Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

https://www.wired.com/story/these-states-are-basically-begging-you-to-get-a-heat-pump/

by Bender • 2 years ago

497 740 2 years ago

vundercind4• 2 years ago

Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump.

Uh, you still need a furnace (though it could be electric) if you live somewhere that ever really gets cold, right?

[edit] I mean, seeing it presented as a furnace replacement is weird to me. I’ve always seen it sold as an air conditioner replacement that also happens to heat (with weird characteristics that often confuse people—they’ll think their heat is broken, because the air coming out is only kinda warm, not very-warm like furnace heat) when it’s not really cold out.

spiderice• 2 years ago

Yes. I live in Utah and have a heat pump and gas furnace. I am told the heat pump is really efficient at medium-cold temperatures, but not so much on really cold days.

loeg3• 2 years ago

I believe heatpump technology has improved over time. Also, "less efficient but still functional" is an adequate option for really cold days.

adastra22• 2 years ago

Heat pumps are still more efficient, but you’d need damn good insulation (or a really big heat pump) in super cold weather. Furnaces scale-up pretty well on the other hand.

If your locale gets life threateningly cold though, I’d feel more comfortable with a furnace because of the fewer moving parts. Burn gas, get heat, dead simple.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF3• 2 years ago

Funny enough in the short term I've lived in my house, I already had a winter where the furnace quit.

It's a high-efficiency one with a control board (Nobody can convince me FCS isn't Fire Control System) and a separate draft motor.

One of the vacuum sensors went out and the furnace couldn't prove it was safe to run, so it would turn on the draft motor, suspect a clog, and then shut it back off.

An easy fix but not as simple as lighting a Bunsen burner. And I haven't seen the electrical cord for it, I'm not sure how I would hook it to a generator if I lost power. The water heater oddly enough is battery-powered, so I guess I could just fill the tub with hot water.

loeg3• 2 years ago

Heatpumps have resistance heating backup for the exceptional periods when it is too cold to make use of the compression system. Most people live somewhere a heatpump would work well.

vundercind4• 2 years ago

Oh, I’ve not see that kind, only the sort where the “e heat” feature on the thermostat is tied to a separate furnace.

heironimus• 2 years ago

Problem is, if everyone has resistance backup and it gets really cold, I doubt if the grid could keep up.

giantg2• 2 years ago

This also assumes a resilient grid, which may not be the case for large areas of the rural US.

Workaccount2• 2 years ago

Cutting edge heat pumps can now work down into the sub zero (F) temperatures. Manufacturers have really been pushing hard on this in recent years. But these units still are more expensive than your run of the mill ones.

nitsuaeekcm• 2 years ago

The best mental model for a heat pump is that they can maintain a certain temperature differential, say 80F. If it gets to be 0F outside and you want it to be 70? You don’t need to switch to a fully separate heating system, you just need to warm up either the incoming or outgoing air an additional 10 degrees via a small resistance heater. The super wide range heat pump systems will do that automatically, and the principle really applies to any differential you could want.

VBprogrammer2• 2 years ago

The wide range ones are basically two heat pumps back to back using different working fluids. They should only be used in applications where they are really required as there are obviously impacts to the COP.

JadeNB• 2 years ago

The best mental model for a heat pump is that they can maintain a certain temperature differential, say 80F. If it gets to be 0F outside and you want it to be 70? You don’t need to switch to a fully separate heating system, you just need to warm up either the incoming or outgoing air an additional 10 degrees via a small resistance heater.

Are your 70 and 80 switched? What you describe doesn't sound like it needs any addition.

kj4ips• 2 years ago

I have a pair of heat pumps in a dual zone setup, each of them has a backup electric furnace as part of its indoor air handler. Newer ones can keep running without that even into quite cold areas.

The thermostat just sees the resistive heaters as another phase, so I have three phases, and if it doesn't see a temp rise within a certain time of calling for phase 1/2, then it goes to phase 3. Mine also has support for an external temperature probe, that can skip 1/2 if it is already too cold.

