Nine US States Are Teaming Up To Accelerate the Adoption of Heat Pumps - Slashdo...
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Nine US States Are Teaming Up To Accelerate the Adoption of Heat Pumps
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Nine US States Are Teaming Up To Accelerate the Adoption of Heat Pumps (wired.com) 95
Posted by BeauHD
on Friday February 09, 2024 @10:30PM from the climate-friendlier-solutions dept."It's a really strong signal from states that they're committed to accelerating this transition to zero-emissions residential buildings," says Emily Levin, senior policy adviser at the Northeast States for Coordinated Air Use Management (NESCAUM), an association of air-quality agencies, which facilitated the agreement. The states will collaborate, for instance, in pursuing federal funding, developing standards for the rollout of heat pumps, and laying out an overarching plan "with priority actions to support widespread electrification of residential buildings."
Instead of burning planet-warming natural gas, a heat pump warms a building by transferring heat from the outdoor air into the interior space. Run it in the opposite direction, and it can cool the inside of a building -- a heat pump is both a heater and AC unit. Because the system is electric, it can run off a grid increasingly powered by renewables like wind and solar. Even if you have to run a heat pump with electricity from fossil-fuel power plants, it's much more efficient than a furnace, because it's moving heat instead of creating it. A heat pump can save an average American household over $550 a year, according to one estimate. They've gotten so efficient that even when it's freezing out, they can still extract warmth from the air to heat a home. You can even install a heat pump system that also warms your water. "These states are aiming to further collaborate with those heat pump manufacturers by tracking sales and overall progress, sending a signal to the industry to ramp up production to meet the ensuing demand," reports Wired. "They'll also collaborate with each other on research and generally share information, working toward the best strategies for realizing the transition from gas to electric."
"Basically, they're pursuing a sort of standardization of the policies and regulations for getting more heat pumps built, bought, and installed, which other states outside of the coalition might eventually tap into."
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We literally just had a new multi-stage (2 for AC and variable for gas) unit installed. In many of those states, you'll still need a supplemental gas unit for the many days and nights when the heat pump just won't cut it. If there had been a significant incentive, we'd have given it more consideration. One thing our state does give incentive for is insulation. Our attic is going from R13 to R38 next week, partially paid for by our state.
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The Polish poster cites 40 houses in his own village - presumably people whom he knows well.
That effortlessly trumps your vague, unattributed "too many successful installations and happy customers in too many locations".
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We live in southern England, which is very moderate - rarely below freezing, and then not for long. When we visited friends who were very proud of their new heat pump (and electric car) we felt quite chilly - and this was in spring. They are fairly well off, so can probably afford to boost their heatin when they get round to noticing that it's not quite up to par.
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That means nothing. We keep our house at 67F in the winter, not because the heater can't keep up but because we want to reduce our energy usage.
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You bought the wrong heatpumps. That's on you and your village, not on the technology. You can't just buy any old pump off the shelf, they have wildly different capacities and climate capabilities.
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Yes, backup system is needed for most people also in Finland, but some heat pumps are producing more heat than they use electricity down to -35C. Of course the problem still is that the colder it is, the more heat you need, but the less heat the pump is outputting. So either you will need to invest more for the cold days, and the payoff time gets longer and longer, or you will have a backup system (resistive heating of course is the cheapest form of heating). The issue then gets that the power grid can be v
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From the link you offered...
The typical claim is that heat pumps are "up to" four times as efficient as resistance heat. That's true but efficiency falls with outdoor temperatures. I have a heat pump and it did well for heating in mild weather until the control unit broke, since then it had no ability to switch between fossil fuel heat and heat pump so the heat pump only provides cooling. The heat pump was sized for cooling in part because the primary purpose was cooling than heating, and because 2-stage
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I can't help but think that there's something wrong with your logic.
