t work under a variety of uncontrollable circumstances. On the other hand, if wind turbines were really cheap and fuel was really expensive, it would make sense to build them there and use gas to meet peak. But as it stands now you’re spending more to save the fuel than use the fuel, which doesn’t make sense
This piece looks like it was funded by the AGA. I like NG also, but this cheerleading seems excessive to me and somewhat of a departure from your previous work. I usually expect healthy skepticism from you. Frank
It’s one thing to be cheerleading and another to see the direction of the market. It doesn’t matter if EBB cheerleads for natural gas or not. Its demand is continuing to increase because of its versatility. Reality always wins.
I didn’t think we were doing any cheerleading. We didn’t celebrate the fact that gas is now the largest source of electricity and we almost always highlight how we think that we should not have shut the coal plants down. The only other slide that could be controversial is the last one with the adjusted heating bill calculation. We didn’t know enough about how exactly AGA got their estimates for that to repeat their claims about annual bill savings but it was good to show directionally what the difference in cost is between the fuels
I was mostly refuting the point the previous commenter made that you were cheerleading but I wasn’t implying that you were - sorry for the confusion. Whether using gas directly to heat (rather than converting it to electricity and then heating) or just generating at scale, there’s a reason gas demand is exploding. EBB has no control over it and you are simply reporting what you’re seeing. Thanks for the information!
Hi Frank, and thank you caring enough about our work to express your concern. We don’t accept funding from anyone for our EBB articles. Would you be willing to share what part of our article you thought was cheerleading so I can address it?
In other news, Massachusetts’ Governor is still looking for the culprits that squashed two natural gas pipeline additions and reinforcements, in a region that uses, (wait for it) natural gas for home heating and electric power generation. She was going to ask OJ Simpson to help her look for these wanton criminals, but he slipped his mortal coils before she could get him on the case. In the meantime we rely on a mixed bag of supply. When it really gets cold NE ISO have NextERA fire up Wyman 4 just north of Portland, Maine. Then old paint hiccups a couple times 800MW’s of mixed fuel (mostly oil) generation roars on line. Last seen on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard the Governor was surfing on very large shards of a wind turbine blade that broke off during a prolonged calm at sea. Someday, New Englanders hope to return adults to their various legislative bodies, but in the meantime as the 1.3 Mariners and their shared tooth say, it’s 11 months of winter and 1 month of damn tough sledding.
If you look at a National Natural Gas pipeline map, there is almost nothing in New England. Over the hill in Pennsylvania and Ohio it looks like Charlotte's web.
We are something like 2 billion BTU short physically in New England. That imbecile governor in Massachusetts saw to it that it is unlikely any pipeline outfit will be back for a good while…
Electric heat in cold climates exposes users to real danger when the power goes out.
https://substack.com/@edreid/note/p-142321985?r=hp9nv&utm_source=notes-share-action&utm_medium=web
So does RE heat!
Ed unfortunately if all you have is a gas furnace you're not a lot better off. Fortunately you can run a gas furnace on a very small portable generator. My gas fireplace has a place I can plug in some AA batteries and get it fired up. The fans won't run without power, but at least I have some heat. I do have a whole house generator, but many do not.
My wood-capable fireplaces have manually lit gas log sets. No batteries needed. My gas rangetop can also be manually lit, not to heat but to eat. I also have a standby generator here in hurricane and ice storm country.
Of course, in a Net Zero world, there would be no small portable or standby generators. There would be no gas fireplaces. There would also be no gas rangetops.
Remember "Let the bastards freeze in the dark."? Happy "dunkelflaute!
Gas fornaces also do not work without electricity, but for those times I have a fireplaces:)
Use gas where it works best, especially for domestic and industrial heating; use more coal to generate electricity!
I built my home in 2022, everything that can be gas is gas. I put in a 2psi gas service with regulators at the appliance drop offs. I even put a tap for the grill(s) on the back porch. For home value I did duel wire, so there is an unused 30 amp 240 dryer outlet, a unused 50 amp 240 volt range outlet, and I put a 60 amp EV charging receptacle in the garage I don't use. But having a big 240 volt outlet in the garage can be useful for other things too. Having all gas has saved me a ton of money!
Sounds like my setup except I had to convert the 240V outlet under the cooktop to 120V to operate the igniter for the gas lol. Other than my oven and AC compressors, we’re fully gassed out down here in south Louisiana - cooktop, drier, 2 furnaces, 2 water heaters, and a standby generator.
Are you using one of those 50 amp 240 to 15 amp 120 converter plugs?
