[HN Gopher] States, including CA and NY, sign heat pump memorandum
___________________________________________________________________
States, including CA and NY, sign heat pump memorandum
Author : rntn
Score : 43 points
Date : 2024-02-07 14:27 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| timeimp wrote:
| Wait, that style of air-con isn't common in the US?
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > Despite the name, heat pumps do not generate heat - they move
| heat from one place to another.
|
| Literally nothing about "pump" implies it generates heat. That
| being said...
|
| > In colder climates, an electric heat strip can be added to
| the indoor fan coil for additional capabilities.
|
| That would just be... electric heating, but with more steps? I
| mean, at that point you just have a heat pump _and_ electric
| heating; a hybrid system. It's better, sure, but it's not
| really just a heat pump anymore.
| jayofdoom wrote:
| In those hybrid systems, you only need the electric heating
| elements when the temperature outside is extremely cold. In
| the average winter season, my auxiliary heat, the electric
| furnace, runs less than a dozen times a year. The rest of it
| is all handled by the heat pump.
| voisin wrote:
| > when the temperature outside is extremely cold
|
| Thanks to improving refrigerant technologies, the
| "extremely cold" threshold is getting lower and lower over
| time.
| nfriedly wrote:
| > _That would just be... electric heating, but with more
| steps? I mean, at that point you just have a heat pump _and_
| electric heating; a hybrid system. It 's better, sure, but
| it's not really just a heat pump anymore._
|
| I have a geothermal system (a ground-sourced heat pump) that
| also has electric resistive heating as a backup. I I've had
| to use it twice in the ~5 years I've lived in this house. The
| first time it was something like -15degf outside, so we just
| figured that was beyond what the system could handle. The
| second time, a year later, it wasn't quite as cold out and we
| had someone come look at it who found that it was low on
| refrigerant. (I've only been here 5 years, but the system was
| at least 15 years old.)
|
| So, I've been happy it to have it there as a backup. From
| what I understand, it's also fairly straightforward and
| inexpensive to add to the system.
| jhauris wrote:
| It's ubiquitous in some regions in the US. I suspect where it's
| not is both very mild climates where you hardly ever use it,
| and severe cold where until recently heat pumps were not
| sufficient. Also probably old buildings.
| amluto wrote:
| I wonder if CA has noticed that electricity prices in the
| investor-owned-utility regions are so out of whack that a heat
| pump with a COP of 4 is no longer economical compared with a
| reasonably efficient gas-fired appliance.
|
| The solution isn't more regulation or incentives, IMO. It's to
| fix the utterly broken electricity market.
|
| (This is a great example, BTW, of how public-private partnerships
| can be dramatically worse than full public control. Palo Alto,
| Santa Clara, and Los Angeles are doing quite a bit better.)
| Aloha wrote:
| Yeah, in a parallel comment I noted that in most of the country
| an 80% gas furnace is cheaper to operate.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Even when you include the cost of carbon emissions in that
| fossil gas being burned?
| riskable wrote:
| The subsidies on the gas drilling, production,
| purification, transport, and infrastructure should also be
| accounted for.
| Aloha wrote:
| How do you calculate policies specifically for gas?
|
| There are tax advantages allocated to fossil fuel
| exploration, but not specifically for gas - and mostly
| just exploration.
| cma wrote:
| You would need a tax or heat pump allowment to adjust for
| that.
| Aloha wrote:
| Indeed, we could make electricity cheaper relative to gas
| to encourage HP usage, but the cost delta is high, you
| need electricity under 10c kWh to be competitive.
| Filligree wrote:
| Carbon emissions don't cost anything to the person doing
| it.
| Aloha wrote:
| Even if you add a carbon tax a 200 dollars a ton, because
| of the relative inefficiency of generation and
| transmission, natural gas ends up being cheaper.
| Aloha wrote:
| Right now 50% of the power I can buy at any given time is
| generated by burning natural gas - this is true in 80% of
| the country.
|
| So it doesn't really matter - it might if we build some
| nuclear or whatever, but right now, it doesn't.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Right, you're not paying the true cost of that energy [1]
| [2]. I'm saying, what happens when you have to. That
| changes market signals, perhaps drastically, assuming the
| per ton cost of CO2 emitted (which is optimistically
| ~$50/ton but likely closer to $200/ton, assuming the only
| two ways to handle emitted carbon are to either not emit
| it or direct air capture and sequester underground ie
| Climeworks and company).