If you're installing a much bigger heat pump in order to increase efficiency, I'd think that power use would actually go down, because it's a more efficient unit. I think the primary size driver would be the outside condenser unit - it's a big heat sink, essentially. The bigger it is, generally speaking, the more efficient it is, though increases drop off after a point.
If you can heat your home with resistive heat, then no matter how big
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Iâ(TM)m in Canada and border Maine. We donâ(TM)t have access the cheap gas here, so all new build go heat pumps. Houses, condos, apartments, they are everywhere. I have lived in 3 different houses with different heat sources: All electric baseboard, air-to-air HP, and geothermal heat pump. For me in NB the A2A energy cost was about half of all baseboard (2x more efficient) and the geothermal was about half the A2A (4x more efficient). Most folks go A2A mini-splits though due to how cheap the
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with R60 and R100 insulation values in building codes, heat pumps are more than adequate, not to mention how they can run off of roof top solar so no grid, EVs can be used as battery walls and not to even mention passive solar
people, we've all been cheated by Big Energy who do everything they can to keep us from being energy self-sufficient
what we have now is just classism, corporatocracy and corruption in action
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Great point. The upstream source of the power for these "green" heat pumps is usually natural gas, coal, or oil. https://i.postimg.cc/7ZqLd2Ld/... [postimg.cc]
Then you have all the losses of sending power miles over the grid before its converted back to mechanical energy to compress gas at the unit. It would seem to take a lot more energy with all the losses, than just to generate the heat at the site that conventional boilers do. If energy was abundant, clean, and free, heat pumps would make sense. But like many gree
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I have great pleasure in awarding you this week's Slashdot Gold Star for the comment that best combines blasphemy, contempt for the intellectually challenged, and 100% lack of content.
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Summary:
- My heat pump broke.
- I need a heat pump four times the size I bought in case there are Siberian temperatures.
- My wires aren't thick enough for such a big heat pump.
- Nordic countries have hydro & nuclear.
- Gas emits less CO2 than oil.
- I know very little about where my electricity comes from or what options are available.
Yeah, very convincing line of thinking you've got there.-
Funny, how in leftist's minds, preparing oneself for once-or-twice-a-century winter conditions is absolutely necessary when talking about Texas electricity grid, and absolute extravagance, waste and excess when talking about heat pumps. Yeah, it takes a total Trumptard to not want to freeze to death when those temperatures DO come.
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Precisely. What's more, any realistic evaluation also needs to take into account the true costs of each system, which means adding in the costs of subsidies. I notice that the article quotes someone talking about "clean" (electric) versus "dirty" energy. By no stretch of the imagination can renewables be termed "clean" and fossil fuels "dirty". CO2 is essential for all life, and the slightly greater atmospheric CO2 levels recently have produced a boom in growth of all plants - notably crops and forests.
http [lewrockwell.com]
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Yeah but Nordic countries insulate their houses when they build them.
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Apropos your sig: I've never heard of the fire department breaking into someone's house and shooting them dead.
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And once again you're repeating the leftist lie of how Norway is some sort of edge of frozen hell, and anything that works there will work everywhere. Meanwhile, 90% of Norway's population lives in the south, near Oslo, with a very oceanic climate (which means that while their average temp is low, they pretty much never experience wild swings, and extreme conditions), additionally heated by the warm waters of Gulf Stream. Which means you'll regularly see MUCH lower temperatures in Minneapolis [wikipedia.org] than an avera [wikipedia.org]
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They historically had very cheap hydro, so lots of people were already heating electrically at COP=1. Their grid is dimensioned for that and they can return to it when necessary. Though the European electricity market bidding up their hydro makes it more expensive.
Governments in colder climates should be very careful with air source heatpumps, it's a grid disaster waiting to happen.
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Yes, there exist heat pumps that can work in cold climates. However, they are Very Expensive. Easily 5x -10x the cost of a conventional furnace. This is a problem, because it is not economical to replace your furnace and AC with a heat pump as lifetime energy savings would not make up for the upfront costs.