My range is a LG double oven gas slide in. I also have a 17kW Cummins whole house generator, NG of course.
https://a.co/d/hj2P6h5
I’m not using that converter plug but that’s pretty cool! Mine was only a 2/C w/gnd so I didn’t have a neutral. Moved one of the hots to the neutral bus (marked with green tape) and then put in a regular 15A breaker and receptacle. I had to use wire nuts to drop the cable size from #8 to #14 to properly terminate in the receptacle but works like a charm.
If I had a 3/C where a neutral was present that little adapter would save a ton of time. Only downside is you’d have an oversized breaker at the panel and it would still be 2-pole. But would probably work fine.
Thanks for the tip!
If you read the details the adapter has an internal fuse so it's all good.
Genius. Simple and effective. Will definitely keep in mind for future use. Thanks for sharing.
As something for another piece, may I suggest you talk about heat pump efficiency curves. That's watts per BTUH delivered vs ambient outdoor temperature. If you look at the curves for most heat pumps, even CCHP rated heat pumps, that curve nosedives between thirty and twenty degrees F. Here is a link where you can look at curves https://neep.org/smart-efficient-low-carbon-building-energy-solutions/air-source-heat-pumps .
This is great. Thanks! We’ll see when we get back to heat pumps. I feel like their moment in the sun has passed
You are welcome, it's also interesting to look at how the BTUH output drops as it gets colder. The backup electric furnace runs way more than they admit.
Another great piece.
I once lived in a home with electric heat. That was more than 30 years ago and the amount we paid back them is roughly what I pay now for heating oil. The idea that electric heat is more economical than natural gas (or heating oil) is absurd.
But you had an heat pump or resistance electric heating? The second one is worse than gas heating the first one can be cheaper depending on local gas and electricity prices, see my other comment for examples.
No heat pump but cannot remember details. Was more than 40 years ago 😂
Another outstanding article. Shows the strong case for a Balanced generation portfolio with significant coal generation included in the regional mix of generation. Thank you
I would love more gas and fission !
My paranoid brain is increasingly convinced that the effort to force electrical conversion on us is being waged on an indirect front now.
In Austin, the gas provider, The Texas Gas Service, recently raised their "delivery charge" to the point where gas now costs 60% more than it did a little over a year ago.
The Austin city government cried some crocodile tears and claimed they would look into a different provider, but three years earlier they had tried to pass a municipal gas ban and were headed off by the Texas Legislature. It sure looks to me like the fix is in.
If you can't ban gas directly, just let it be so expensive folks can't afford it.
Of course, when they made/allowed the increase they claimed it would about a 10% increase in bills.
Liars.
Vote the idiots out and get competition in!
What competition? Most Austin City Councilor members seem to run unopposed or the opposition wears an even thicker tin foil hat.
Doesn't matter though. I'm out voted on every proposition. The population here votes and votes and votes to spend more money. Every spending proposition, no matter how foolish, passes. Even with viable alternatives for CC positions, the morons in Austin would vote for the California transplants.
The only reason Austin doesn't look like San Francisco yet, is that sometimes the Texas Legislature deigns to restrain what the Austin City Council is allowed to do.
Competition for the gas franchise after council voted out.
Great analysis. We clearly need more interstate pipelines as the gas consumption for electricity around the U.S. continues to grow especially East of the Mississippi River where there is limited wind.
On the home heating side, simply put gas home heating is twice as efficient of use of natural gas as converting natural gas to electricity to home heat. In the deep South, not a big deal as cost of two systems can offset, but in northern climates, natural gas heating a great answer.
Absolutely. I own an apartment building in my home town that has electric baseboard heating. I can attest that the Upper Midwest is hardest hit by electric heating bills.
If you combine gas for electricity and heat pump for heating you get better returns from your gas power!
You go to 40% in making the electricity ( worste case) but then you use to move ambient heat with the heat pump and you get around 3,5 more heat energy than electricity you put in ( average case) which leads to 0.4 x 3,5 = 1,4 .
Ofcourse this is worse the colder it is but it is better the more you insulate your home .
On average the combination of gas for electricity and heat pump for heat could lead to lower electricity prices and so an even lower cost for households
Keep it in the ground! Then the undesirable people die. And we don’t have to worry about famine from all the farmland we are converting to use for solar panels and windmills. So obvious.
I wish we could have a discussion of energy without feeling the need to pick a side. Anyone who thinks global warming is a problem should be all for adding natural gas pipeline capacity into New England. At the same time the coefficient of performance of a heat pump is greater than one and the cost to extend a natural gas pipeline just a few houses will take a very long time to recoup. I get it that there are advocates. Anyway, thanks for publishing.