|
| When consumers must pay for the externalities of their
| fossil fuel consumption, it's no longer economically
| competitive. If you can't pass carbon taxes, have to
| outlaw new gas service like many jurisdictions are
| attempting to do. High level, looking at the cost of
| natural gas alone is insufficient for these discussions;
| you have to look at the entire supply chain and
| externalities to arrive at a true "apples to apples"
| comparison.
|
| (matters now, but won't as the blended cost of renewables
| and storage [firm generation] declines below the floor
| fossil gas needs to sell at to keep the infra running,
| and that infra already leaks like a sieve [3])
|
| [1] https://energypost.eu/new-u-s-study-damage-per-ton-
| of-co2-co...
|
| [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05224-9
|
| [3] https://www.edf.org/climate/methanemaps
| amluto wrote:
| In a sensible world, i.e. not California IOU-land, you
| are of course correct.
|
| In California, for IOU customers, electric rates are
| pushing $600/MWh. You can figure out how exactly you want
| to apply the emission factors:
|
| https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-
| equivalencies-ca...
|
| But you will have a hard time making the math come out in
| favor of electricity. Unless you have a _really nice_
| heat pump, your electricity is 100% carbon-free, _and_
| you rule out gas-fired heat pumps [0] or cogen [1],
| you're probably better off burning natural gas and using
| the money you save to offset your carbon usage in some
| more effective manner than throwing it at your local
| utility so they can burn it.
|
| Fundamentally, carbon pricing can work when CO2 emissions
| are expensive _and_ the clean alternatives are reasonably
| priced. California has a major problem with the latter
| requirement.
|
| [0] They exist but seem very rare.
|
| [1] Reputable companies make these, but the devices are
| large and are not friendly for residential installations.
| Aloha wrote:
| In a parallel comment I ran the numbers - and you're
| absolutely correct here.
| Aloha wrote:
| Even if you price CO2 emissions in, both electricity and
| natgas rise - because of how much electricity is
| generated by gas - and how inefficient thermal generation
| is.
|
| 1 metric ton of carbon is about 19 Mcf of gas burned.
|
| 19 Mcf of gas contains about 1.65MW of electric power
| (assuming combined efficiency of generation and
| transmission of 30% - if you can provide a framework for
| better electricity efficiency I'm open to it).
|
| It'd add about $121 to the price per MW or 35 cents per
| 10,000 BTU
|
| It'd add about $10 to the price per Mcf of gas or about
| 10 cents per 10,000 BTU
|
| Assuming that 50% of your power has a carbon surcharge on
| it, we can halve those numbers - 17.5 cents per 10,000
| BTU.
|
| So once I plug those into my HP Calculator - that raises
| assumed electricity prices to 90 cents per 10,000 BTU and
| gas prices to 24 cents per 10,000 BTU.
|
| The heat pump still ends up being more expensive over the
| entire operating range - note that HP efficiency goes
| down with temperature.
|
| So at 40f it costs 35 cents on my 5T HP to generate
| 10,000 BTU of heat, at 10f 65 cents per 10,000 BTU of
| heat. Gas however is steady at 29 cents per 10,000 BTU of
| heat - no matter the operating temp.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| The "but fossil fuel externalities!" crew can't seem to
| comprehend just how efficient, cheap and abundant fossil
| fuels are, and that we can't simply shut them off or
| double their price tomorrow without massive economic
| consequences.
| Aloha wrote:
| Bear in mind, I'm pro alternative energy, I'm a major
| advocate for nuclear - because once all of fossil fuels
| externalities are priced in - its very attractive pricing
| wise.
|
| But fossil fuels are not going anywhere, and no one (but
| me) seems to have any great appetite for nuclear
| construction.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Heat pumps are much more efficient than furnaces. Even if
| 100% of the electricity generation was coal you'd use
| less energy to heat your home with the pump so there'd be
| less emissions.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That depends on the outside air temp (OAT)*. At OATs
| below 30degF, the heat pump is capable to heat the home,
| but the coefficient of performance might be 2.0 or less.
|
| For a fossil fuel plant that might convert fuel to
| electricity with ~35-40% efficiency, a heat pump with a
| CoP of 2.0 will be less efficient overall than a 90% gas
| furnace.