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Ground source (i.e. geothermal) heat pumps are the right answer for areas where it gets too cold for air source heat pumps (aka reverse cycle air conditioners). Not fossil fuel powered boilers or furnaces.
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Ground source is unlikely in urban areas. Great in the country though.
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With the right design, an urban system can harvest heat from neighboring apartments.
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not true at all, geothermal can be used to store and use heat from mass walls and shallow ground loops, basically people use their yards and garages to store heat during the day and use it at night or during the summer and then released in winter months, google shallow geothermal
also google Saskatchewan Conservation House for passive solar development history in cold climates
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Depends on how deep your pockets are. We put heatpumps in our last house, loved them. But they were air source and shutdown as -10C approached. Side effect is that they would not turn on again until outside warmed enough to melt the ice on the coils -- that usually took a day or two. Had wanted to do ground source but the hard rock drilling required (bedrock was 18" down) would have cost 5x the price of the entire system. We kept the old electric baseboards and were glad of it. Big problem we ran into is th
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My Mitsubishi hit the limit in the last cold snap. At -5 F it was still putting out warmish air, but it was not keeping up with the losses from the wind. I had to start up the baseboards I have as backup.
In warmer weather like the typical 10 F above zero that is a normal winter nighttime temperature here it does fine.
It surprises me that Maine is pushing them, not only is it cold there, but it's damp and the outdoor unit will be frosting up quite often.
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In Norway, Mitsubishi sells units that have a guaranteed heat capacity down to -30 C (-22 F) and are tested down to -36 C. Weird way to write it. I've got another brand, and they kept the house nice and warm at -24 C a couple of weeks ago. Heat pumps have automated defrosting on the outside unit, so that works fine in the coastal area where I live.
teg - Posting anon to avoid undoing mods
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Nordic countries still have to obey the laws of physics. They do have integrated electric coils for backup heat. There is no magical product that isnâ(TM)t available for purchase in the US
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Pushing what? Be specific. There are a wide variety of different heat-pumps on the market to suit a wide variety of different climates. Yes there are plenty of heatpumps which can still operate as a heatpump below -5F. But even down to much colder you can get hybrid heatpumps that supplement their heating with gas during the odd rare extremely cold snap and still act as a heat pump 99% of the time.
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the point is that overall, heat pumps, despite all limitations, are still far more economical and conserve energy, which is exactly what we all need to do
real conservatives live conservatively and conserve our resources....
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"Far more economical" than what? Electric heating, which nobody should use as a first choice?
Heat pumps are great in moderate temperatures, but they do need a backup like gas or oil heat where it gets really cold. My neighborhood doesn't have natural gas (ironic because a four-pipe natgas pipeline goes through the middle of it) so most people have oil; a few people have propane tanks. Historically, those fossil fuel backups were preferred because they cost significantly less than electric heat. How do h
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Than every form of heating. It's literally the single most efficient way we have to heat. Even the gas backed heat pumps you mention use a tiny TINY percentage of the gas and blow away normal gas systems in energy efficiency by an order of magnitude.
If you live in a place where you can't use a heatpump (only a minority of the world), a hybrid gas heatpump is your most efficient heating choice by a long shot.
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Heat pumps can also use electric strips for the third stage heat (mine does here in Virginia).
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We have a (ground based) heat pump. It uses an appalling amount of electricity, but is too costly to replace with conventional heat/ac. This is not an arctic area (Cecil county,Md, at the north end of the Chesapeake) but the cost of running the unit has been high and we get notices every month about our electricity usage being higher than most everyone. Nor do we keep thermostat settings to cause extra heat. This does not reflect the "emergency mode" (we haven't turned it on). (That is just electric resista
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Ok, so I might have told this story here before.
I live in a condo built in 1970s that has a specific size opening and installation area that fits an HVAC compressor of a certain (common, esp. back in those days) form factor. It is currently just an AC (cooling) unit, that has plain resistive heat elements (so my winter heating bills are comparable to those of a standalone house x2 larger).