I also have other ways to make heat if I have a prolonged electrical outage, but outside of maintenance, I've not used that.

loudmax• 2 years ago

What's really cold? There are heat pumps that are advertised as working at -15F. On the days when it gets that cold, your heat pump will need to switch to electric heat. So on those days, your heat pump is no better than an electric furnace. On all other days that the heater is running, the heat pump is a far more efficient option.

epiccoleman• 2 years ago

From my limited experience, I'd say yes - you still need a furnace.

I converted my garage into my office by adding a mini split AC/heat pump. The garage walls, door, and attic are insulated - but it's still a garage, which means that it's not nearly as well insulated as a regular room in a house.

The unit is 18k BTUs, which is quite oversized for the size of the garage. I made this choice because the heat pump BTUs are significantly less than cooling BTUs. This is definitely obvious, experientally - the unit can make my garage uncomfortably cold even in the peak of summer.

But even though this unit is supposedly rated for operation in temps down to about -20F, when winter gets really cold, it struggles to keep the space warm. Once the temps are below about 20F or so, I usually add a space heater to the mix, which, combined with warm clothes, makes working out here at least tolerable.

rootbear• 2 years ago

I live in Maryland and the first townhouse I owned, in the late 80s to early 90s, had a heat pump. It included an auxiliary electric heater for days that it got really cold. I don't remember it coming on all that often. (There was a light on the thermostat to indicate when it was on.) My current townhouse has a gas furnace. I plan to move soon into a single level home, more appropriate for an old greybeard, and I'll have to evaluate then if I want to switch to a heat pump, if the house doesn't have one already.

rimunroe• 2 years ago

Note: this is only true for air-source heat pumps. Ground source-heat pumps aren't affected by ambient air temperature, but they're also much more expensive and require suitable ground. Also, I hear air-source heat pumps have made significant advances lately in how well they handle sub -15 °C temperatures.

mikeyouse3• 2 years ago

Uh, you still need a furnace (though it could be electric) if you live somewhere that ever really gets cold, right?

For now - and only in part of the country. Most of the newest models can output 100% of their rating down to something like -5ºF -- they're easy enough to oversize as well, so if your 99% heating load is e.g. 48,000BTU, a 60,000BTU heat pump that's only outputting 80% of rated BTUs due to the extreme cold can still cover the full design load.

Here's the spec sheet for the newer Mitsubishi hyper heat models - 87º output at -4ºF and 76% output at -13ºF -- very few places in the states ever get that cold: https://static.appliancesconnection.com/attachments/D5bf5709...

lotsofpulp4• 2 years ago

I like the redundancy of natural gas. So far, in less than 40 years, I have been kept warm for multiple days on 3 separate occasions by having access to gas while the electricity did not work. Also, I was able to keep cooking.

One of the states in the article is Oregon too, where I have family that just a few weeks ago lost electricity for 4 days, but were able to use an electric generator to keep the air handler going and gas to heat the the house and cook.

I fear heat pump only heat will fail exactly when I most need it not to.

vundercind4• 2 years ago

I’d say -15°F or lower is something you need to design for at least into the light-blue area on this map:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tdK_AMaZ9pg/Vb51WrvPDhI/AAAAAAAAD5...

Which is quite a lot of the country.

Light blue is a typical Winter low point in the -10°F to 0°F, which means you will see -15°F or lower often enough to worry about it.

dkasper• 2 years ago

i think this explains the oversizing. 76% seems pretty good, but a lot of places do get to negative temperatures once in a while, maybe once every year or two, and that’s when you really want the heat to work.

semiquaver• 2 years ago

We have a set of those hyper heat mini splits to supplement a hydronic system which wasn’t expanded to several additions. They’re generally great but during the Midwest’s recent extremely cold snap down to a week or two of negative temperatures they were pretty disappointing and could not keep up. We ended up having to close off a few parts of the house to keep the temperature reasonable in the rest. I think that trusting heat to a heat pump system is not yet feasible in much of the Midwest and northeast.

o11c• 2 years ago

Temperature rating is irrelevant if the outdoor unit turns into a solid block of ice before it gets that low.

Oddly enough, it tends to snow when it's cold. Even rain can a problem since the nature of a heap pump means the unit is cooler than the surroundings.

So often for a few nights of the year, the alleged "heat pump" actually just falls back to electric heating.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF3• 2 years ago

Technology Connections seems pretty happy with his. I think he lives in Chicago, admittedly not the coldest place, but it does snow every winter in that region.