|
| * More precisely, on the spread between the OAT and the
| indoor temp, but since the latter is basically a fixed
| figure...
| Aloha wrote:
| This just isn't accurate - you use less electricity yes,
| but not less energy.
|
| 1 kWh of electricity run thru a resistive heater will
| generate 3412 BTU
|
| 1 Ccf of gas contains the equivalent energy as 29 kWh,
| but will only generate 8.7 kWh when run thru thermal
| generation (assuming 40% efficiency and 10% transmission
| losses).
|
| If you're just trying to make heat, directly burning the
| gas will consume much less energy - and make fewer
| emissions - than gas > electricity > heatpump > heat.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Why are you talking about a resistive heater? Heat pumps
| dont make heat, they just move it around.
| Aloha wrote:
| If you're trying to compare the caloric content of two
| forms of energy, knowing what you can get out of the
| energy by itself is helpful.
|
| In the end, the HP will be up to 30% more efficient than
| strip heat (in my case the crossover point is under 10f
| where strip heat is cheaper to operate).
|
| I built a breakdown chart showing cost per kWh for both
| heat pump and strip heat, then added gas to it as a
| comparison.
| Slevin11 wrote:
| Agreed. I live in the CA, and am a homeowner. I love the
| efficiency of heat pumps. I have a high personal incentive to
| install cool efficient tech. I have the 20k lying around to
| install a heat pump (or 5-7k for a mini split). Yet I will
| never install a heat pump, because PG&E is running a racket on
| electricity prices. In fact, I'm considering instead installing
| a new wood stove / masonry heater.
|
| CA needs to get its incentives aligned to meet any of these
| goals. You want people to electrify? Just make it cheaper to
| run in the long term, and everybody will just do it by default.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| PG&E is charging you to pay for wildfire lawsuits and to bury
| power lines so that people can keep building cities in
| forests.
| photonbeam wrote:
| The state should pay for that out of general taxes rather
| that shifting the economic incentives of power use
| amluto wrote:
| IMO the state should have forced PG&E into liquidation,
| bought all the assets, and converted the whole mess to a
| public utility. It would surely take some time to learn
| how to operate PG&E's disaster of a system, but it's not
| as though PG&E can competently operate its own system
| right now.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I hated this idea at the time, but have come around to
| it. Im fairly libertarian, but understand that
| competition is difficult for the power distribution
| network.
|
| As much as I think the state is inefficient, a cost plus
| regulated monopoly is even worse. Municipal power
| companies in CA run $0.10-0.20 per kwh, while PG&E is
| $0.40-0.50 cents, and going up.
| amluto wrote:
| It would be amusing to require PG&E to match the average
| rates of the municipal utilities plus 10%. And then
| liquidate them when their stock goes to zero as a result
| :)
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Which leads to opening up a whole nother can of worms
| regarding forest mismanagement and lack of controlled
| burns.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| They are also regulated to have a 10% profit margin, so
| that only way to increase revenue is to drive up costs year
| after year.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| >Just make it cheaper to run in the long term, and everybody
| will just do it by default
|
| That's how you get exorbitant taxes on the alternatives
| et-al wrote:
| On top of this, the CPUC _lowered_ incentives for solar last
| year:
|
| https://calmatters.org/environment/2023/11/california-
| solar-...
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| California was paying rooftop solar owners far too much.
| Poor people who couldn't afford solar were subsidizing the
| grid for solar owners.
| hightrix wrote:
| Yes, this is what the CPUC said but was a ridiculous
| argument in favor of raising profits moreso than helping
| lower income people.
|
| The climate should take precendence over everything else.
| Incentives for rooftop solar should increase, incentives
| to help lower income people should increase, electricity
| record profits should not be a thing.
|
| This is entirely due to regulatory capture, not some
| "good will towards poor people" that the electricity
| industry is pushing.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| It doesnt make any sense to force utilities to pay retail
| prices for electricity when wholesale prices are 10x
| lower. There are much more efficient ways to encourage
| renewables.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Net metering actually increases both costs and profits.
|
| Power companies have a fixed margin of 10% and a captive
| market.
|
| If power costs them $1, they make $0.1. If power costs
| them $5, they make $0.50.
|
| Rooftop solar costs 10X what commercial solar does. Every
| kw of rooftop power they buy means 10kw of commercial
| solar isnt built.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > electricity record profits should not be a thing
|
| Unless the electricity consumption is falling faster than
| inflation, I'd expect the regulated-profit electric
| utility to be having record profits essentially all the
| time.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The climate should take precendence over everything
| else.
|
| That's an argument for moving from rooftop solar
| subsidies into storage subsidies, because its already at
| the point where renewable output sometimes exceeds 100%
| of demand. (And the strong solar mandates will contnue to
| add supply without subsidy, especially--and this adds to
| the pile of reasons that this needs to happen--if housing
| construction stops being held back by zoning
| constraints.)