Sometime in the 90s there was a company making heat pumps of the same form factor. It's not a terribly lucrative business, these pumps being replacement only and not too expensive, but they did their best.
Then EPA came, measured these heat pumps and stated that they do not satisfy the minimal heat pump efficiency requirements set by the government. Now, the issue is that given the small form factor, it is difficult to make a heat pump as efficient as the government standards require (so the larger heat pumps can do so but this one really cannot due to laws of physics and the like).
Of course even a less-than-most-efficient heat pump is still at least x2 as efficient as heating with a giant hair dryer. But that did not matter. So, the manufacturer was forced to stop making these heat pumps (and, eventually, shut down). That was the end of it, sometime around the year 2005.
Since then, no heat pumps are available for anyone that lives in a unit similar to mine and has a similar AC system. It's not possible to fit any of the larger units in here (at least without breaking exterior walls which, generally, is not something that condo owners can do and/or condo boards permit, nor is it cost effective or attractive). So, 100s of units in our community, 1000s within a few mile radius and many 1000s more all across the country (as these were very standard building designs) have no heat pump options available and unlikely to ever.
So, I waste a ton of electricity and $$$ - but at least it's not gas, I guess - just coal somewhere west of here.
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Sounds like government efficiency for you...
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Heat pumps have changed wildly over the past decade alone, to say nothing of the past 2 decades, both in terms of capability, size, and in efficiency. Saying "unlikely ever" is silly in a developing field. The government has good reason to mandate minimum efficiency standards, and your handful of condos are likely offset by not having inefficient heat pumps being installed around the country for those people who were able to but too slack to do it "properly".
Don't rule out a developing technology just becau
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What prevents you from installing a mini-split?
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I installed a hybrid gas / heat pump system here several years ago, and it's been okay. I've had to have it repaired a few times though, it's higher maintenance than straight natural gas, mostly due to the outdoor "exhaust unit" as they call it. The big metal box with the fan.
One important thing for people to know - their capacity isn't really high. If you live in a really cold climate, your heat pump will struggle to provide enough heat, or it may just plain not be able to run at all. Mine is set to click over automatically to natural gas if it starts falling behind, and it WILL do that periodically when it's below zero (F) outside. I tried to leave it set on electrical only, and it fell behind several degrees before I re-enabled "emergency heat' mode, and the natural gas didn't take long to catch me up.
I'm currently on emergency heat only, because my starter capacitors have gone out AGAIN in the outside unit and it's a bit chilly to be outside doing repairs yet. I've got the replacement caps, just need a bit of warm weather and some motivation to get out there and swap them.
So make sure you "get both sides of the story" before making any expensive decisions. They're not all roses, but it's NICE to finally have central air conditioning. Also, make sure the peeps that install it did a good job of sealing up the entry into the house. I had to evict some mice and re-seal it myself a few years ago. Great Stuff works well for that. And depending on where you live, natural gas may be a cheaper source of heat than electrical is. I wouldn't trust the sellers to be honest about that - talk with a neighbor that's switched, to see if they're really saving money like the salesman told them they would.
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Air source heat pumps deliver much greater efficiencies than natural gas because they move heat from one place to another rather than creating new heat.
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A better way to say it is modern natural gas systems are well above 90% efficient with some reaching even 97 or 98%. Heat pumps can do over 300% efficiency because they are taking free heat from the environment and concentrating it which takes less energy.
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When gas is burned at a central plant to make your electricity that process is perhaps 40% efficient by the time the electricity reaches your home.
So, a 300% efficient heat pump (depending on the temp) in the winter with 40% efficient power is really just 120% Some hours of the day may well have truely green power from solar, wind, hydro, nuke. But that just depends on where you live.
Before heat pumps it was quite sensible to use a 80-97% gas furnace vs. electric resistive heat (100% efficient * 40% effic
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1. Electricity is made from things other than gas.