He said 2.9 coefficient of efficiency average over a heating season for him - https://youtu.be/7J52mDjZzto?t=1522

orwin• 2 years ago

Depends on the heat pump, and the quality of your house. Hopefully houses in northern US states are of better quality than houses in California or West Virginia/South Ohio, so a furnface might not be needed.

Because for the scandinavians reading the thread and with the "It works in my country", US house build quality, in my experience, is even worse than UK houses build quality (and that's a pretty low bar).

carapace• 2 years ago

No, you need better insulation.

(And maybe a rocket stove combined with a heat storage hypocaust.)

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2017/03/heat-storage-hypoc...

switchbak• 2 years ago

They make ones that handle the cold quite well, but in my mind dual-fuel is where it's at, especially if you're doing a retrofit. Unfortunately there does seem to be a desire (even with the rebate systems) to kill the old furnaces.

bagels19• 2 years ago

The capabilities work fine for much of the country that doesn't get exceedingly freezing temperatures. It only gets down to about 26F on the coldest of cold nights here once or twice per year.

herpdyderp• 2 years ago

The states listed are:

  - California
  - Colorado
  - Maine
  - Maryland
  - Massachusetts
  - New Jersey
  - New York
  - Oregon
  - Rhode Island

nostrademons6• 2 years ago

So the usual blue-state suspects, minus Washington and a bunch of the New England states.

virtue32• 2 years ago

places where heat pumps are not going to work well when it drops to freezing / below freezing.

bluGill11• 2 years ago

Several red states (the TVA) have had heat pumps as normal for decades. Now heat pumps work better and so they should extend to the other states.

082349872349872• 2 years ago

representing ~1/3 of 2022 GDP

(via https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2023-12/stgdppi3q23.... )

jtbayly2• 2 years ago

I don't see how the GDP has anything to do with this.

What percent of the population those states make up might be somewhat interesting at least.

But even then, 90% of new installations requires us to know what percent of installations those states make up, and population isn't necessarily (but could be) a good corollary for that.

subsubzero• 2 years ago

Interestingly enough, That list of states besides Colorado and Maine all were the biggest losers of population in 2023, meaning people are leaving these states.

  - California -0.9
  - Maryland -0.5
  - Massachusetts -0.6
  - New Jersey -0.5
  - New York -1.1
  - Oregon -0.1
  - Rhode Island -0.3

melling• 2 years ago

60 million people live in California and NY.

9 million in NJ

4.2 million in Oregon

7 million in Massachusetts

6 million in Maryland

1 million in Rhode Island

epistasis2• 2 years ago

They are also rich states that are pricing out people rather than building housing.

nostrademons6• 2 years ago

Largely because that's the list of places where housing is super expensive:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_median_home_price

  #2 California    $554K
  #3 Massachusetts $422K
  #5 Colorado.     $397K
  #6 Oregon        $361K
  #8 New Jersey    $335K
  #9 New York      $322K
  #10 Maryland     $308K
  #13 Rhode Island $300K
  #25 Maine        $242K

And where income is highest:

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_income

  #1  Maryland      $90K
  #2  Massachusetts $89K
  #3  New Jersey    $89K
  #5  California    $85K
  #9  Colorado      $82K
  #14 New York      $74K
  #15 Rhode Island  $74K
  #18 Oregon        $71K
  #32 Maine         $64K

People are moving out because it's desirable to live there and hence there's a lot of competition for housing. If you're not one of the top earners in the state, you can increase your relative standard of living by moving somewhere where it's cheaper.

bagels19• 2 years ago

What are the units?

Detrytus2• 2 years ago

Why would anyone need a heat pump in California, given the climate there? I can understand north-eastern states, but not this. Is it a case of mindlessly jumping on "progressive" bandwagon?

EDIT: I actually spent one winter in San Diego, and apartments there don't even have any heating installed (except occasional fireplace in the living room). I know that more to the north it might get worse, but by how much?

jtbayly2• 2 years ago

You still need heat in California, one way or another, especially further north. What would you suggest as a method of heating in CA?