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I guess they fixed the glitch by moving to income based
| utility bills
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Which is simply a hidden tax hike, and a wild market
| distortion.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| which is basically incetivizing even more electricity
| usage by subsidizing large electricity users and
| punishing electricity savers.
|
| there's nothing more evil than forcing people to pay flat
| rate for services (electricity) that we should all be
| cutting back on, not using even more.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| California CPUC is out of control.
|
| They wanted the state to impose a tax on people using solar
| panels.
|
| https://krcrtv.com/news/chico-residents-on-possible-solar-
| pa...
| stephen_g wrote:
| How is a mini-split $5-7K in the US? A 6kW Mitsubishi
| Electric mini-split is $1800 (US$1200) here in Australia and
| you'll pay another $650 (US$420) to get it installed... My 5
| kW air to water heat pump was about $6K (US$4K) before a $900
| (US$600) rebate but they are less common here so I think
| still cost a bit more than in Europe or the UK.
| Slevin11 wrote:
| Yeah so basically the guideline here is 25 btus per sqft,
| which is 270 btus per m2, house is 110ish m2, so it's
| roughly 30k btus. So then get a 30k btu condenser, about
| $3400, plus three 12k air handlers ($600 each or so), plus
| labor and the rest of the random parts. Could be overkill,
| I'm just following guidelines for the estimate.
| sokoloff wrote:
| HVAC companies bid as if they're entitled to $4K of
| labor/profit for a half-day of on-site work. It's
| maddening.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im frustrated with HVAC and solar too, but I suppose that
| as long as nobody else wants to do the work, they are
| indeed correct.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Indeed. Not helping are all the "get a heat pump
| installed and receive a $6K rebate"s (which drive up the
| bid price by around $5K-$6K).
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yep, same story with solar rebates, most of it goes to
| the installer.
|
| Home construction work is really interesting, because the
| transaction costs are so high around locating and
| comparing the service providers.
|
| It is easy to say there isnt enough competition, but im
| not sure that is actually true. I think more likely is
| that most consumers dont collect 10+ quotes and compare,
| so the price signal is weak.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Second biggest issue with California is the contractors
| licensing system ended up creating a system of guilds.
|
| First biggest is high rents drives up the cost of labor.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >First biggest is high rents drives up the cost of labor.
|
| Tell me about it. I just got quoted 80k to landscape my
| residential backyard.
|
| For 1 year of my take home salary.. I'll do it myself.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Would you say HVAC companies are more or less "entitled"
| to that labor/profit, compared to, say, a company that
| prints business cards for those kinds of small
| businesses?
| sokoloff wrote:
| Any business is entitled to the profit they're able to
| compete for and satisfy their customers, HVAC, lending,
| printing, whatever, even selling pictures of your
| butthole on the internet.
|
| When regulation serves to limit via licensing and multi-
| year apprenticeships is where you get into market
| distortions that sometimes serve consumers and sometimes
| harm them. This happens to some degree in licensed trades
| (price out a drywall crew, painting or carpet [not
| licensed or at least licensed without apprenticeship in
| most places] vs a plumber, electrician, or HVAC).
| amluto wrote:
| How do you get it installed for $420? You can barely get an
| HVAC technician to come and say hi for $420 in California.
| kerkeslager wrote:
| I agree with you that the electricity market in CA (and a lot
| of other places) is broken and should be fixed.
|
| But we also need to stop waiting for intractable economic
| problems to be solved to address climate change. In the long
| run, the economic and human cost of not addressing this will
| far outstrip short-term costs.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _are so out of whack that a heat pump with a COP of 4 is no
| longer economical compared with a reasonably efficient gas-
| fired appliance._
|
| Orthogonal, but I point this out all the time re: electric
| vehicles, when people claim "they are so cheap to operate!".