2. Have you got a link to show that electricity made using a natgas power source is only 40% efficient? Just conceptually, this makes no sense. The natgas power station is more efficient than a home furnace, obviously, and transmission power losses (step-up, step-down, transmission lines, distribution) are 8 to 15%.
3. I hope you’re not counting transmission power losses for electricity while ignoring transmission power requirements (not losses) for gas
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I know in Georgia, my heat pump was set to switch to gas below 45 degrees because it's cheaper that way even though the heat pump can work at colder temperatures.
I've had a better experience with mine. No repairs have been necessary in 10 years.
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The newer units are more efficient than those from 10 years ago. It might be that you don't need to switch to alternate heating sources until a much lower outside temperature now.
(Posting AC to preserve mods)
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Fortunately for all the low-income renters who'll be stuck on non-hybrid systems beyond their control, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and Rhode Island are well-known for their mild winters.
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If you're not just pretending to care, please explain how they are better off with kerosene heaters and wood stoves.
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What do kerosene heaters and wood stoves have to do with anything? The low-income renters are better off with the actual natural gas and electric furnaces which heat pumps are slated to replace, not the imaginary kerosene heaters nobody in TFA, TFS, or TFComments was talking about.
People using a wood stove to heat their shotgun shack aren't installing $5,000 heat pump systems, and slumlords who force their tenants to rely on kerosene heaters aren't going to suddenly spring for a heat pump either.
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I have a Heat Pump on my home improvement To Do list. I would like to get a dual fuel system too.
The smart thermostat should know my gas and electric rates and run whatever fuel is cheapest at the moment during the winter.
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I would like to mod this one up. Seal up the holes made by fly by night installers. Nice of you to have replacement caps. Do remember the power supply dropper cap for 5-12v initial on switch may also fail early. If your starter caps are failing too often - they may have fake or marginal voltage ratings and maybe only 2000 hours of operation. If there is room to fit same value, larger higher voltage types will last much longer. Stick a cheap thermometer thermistor/temp probe on the caps and watch the tempe
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There's something not right. Heat pumps should run for years with zero maintenance. For new houses, you can put the entire unit in the house, with air vents allowing it to pull outside air through. That exposes the unit to less weathering, which may also improve reliability.
The capacity depends on the unit you buy. It sounds like yours is just barely big enough.
As for temperatures: current heat pumps will work effectively down to around -20C (that's about -5F). After that, their efficiency does drop off.
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Heat pumps have the same problem as EV's in having expensive components that a home mechanic cannot fix.
A furnace is completely inside the house and they can easily last 30 years with just minor cleaning
A Heat pump has pressurized gas and outside condenser which is exposed to the elements and ice and sun and require constant cleaning of coils and checking pressures and such. There are electonics and wires outside that rodents get into. And to top it off they don't work in freezing weather
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Wow, that's a lot of problems with refrigeration cycles. If you own an air conditioner, I recommend you get it ripped out to avoid all the suffering.
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A heat pump is (basically) an A/C unit that can run in a reverse cycle -- it's not much more complex than an A/C unit. (He said, having one for many, many years.) "Constant cleaning of coils and checking pressures" is an exaggeration; I have mine checked/serviced twice a year and, since 2005, has really only required the coils cleaned then -- with a hose, that I could do myself. That said, I have a quality Trane unit that is well located with nothing in my yard to damage/abuse it. The first two compressor stages reliably produce some heat down into the teens and the electric third stage fills in as needed.
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Here in the UK, boilers (furnaces) can only be repaired by registered engineers who are qualified to work with gas. Boilers involve gas, water and electricity. They are notoriously prone to failures requiring expensive parts and costly labour. And they have an average life of about 15 years, not 30. Apart from that and the stuff about heat pumps (I really hope you don’t have a fridge in your house, it would cause you a lot of stress), you’re completely right
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That is, of course, gas boilers ; there are also electrically powered boilers and oil fired boilers. Which require different certifications (and in many cases, apprenticeships).