BorgHunter2• 2 years ago

Heat pumps are much more common in warm areas than cold ones, because the difference between an A/C and a heat pump is really just the ability to reverse the refrigerant flow, and they're very efficient at heating in mildly cold weather. I grew up in Florida, and pretty much every house there had a heat pump even thirty years ago, with electric resistive heating that kicks in when ambient temperatures drop below 40F or so. Where heat pumps don't work so well is when ambient temperatures are very cold, which is why adoption in northern states has been much slower.

EDIT: My grandparents' house had a thermostat that looked like this: https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/uqsAAOSwTVlbyNN9/s-l1200.jpg They would call very cold (for Florida) weather "blue light weather", because the blue "aux heat" light would turn on on their thermostat, indicating that the system had switched from the heat pump to the resistive heat strips.

mperham• 2 years ago

Because even California dips below 68F and so your house gets cold.

blackguardx• 2 years ago

Heat pumps make lots of sense in California. It gets hot enough to want air conditioning and still gets cold enough to need heat in much of California. California has many types of climates. Even in the desert areas like near Joshua Tree, you will still need heat in the winter. It snows there.

aidenn04• 2 years ago

I live in one of the mildest parts of California and I still have a gas furnace (no AC though). Heat pump actually makes more sense given that the winters rarely dip below freezing, so heat pumps can work in a fairly high COP range.

dhosek3• 2 years ago

I used to own a house in Claremont, California (east edge of L.A. County). It had a furnace that I never used until one winter it got super cold (under freezing as I recall) and I discovered that the pilot light for the furnace was broken and had to call out the gas company¹ to fix it and because everyone else was having similar issues it took two days for them to come and fix my furnace. I grew up in Chicago and was never so cold as that.

⸻

1. They fixed minor furnace issues like this for free.

callalex4• 2 years ago

Everything was built in the 40’s-60’s and the average amount of insulation is 0. I live in the mildest part of CA, the San Francisco Bay Area. Today the overnight lows were in the mid 30’s and the high will be about 50. Without heating my indoor temperature would be around 50 which I find unacceptable.

I’m not sure what your bogeyman “progressive” bandwagon has to do with not wanting to live in 50° living spaces?

ajross5• 2 years ago

For the same reason people in California install heat and air conditioning? Heat pumps aren't a new product market, they're a more efficient variant of products the market already buys.

crftr• 2 years ago

I live in San Diego and energy prices are relatively expensive. We installed solar two years ago and routinely overproduce 3+ MWh.

Now, with a heat pump, the wife and kids can set the thermostat for their comfort and I am less anxious about the monthly bill. The freedom was worth it, for us.

acdha• 2 years ago

Ever wonder why it’s called a “heat pump” rather than a heater? It’s because they work in both directions, and that means that you can have the system which keeps you cool in the summer also keep you warm in the winter rather than having a separate system. This is especially nice because if you don’t use a heater much, you don’t know that it’ll work when you need it: where I lived in San Diego, the condo complex had radiant heat in the floor in every unit but once in a decade a cold snap meant people really needed it … and some of my neighbors learned theirs no longer worked.

The efficiency wins from a better quality system are nice, too. I live on the east coast now and went all electric a few years back. Our energy costs in the winter went up modestly - not much because heat pumps are great on all of the not incredibly cold winter days we get in the mid-Atlantic - but the savings in the summer versus the cheap AC the previous owner had purchased were substantial. The savings up front for a less efficient unit get eaten up pretty quickly if you use it regularly.

avery17• 2 years ago

Tried to get one in NJ and no one wanted to install one. Everyone we got a quote from tried really hard to talk us out of it. We ended up going with gas cause it was cheaper but I'm not happy about it. Gas is just the new oil, once everyone is hooked they'll jack up prices like they did with oil.

danans6• 2 years ago

A big issue right now is the oversizing of heat pumps by HVAC contractors who are used to sizing gas furnaces using very simple btu/hr/sqft calculations.

A contractor should do some kind of heating need analysis, at the least by studying old utility bills, and ideally by doing a Manual J heat loss calculation for the house. But almost none of them do that.

There are some startups attempting to handle these design steps as a service, but the construction industry is slow to adopt new technology.

jacobolus• 2 years ago

Can you explain why this is a big issue?

zbrozek7• 2 years ago

The simplest devices are on or off. If they are grossly oversized they cycle a lot and make homes less comfortable by pushing a huge volume of hot or cold air briefly.