|
| Do you really think that will continue to be the case when they
| are 10%, 25%, 50% of the market? The government will squeeze
| every dollar "saved" out of you. If you're _lucky_ it will be
| equivalent to what you used to spend on gasoline.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| Heat pumps are nice and efficient, but expensive to build and
| reliant on grid. Makes you more dependent and at the exact moment
| things get bad - during a weather emergency. Nobody, especially
| in NY state, should be without a fuel- burning heater.
| chucksta wrote:
| Uh or a generator..
| voisin wrote:
| > Heat pumps are nice and efficient, but expensive to build and
| reliant on grid
|
| Expensive but falling as scale increases and government
| subsidies help drive scale.
|
| Reliant on the grid - natural gas relies on the grid to move
| the air too. Not sure if this is the case all the time but mine
| won't run at all without power, so unless you are referring to
| wood fired stove, natural gas furnaces are also reliant on the
| grid from what I can tell.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Yea.. mine does. I have water heat during power outages iirc,
| but no gas furnace heat. I've always assumed it's due to the
| thermostat though - if i knew how to manually run the furnace
| i always assumed i could have it start pushing air during a
| power outage.
| pokeymcsnatch wrote:
| My strategy is a deep cycle car battery and harbor freight
| inverter to run the blower motor. You get a long enough
| extension cord and you can use your car as an emergency
| generator.
| brk wrote:
| I have done exactly that - car as generator, during a
| long power outage in NH. We had 2 oil furnaces, and ~350
| gallons of oil left in the tanks, but no power to run the
| blower motors to move the air. A Harbor Freight inverter
| and our Ford Explorer kept things running for 30 hours,
| until Amazon could deliver me an 8,000 watt portable
| generator.
|
| The blower motors are pretty power hungry, on the order
| of about 330 watts, give or take. For a 12V system that
| is about 30 amps, or about 2 hours of output from a
| typical deep cycle batter before you risk depleting it to
| the point of damage. An ~$300 12V Lifepo4 battery might
| get you 4 hours of runtime, but not much more than that.
| In most cases, an outage of less than 8 hours won't get
| things so cold in a decently insulated house that you
| need to worry about it, and IME, an outage that lasts
| more than 8 hours has high probability of lasting much
| much longer.
|
| TL;DR - Your deep cycle battery approach may not prove to
| actually be worthwhile, consider working out the car-as-
| generator hookup plan in advance.
| pokeymcsnatch wrote:
| > TL;DR - Your deep cycle battery approach may not prove
| to actually be worthwhile, consider working out the car-
| as-generator hookup plan in advance.
|
| Ha yep, learned that the first time and was ready to go
| with an extension cord the second time I needed this
| setup. First time, I had a stash of 3 batteries but I
| didn't realize how much power the blower motor would
| draw, so I was charging on the car and swapping out
| batteries as needed. Did that the first day then rigged
| up cords for day 2. Halfway through day 3 we got power
| back.
| jcadam wrote:
| I have a 7500W dual-fuel generator but haven't gotten
| around to installing a transfer switch yet. I have a well
| pump and a gas boiler that I really miss when the power
| is out :)
|
| Radiant in-floor heat is pretty efficient (and it's nice
| not to have an ice-cold floor first thing in the
| morning), just need power for the circulation pumps and
| the boiler. My back up heat is a wood-burning stove - and
| we have lost power for several hours when the temps are
| -20F or so...
| voisin wrote:
| > power for the circulation pumps and the boiler
|
| If the boiler is in the basement would you not be able to
| treat the circulation tubes as a thermosiphon, with the
| hot water rising from the boiler, creating pressure to
| push water through the loop?
| voisin wrote:
| > The blower motors are pretty power hungry, on the order
| of about 330 watts, give or take. For a 12V system that
| is about 30 amps, or about 2 hours of output from a
| typical deep cycle batter before you risk depleting it to
| the point of damage. An ~$300 12V Lifepo4 battery might
| get you 4 hours of runtime, but not much more than that.
|
| This is 2-4 hours of _run time_ though. My experience is
| that the blower turns on for a period and then off for a
| period. It would depend on your heat loss rate which is
| situation specific, but you can probably get
| significantly more than this in time coverage with the
| blower only running periodically.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Inherently more expensive to install due to greater size and
| complexity.
|
| Gas/oil furnace can be powered by a small generator, solar
| panels or even a backup battery system, which is not the case
| for a heat pump. Oil / propane with local power generation
| can be fully off the grid.