Which probably isn't a bad thing - there would be more cowboys out there without the regulation. It must have been a week since the last report of a house blown to shit killing several people.
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You sound like you're comparing your heatpump to your granddaddy's furnace. Our gas system has wires, needs pressures checked, has condensation traps that need to be filled and maintained, complex computer circuit boards regulating and protecting all parts of the system, ignition coils, etc. You're an absolute fool if you've been sold a heating system as maintenance free. Furnaces should be disassembled and cleaned by a professional on a 2 yearly basis. My neighbours heatpump is disassembled and cleaned on
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I'd bet that your house was not properly insulated and the heatpump system was not installed correctly. This is the main problem with heatpump - crap installers who do not know what they are doing and do not do heat loss tests etc in order to spec the correct equipment.
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Have lived the last seven years in an all electric house with a heat pump. Including 4 days without power during winter storm "Uri"... With proper insulation, they actually work pretty well. My unit can generate heat all the way down to at least -4/F, but I have to have power, which is where the Texas grid failed me.
The other caveats:
1. They require a defrost cycle outside in cold weather. If the fan is blocked/seized/imbalanced by ice, you're boned. If it isn't, it needs 20 - 30 minutes of defrost before it can provide heat. This is a problem if the grid operator makes the rotation time shorter than an hour or so.2. An all-electric neighborhood can create a huge feedback loop under conditions like "Uri". The power comes back on, and a thousand houses turn on their 12kw water heaters, and defrost their heat pump, and... We're talking energy units measured in 6000 horsepower mainline locomotive's per city block in current draw. Before anyone gets any heat...
Ultimately, I suspect the south needs to adopt a dual unit model. Where the main house A/C & heat are a grid tied heat pump, and a second ductless unit is tied to off-grid solar. At 8 to 1 heat moved per watt, it doesn't take much. Maybe 800 - 1200 watts... All of three modern solar panels. Just to get rid of the single point of failure.
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"it needs 20 - 30 minutes of defrost before it can provide heat." SOOO you are gonna be running it 24/7 if you live in northern states where when it gets under freezing it stays there for many months.
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I can't speak of the OP's heat pump model, but 20-30 minutes defrosting cycle sounds strange. Maybe if it hasn't been used for days and is covered with ice due to that? We use a lot of heat pumps in Norway - noone uses gas for heating, there is no infrastructure for it either. The heat pumps work continuously through the winter, defrosting is just a couple of minutes now and then. We recently had a cold spell where the temperature got down to -24C where I live, and the heat pumps kept the house nice and wa
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I live in south-eastern Virginia and my Trane unit only defrosts when needed based on two temperature sensors -- one for air and one on the coil. My unit doesn't need that much time to defrost when it kicks in. But yes, when it's really cold, the heat pump runs a lot, but the first two compressor cycles don't really use that much electricity and they produce some heat down into the teens. I have an electric third stage, however, that obviously used more when it kicks in as needed and during defrost.
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It speaks volumes about your waste when you think 20-30minutes extra time means you need to leave something on 24/7 instead of say spending $150 for a Google Nest or something similar which takes those kinds of delays into account.
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Last time I remember hearing about a Texas grid outage they had a consumer natural gas outage as well. That's the thing with grid outages, they affect everyone. Only really small local outages are likely to affect your electricity while leaving your gas intact, and then... well... my natural gas system heating system has no means of actually starting and running it's circulating pumps and fans without electricity either so I'd still be screwed.
That said, you could run a heatpump for several days back-fed o
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Just like with EVs (and esp PHEVs), and solar, and wind, and wave power, and desalination plants, and water recycling i really like heat-pumps, especially if used w/ a geo-thermal loop because it's neat tech and harnesses physics in a cool way and i want it to succeed.
But for the love of FSM, stop shoving this stuff down people's throats with bans and mandates!
I'm at the point of switching to an 80s diesel Mercedes and coal heating just out of spite. (ok not really, but damn! get off my back!)
