25 States Agree To Quadruple Number Of Heat Pumps In America::The US Climate Alliance met in New York City this week to explain the benefits of heat pumps, including better health for American families.
25 States Agree To Quadruple Number Of Heat Pumps In America::The US Climate Alliance met in New York City this week to explain the benefits of heat pumps, including better health for American families.
The article doesn’t say just how much more expensive heat pumps are when comparing to gas furnaces. I live in one of the states at the top of that picture and just replaced my 20+ year old furnace and AC compressor. I specifically asked about heat pumps and they were reluctant to even price it out for me. It was over twice the cost. In addition they said the area I live in would almost certainly require an aux heat source, which they recommended gas for because direct electric heat is so horribly inefficient. I ended up going with the 98.5% efficient gas furnace, which also came with incentives and rebates from the power company.
Direct electric heat is very efficient. Practically 100%.
My understanding is that you would only need the aux source during extreme cold. So very rarely.
Right - in fact, from my knowledge, heat pumps only see use over direct electrical heating because they are effectively more than 100% efficient. They move more heat energy from outside to inside than they use in the transmission.
The breakdown between gas and electric heating isn’t necessarily a matter of how efficiently the energy is used once it gets to the home, it’s how expensive it is to get it there in the first place. In a lot, if not a majority, of places, it’s much cheaper to get gas piped in than it would be to pay for the same amount of heating via direct electric resistance. Heat pumps change the equation because they can make electric heating in places that don’t get outrageously cold economically competitive with gas.
Yep PGE makes it so that gas is tremendously less expensive than electrical in California. So a lot of people who would normally be upgrading right now will not be doing so.
My heat pump is around 300% efficient. It adds 3X the energy into the house than it spends by stealing that energy from outside.
Except when it’s very cold outside, which is what was discussed here. Heat pumps are great (have one in my home), but it might not be ideal in very cold areas, especially if electricity prices are high compared to other energy sources.
You need to be in a very, VERY cold area for that to matter. While these places exists, I’m sure it’s not the case for a lot of the states I’ve seen marked in that article. Heat pump can heat the inside of your house even when it’s freezing outside.
What do you consider “extreme” cold?
I don’t know. It’s a curve though, not a cutoff.
Icing conditions can also be a factor; freezing rain in the high 20’s F (~-4C for those who can’t F) will build up a layer of ice on the outside unit especially since it’s already the coldest thing around. That ice prevents air from circulating through, so it loses effectiveness. Running the strips for about a half hour or so, then running the air conditioner for about a half hour will defrost it quite effectively and restore it to efficient operation. It is my understanding some systems even do this automatically.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFEHFsO-XSI
I’d explain, but he does it better.
Knew what video was the second i saw the youtube link :D
The article does eventually mention that heat pumps cost more, plus replacement rate is limited by when existing stuff goes bad., after way too much filler text.
Of course they gloss over it a bit and use an example “ if a heat pump cost $5,000 …”. If I could do that, I would have. I did get one quote before giving up, and even if you read it as “$5,000 more than conventional options…”, it’s not close to that either.
However the biggest problem with the article is claiming that being more efficient means less operating costs and make a claim about how much money you’ll save. Sure, they’re very efficient , but it’s more complicated than that. Where I live, the preferred alternative is natural gas, and it’s price per energy is much cheaper than electricity, so you’d save very little, if any
I was renting a place while rehabbing my home. We completely removed the natural gas from our house and went induction range, electric oven, heat pump water heater and heat pump air conditioner/furnace. The place we were renting was about 3 blocks away. It had an old but not terribly old gas furnace, standard gas range and oven, gas water heater, and no air conditioner. It turned out to be a really great way to compare the two setups. One mostly gas, somewhat inefficient (which is standard out there), the other ultra modern power saving equipment throughout the house. The rented place had baseboard heating as well, but that is so wildly inefficient that we turned them off and never used them. Sweet jesus it was like lighting cash on fire.
My last bill gas + electric at the old place was $210. My first full month bill at the new place was $90, and that includes an AC running at the new place that didn’t exist at the old place.
It is a shocking level of savings, and we aren’t even in winter yet where my gas bills at the inefficient place would regularly hit $200.