|
| Edit: the lower capital cost means you can also _afford_ a
| backup power supply.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Heat pumps are hardly much more complicated than plenty of
| other household appliances, like washing machines,
| microwaves or fridges (which are heat pumps!). There's
| plenty of scope for them to become a lot cheaper than they
| are today as they are manufactured in larger volumes.
|
| Also, the largest heat pump in my house (I have a 6 kW and
| a 3 kW split system and a 5 kW air to water) also only uses
| about as much power as an electric kettle (~2 kW) most of
| the time here, I'm sure that could be powered off a small
| generator...
| tetromino_ wrote:
| > natural gas relies on the grid to move the air too
|
| Natural gas heating relies on nothing more than convection to
| move hot water or (in older setups) steam from the boiler to
| the radiators. The only part of the setup where electricity
| is required is for electronic thermostats, and those can have
| a battery backup.
| esprehn wrote:
| Without the grid how does the gas furnace blow the hot air into
| the house? I'm not aware of any normal gas furnaces that work
| without power.
| amluto wrote:
| A gas-fired boiler with radiant heat needs very little power
| for its fans and pumps.
|
| I wish residential-sized gas-fired cogeneration systems were
| a thing.
| ejb999 wrote:
| with a very small generator or battery - but you can't run a
| heat pump on a generator without going with a much bigger
| one, (and much more expensive one).
| opwieurposiu wrote:
| My forced air heater was noisy and getting old. I installed a
| "Direct Vent" heater near the stairs in the basement and it
| keeps the whole house warm via natural convection. No
| electricity needed. You get to watch the cheery flame in the
| window, it is great.
|
| I was worried the bedrooms would get too cold when the doors
| were closed but it turned out not to be an issue. The
| bedrooms do get colder but this actually is better for
| sleeping.
|
| We still have the forced air system as a backup.
|
| https://wildoaktrail.com/collections/martin-heaters
| mistrial9 wrote:
| if the economics and/or contractual arrangement of crucial home
| equipment benefit a corporate profile, you can bet that some
| number of people will get those units -- usually people who do
| not have a choice, or do not understand the whole deal. This
| kind of degradation of the consumer and their rights is going
| on at a wide scale.
|
| Another way to say this is "the consumer does not matter at
| this point" .. meaning that the game plan and expansion of the
| central corporate (or govt) operation is "more important" than
| the consumer benefit or choice.
|
| Sadly, more than one thing can be true at once. If dramatic
| energy savings are "required" due to real structural problems,
| and also the well-capitalized and aggressive central entity can
| negotiate and implement the changes.. then it is a collective
| social situation.. End result - many advantages that small home
| owners have enjoyed in the USA for so long, are going away in
| real time right now, on a large scale.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Aren't gas heaters reliant on the gas grid? What if the gas
| grid goes down?
| ejb999 wrote:
| The gas grid is much less likely to go down than the electric
| grid - and btw, many run on propane - not natural gas - and
| that is stored locally (i.e. in a tank at the house) - I use
| propane gas, stored in my own tank - natural gas is not
| available anywhere near my area.
| nfriedly wrote:
| > expensive to build
|
| A heat pump is basically just an air conditioner with a handful
| of extra parts to allow it to work in reverse. In the US they
| _currently_ are significantly more expensive to install than
| AC, but I don 't think it will stay that way for ever.
|
| I think part of cost issue is that heat pumps tend to put an
| extreme focus on energy efficiency, leading to higher up-front
| costs, whereas AC units tend to balance a little more towards
| lower initial costs.
|
| Any home that has both gas heating and air conditioning could
| replace the AC with a heat pump and get more efficient heating
| for most of the time, while still keeping their existing
| heating for situations that call for it.
|
| I'm hopeful that AC manufacturers start shifting towards bi-
| directional units for their lower-cost "regular" segments
| instead of reserving that for only the fancy super-high-
| efficiency (expensive) units.
| mindslight wrote:
| Wood stoves pair very well with heat pumps. The fuel won't
| leak, won't expire, and can be stored away from the dwelling.
| During extreme cold or loss of electric, one can spend the time
| tending the fire. And in the shoulder seasons where keeping a
| fire going would be overkill, the heat pump is most efficient.
| Aloha wrote:
| Heat Pump + 80% Gas Furnace is the best combination for most of
| the country.