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Our legislature has a bill before it to "encourage" utilities to switch from gas to electric (heat pumps) where possible. I live in a neighborhood that was designed as all gas (heat, hot water, cooking). The same company that runs the gas distribution also runs the underground power grid. Their response will be: Can't do it. Insufficient grid capacity. They can't even tolerate more than a few EVs charging per block without burning up the underground cables.
The same utility also handles gas distribution in
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i'll keep gas, it never has outages and if power fails a 7000watt generator is enough to have lights on, fridges cold and run the blower motor in my gas furnace to keep me warm.
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Solar energy falls significantly in winter - shorter days, sun lower on the horizon - and wind doesn't change much, so power grids will probably make up the shortfall with gas-fired generators.
Which means they're replacing gas heaters with heat pumps that will usually be powered by... gas. I know heat pumps are efficient, but not enough to make up for the inefficiency of a gas generator.
However, heat pumps for air conditioning and water heating seem sensible.-
Read TFS, heat pumps are still lower emissions & more efficient even when gas is burnt to generate the electricity. Using fossil fuels electricity generators in your home if probably the least efficient, most polluting, & most dangerous way to go about it.
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I knew exactly how this would go here. Yep. There are places where they don't work well. Here in the coast ranges of NorCal, they actually work quite well. As old systems age out, I've seen a lot of my neighbors get these systems. For us, 20F would be unusually cold, and it would probably only happen for a few hours before you wake up. 30F is more common, but it's the same deal and snow here is typically an inch or two that melts by noon--last year's foot that took a few days to melt was a freak wonder.
So heat pumps work well here in the Winter; but I think you'd be disappointed if you had one in Truckee or Tahoe.
What I'm less certain of is the A/C performance because that's where our weather is more extreme--we get 100F+ routinely in the Summer, but nights will usually stay cool. It's not like back east where it stays sticky all night long. You can have 95F here for a high, and 55 for a low, it's actually quite pleasant even an hour or two after the Sun goes down. If I'm here for the heat of the day, I open windows, close doors, and selectively cool with a window unit. Whole-house A/C would be nice, but it's more of a want than a need.
So heat pumps work well as A/C here, but can they handle the South? I don't know. You don't hear that complaint as much, so I suspect they can.
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This is a great idea but there are areas like where I am in southern California that electricity is simply too expensive to make this viable. In the summer when it's extremely hot our combined utility bill runs over $800, and this is for a small house with pretty decent insulation. We get a break in winter when we can heat with gas which is cheap here. If heat pumps are mandated, then there needs to be massive amounts of work done to make electricity cheaper at the same time. Otherwise it's simply not e
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If energy is expensive for you...
- Do you have a solar water heater? They substantially reduce energy consumption & are essentially free hot water after installation.
- Have you effectively insulated your home? That substantially reduces energy consumption for both heat & cold.
- Do you turn off air-conditioning or heating in rooms that you're not using? That substantially reduces energy consumption.
- Do you keep your home temperatures within reasonable limits & dress appropriately, i.e.
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It sounds like it'd be a good idea to establish standards for the quality, durability, efficiency, capacity, etc., for heat pumps & their installation, i.e. hold installers accountable for faulty or inappropriate installations, since so many/.-ers appear to have inadequate, ineffective, faulty, etc., heat pumps. All these states would need to do is add effective warranties as a condition of receiving subsidies & grants.
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What's going to power these heat pumps and what kind of fuel?
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I have a dual fuel system - modulating natural gas furnace with a variable speed blower, and a variable heat pump. Since gas is so cheap right now (in Ohio), $3.3900 per MCF and electricity is about $0.13 per kWh, its cheaper to use the gas furnace for heating. I've used various changover temperature calculators online and the one built into my thermostat, and its never cheaper to heat with the heat pump.
The default changeover temperature was 30F anyways. When I asked the HVAC contractor why not just a g
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