I have a whole house a/c that needs to be replaced. Whether an air source heat pump can be used instead of the a/c is something I need to figure out. Backup heating is still needed for cold temperatures, that would just be my existing furnace.
Exactly! There will be down in the weeds capital allocation decisions (I’m looking into a heat pump for my house) but from a big picture policy perspective it shouldn’t be controversial.
Yeah I too looked into one but there was not enough benefit. It would have been cheaper to run but it would have drained all my power during the worst days in winter so I revolver to wait until I better insulate it. How is your house situation?
To me gas and heat pumps are great allies ! Using gas for electricity is 0.4 the heat pump is around 3.5 = 1.4 on average leading to lower cost of heating for houses and more gas for power generation which will lead to lower electricity prices and so on
Very interesting and relevant info. I like your "Peak Gas" graph. Something for people to understand is this shows averages (day?). If you look at peak gas rates on a minute-to-minute basis, they can be significantly higher.
Absolutely. Do you have any idea where we could get data with that level of granularity? We’d love to nerd out over it haha
A lot of data can be accessed at: https://www.gridstatus.io/datasets
The 5-min data is only available a relatively short period before it is averaged out into longer durations. I download the data I am interested in a couple of times a month.
I track data for several grids and generate key indicators.
Texas KPIs are available at: https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/texas-ercot-sep-2025-the-path-to. Check out Figure 2 which shows hydrocarbon generation in 5-min intervals. You can really get a good idea of the variation which is driven of course by part-time Wind & Solar.
California's are available at: https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/california-caiso-aug-2025-the-path . I have not updated September yet, but I will do shortly. It will be available at https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/california-caiso-sep-2025-the-path
One issue with California is that much of their W&S Firming is by imports. There is no measure of which of those imports are High-Carbon, but we can make assumptions based on longer term averages. Not as precise as Texas, but directionally correct.
I also have data for the UK that shows the wide fluctuations of Nat Gas. The peaks are substantial. I can supply this if you want. You can get an idea of the variation from Figure 1 in: https://wrjohn1.substack.com/p/wind-solar-and-the-effect-of-diminishing
Excellent stuff!
Thanks guys! Useful stuff.
Thank you for this very informative article! I live in Winnipeg, MB, Canada, so the heat pump issue is important (as is the wind turbines not working at -30C and there is risk parts can break at -40C https://penguinempirereports.substack.com/p/freezing-to-fight-global-warming). For heat pumps, are you referring to air source or ground source or both? What are your thoughts on Robert Bryce's recent article "The Era of Super Cheap Natural Gas is Ending" https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/the-era-of-super-cheap-natural-gas ?
Windmills shut in when it gets -22 F is very interesting. I just spent a couple weeks in North Dakota hunting. It seems completely ridiculous there is a single windmill in the Dakotas , Montana, Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and those are just states I’ve been too and have seen them. How is this not completely ridiculous?
It’s ridiculous to give them any capacity value because they don’t work under a variety of uncontrollable circumstances. On the other hand, if wind turbines were really cheap and fuel was really expensive, it would make sense to build them there and use gas to meet peak. But as it stands now you’re spending more to save the fuel than use the fuel, which doesn’t make sense
Exactly, North Dakota has really made progress on flaring. I only saw a fraction of it compared to past years. WTG ND oil and gas industries!
This piece looks like it was funded by the AGA. I like NG also, but this cheerleading seems excessive to me and somewhat of a departure from your previous work. I usually expect healthy skepticism from you. Frank
The piece is based on simple thermodynamics, physics and chemistry. No cheerleading needed.
It’s one thing to be cheerleading and another to see the direction of the market. It doesn’t matter if EBB cheerleads for natural gas or not. Its demand is continuing to increase because of its versatility. Reality always wins.
I didn’t think we were doing any cheerleading. We didn’t celebrate the fact that gas is now the largest source of electricity and we almost always highlight how we think that we should not have shut the coal plants down. The only other slide that could be controversial is the last one with the adjusted heating bill calculation. We didn’t know enough about how exactly AGA got their estimates for that to repeat their claims about annual bill savings but it was good to show directionally what the difference in cost is between the fuels
I was mostly refuting the point the previous commenter made that you were cheerleading but I wasn’t implying that you were - sorry for the confusion. Whether using gas directly to heat (rather than converting it to electricity and then heating) or just generating at scale, there’s a reason gas demand is exploding. EBB has no control over it and you are simply reporting what you’re seeing. Thanks for the information!
Oh I understood that. I was just joining the broader conversation.
Hi Frank, and thank you caring enough about our work to express your concern. We don’t accept funding from anyone for our EBB articles. Would you be willing to share what part of our article you thought was cheerleading so I can address it?