You obviously weren’t an engineer.
Based on the higher heating value of natural gas a well designed gas turbine combined cycle plant is well above 45% not 20% and new plants are nearing 70% no method of making electric power is more efficient not even hydrogen fuel cells.
https://www.powermag.com/another-world-record-for-combined-cycle-efficiency/
Even considering generation one NGCC plants the over all average is above 43%
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32572
I have a dual system dual zone geothermal heat pump with a coefficient of performance at 55 degrees ground source temp in heating mode of 6 that means for every kilowatt hour of electricity the system consumes it outputs 6 kilowatts of heat. The numbers work like this
Natural gas combined cycle avg efficiency to the busbar of 45% using 7340 btu / kwh higher heating value heat rate. 3% transmission losses over the HVAC network the 100km to my property including step up and step down 3 phase to single phase transformers. That one kWh at my meter needed 7340 btu + 3% more (220btu)= 7560 btu of raw natural gas. My heat pumps take that delivered one kwh and turn it via a first law reverse carnot process into 6 kWh worth of heat moving against the thermal gradient of 56 degrees to 90 degrees at the outlet air vents. 1 kwh is 3414 btu so 6 times 3414 is 20484 btu delivered to my living space from the original 7560 btu burned at the power plant. Oblivious 20484 is drastically more than 7500. Burning the same 7560 btus worth of natural gas at my location in the most modern gas furnace would only yield a 90% transfer to my living space or 6804 btus.
The math is clear
20484 is much greater than 6804 that’s verifiable physics. My system is even more efficient since all my power comes from the sun via the 15kilowatts of panels I have on my roof there is effectively no transmission losses over the 50 feet from the inverters to the heatpump units.
The only way direct firing of natural gas beats electric heating is when you compare on site combustion to electric resistance heating elements and that ancient technology is being phased out for a host of reasons. In temperate climates homes may not have cooling units but in humid hoy climates nearly every home will and that very same compressor that produces cooling produces heat on the other end of the cycle after the compressor nearly every new unit now has the 4 way valves which is all it takes to flip the condenser and evaporator locations to go from cooling to heating. Air source heat pumps of this ddesign gave COPs of 2 to 5 given the same parameters as the ground source an air source heat pump still beats direct fired gas heat.
COP 3 is 10242 btu for air source vs again 90% direct fired at 6804 using the same starting amounts of natural gas on a btu for btu basis. Since the cooling unit would be there anyways in hot climates it.makes all the sense to add in heat pump 4 way vales to the compressor evaporator chain. And nearly every manufacturer does exactly that now. Only in the far north with zero cooling yearly loads vs pure electrical resistance heating does direct fired gas make sense from a energy burned point of view. CO2 heat pumps can and do work in the far north they can extract heat from air temps down to 40 below zero while still.maintaining a COP above 2 at moderate temps of 40_50f that COP rises into the 4s
This entire muck of words is nothing but meaningless babble. Sentences without verbs or punctuation cannot be deciphered.
Since you started your reply by insulting the writer, don't cry when you're insulted back.
Combined cycle plants definitely have a good peak efficiency compared to other types of generation. The article you linked said the record the Japanese plant attained was 63.08% but of course one assumes that this is at the beginning of a campaign when everything is in tip top condition…. the numbers at the end of a campaign before an outage are always lower. And don’t even get me started on the games people play with their ‘uncertainty analyses’. Regardless, for me the more impressive insight from the link is that “The 7HA turbine can ramp up to full load in less than 30 minutes, which allows for greater grid stability with renewable and alternative energy sources.” That is faster than I’d have expected… one of the big issues in the past when trying to incorporate IWTs and solar is that the gas fired stations had to be able to react fast enough to catch the dips… hence simple-cycle gas turbines instead of combined cycle were selected which of course immediately drops peak efficiency from say 60 to 40% and that differential basically meant that the power produced from IWTs and solar was useless since it could have been produced with no additional gas if all the plants were all combined cycle. Regardless, a more meaningful value is the efficiency of the gas turbine plants on an ongoing basis if it can take advantage of its complete combined cycle capabilities… that means through part load and full load conditions and while ramping up and ramping down. If they are constantly cycling trying to accommodate IWTs and solar, the only efficiency that really matters is what the trend line says it is 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And as a separate but semi-related issue, the more a plant cycles, the higher the maintenance costs.
As for your heat pump system, sure…. put one kW in and get 6 kW of heat out. However, there is far more to this than that basic math. What did you spend for the total system? How much real estate did you use…. and are you suggesting that this is relevant to NYC where buildings are built on postage stamps? Or did you drop two wells down? Do you think dropping well down all over NYC is a practical idea? There are already endless problems with contamination of the ground water table from wells that aren’t looked after or decommissioned properly. How long have you had your system and have you had any maintenance problems with it? A few years ago when I investigated these they had a horrible record of bad control problems and it seemed that the number of technicians who knew what they were doing was few and far between.