|
| Both in terms of cost and efficiency. You get all the advantage
| of heat pump, and the cheaper defrost cycle from gas furnace.
|
| Consider how much of power generation wherever is gas.
|
| If you can get residential power below 10c/kWh then HP always
| wins in cost, but most of the country has high electricity costs,
| low gas costs, and the ability to use gas when the grid is
| stressed.
| amluto wrote:
| I've never seen a heat pump with gas-assisted defrost. Have
| you?
| Aloha wrote:
| Yes - defrost means turning on Aux heat with the HP in A/C
| mode.
| amluto wrote:
| And can it do that by itself at the correct time?
| Aloha wrote:
| Yes, in the same way your Electric Furnace is turned on
| to do defrost with a Heat Pump, it just fires up the
| furnace for 3-5 min.
| amluto wrote:
| My heat pump defrosts itself under its own internal
| control.
| yanslookup wrote:
| My dream is that municipal ground source heat pumps become
| popular. Let the municipal put and maintain wells (the major
| contributor to adopting ground source heat pumps) along streets
| and allow homeowners to tie in to the wells. Ground source is
| much more efficient, requires less space, creates less noise
| pollution, and is equally decentralized compared to air source.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Not legally binding.
|
| Market adoption is already rising. Seems like a good way for the
| states to get good PR riding on the back of existing momentum.
| lsllc wrote:
| The problem with heat pumps in the colder states is that they
| only work with forced air and also don't produce (enough)
| domestic hot water.
|
| Particularly in the North east you are going to find steam or
| forced hot water systems fired by gas or oil (most likely #2
| heating oil or possibly kerosene).
|
| In a new build yes. A forced air with (air or ground source) heap
| pump should be required (although it still doesn't really solve
| the DHW issue).
| itsoktocry wrote:
| I live in the north north east (Canada).
|
| Our house had an oil furnace, we added an air source heat pump.
| There are periods in the winter where the heat pump can't keep
| up, but in the months early and late winter it's all we need.
| The net result is that it has significantly reduced our oil
| consumption. Add to that fact it's an A/C unit in the summer,
| and it's wins all the way around.
| Aloha wrote:
| Heat Pumps absolutely blow both Fuel Oil and very nearly
| Propane out of the water in run cost, even when electricity
| is high.
|
| At 30f - until you exceed 15-15.5 cents per kWh, heat pump is
| cheaper to run than median oil price.
| lsllc wrote:
| Propane is no better than oil in terms of cost per BTU
| (except propane boilers are usually slightly more
| efficient). Natural Gas (from the street) is significantly
| cheaper than either oil or propane per BTU and particularly
| if used with a modern condensing boiler.
|
| It's not that a heat pump isn't more efficient it's that if
| you have forced hot water or steam radiators you are
| looking at an additional $40K to retrofit forced air
| ducting to your house. Oh and you still need a solution for
| domestic hot water, probably you'll just end up with a
| resistive heater (or a hybrid/heat pump unit like the
| Aerotherm but the heat has to come from the room).
| Aloha wrote:
| I went off median prices from DOE and found oil to come
| in at 32 cents per 10,000 BTU's propane at 24 cents per
| 10,000 BTU.
| lsllc wrote:
| You can look at the State of New Hampshire's Dept of
| Energy comparisons here, updated weekly:
|
| https://www.energy.nh.gov/energy-information/nh-fuel-
| prices
|
| Actually right now #2 heating oil is now somewhat cheaper
| per MBTU than propane. Also Natural Gas is slightly
| cheaper than heat pump per MBTU (YMMV on efficiency!)
|
| I've never seen propane cheaper than heating oil here!
|
| EDIT: It's probably worth pointing out that the North
| East of the US is the largest heating oil market in the
| world.
| lsllc wrote:
| How is the heat delivered? Forced air? If so no problems with
| heat pumps, the modern air source can produce heat at very
| low outside temps and a ground source is excellent in very
| cold climates (if you have artesian well, or ground loop).
|
| The problem is most oil or gas fired heating systems are
| forced hot water (or steam) so a heat pump isn't going to
| help you unless you want a mini-split in every room.
|
| Even if you have ducting for cooling with AC it likely won't
| have enough CFMs for heat in the winter unless it was
| specifically sized that way (but you likely wouldn't be still
| using forced hot water or steam in that case).
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