Variable speed compressors are better, but blowers may not also be variable speed. So you'll get better efficiency but may still suffer a feeling of draftiness.

A properly sized variable speed unit will operate within some optimal band of efficiency and constantly output nearly the minimum necessary air volume to achieve the target temperature.

danans6• 2 years ago

Higher up front equipment costs , discomfort, potential humidity issues, higher energy costs, shortened equipment life, increased noise.

supertrope2• 2 years ago

Combustion furnaces deliver very hot air so they can cycle on once in a while and then turn off. Heat pumps deliver warm not hot air so they have to run longer cycles. The slower rise in room temperature can even mean that it makes more sense to set a constant temperature on your thermostat instead of letting the temperature fall when you're away during the day (the conventional logic to save energy).

moribvndvs2• 2 years ago

I’ve had one for three years. While I generally love it, it cools too fast, which means it sucks at removing humidity, actually increases it a little. The installer over-provisioned.

Mountain_Skies• 2 years ago

Other than higher cost for the heat pump unit, are there any other issues with having one that's oversized for heating? My understanding is that for cooling, having one that is oversized can be a problem because of humidity issues, which also makes me wonder what can be done if a space has an imbalance between the size needed for cooling versus what it needs for heating.

danans6• 2 years ago

Other than higher cost for the heat pump unit, are there any other issues with having one that's oversized for heating?

- Short cycling leading to lower equipment life (also true for gas furnaces, although heat pumps have more moving parts)

- Greater discomfort as the house heats up rapidly then cools down rapidly (especially if it has a leaky building envelope).

- Higher peak electric loads, possibly during hours of high electricity prices, leading to higher electricity costs.

My understanding is that for cooling, having one that is oversized can be a problem because of humidity issues,

Yes, because moisture will build up when it isn't running.

makes me wonder what can be done if a space has an imbalance between the size needed for cooling versus what it needs for heating.

Many heat pumps have different output ratings for heating and cooling modes to deal with this. Often however, this has as much to do with the distribution of the heated/cooled air and placement of supply registers, which is often an afterthought when the system is purposely oversized (which is presumed to make up for lack of air distribution design).

bluGill11• 2 years ago

No there is not IF the heat pump is variable speed/flow. Many modern ones are, but most old ones are not, and it is really hard to tell if a new one is. In fact you want one oversized as if it is the correct size for cooling it cannot make enough heat when it is cold (it can make heat, just not enough)

If you get a normal single speed heat pump see the other reply - there are significant downsides.

seltzered_• 2 years ago

A possibly helpful thread related to the heat pump retrofit process and the need to assess context for each home: https://twitter.com/karakara98/status/1598718540365938688

The other thing I've kept thinking about is the replacement interval , material input (compressor, refrigerant, etc.) and ease of maintenance. They generally have a lifetime of 10 years IIRC.

danans6• 2 years ago

The other thing I've kept thinking about is the replacement interval , material input (compressor, refrigerant, etc.) and ease of maintenance. They generally have a lifetime of 10 years IIRC.

The compressor and refrigerant should never have to be replaced as a maintenance item. The compressor should be cleaned off occasionally since it's outdoors, especially if you live in an area with high dust/pollen, but that's no different than an AC. The interior air handler maintenance is the same as for any furnace or AC system. The lifetime is also similar to a similarly built AC.

bagels19• 2 years ago

I'd much rather have oversized than undersized and still be sweating inside when it's hot outside.

jillesvangurp2• 2 years ago

It's a big topic everywhere. A lot of early adopters of heat pumps end up with relatively expensive and inefficient solutions because the people that install them barely know what they are doing. There's a lot of demand for heat pumps so most people doing the installation work are very new to this. The good news is that they are probably learning from their mistakes and gaining a lot of knowledge. The bad news is of course that a lot of people are getting a bit of a bad deal.

Things will improve in a few years but until then you really need to be careful with making sure you get the right stuff installed properly by the right people for the right price.

notyourwork3• 2 years ago

Why is oversizing a problem? Is it cost or something else?

genmud• 2 years ago

What a clickbaity, poorly written and sensational article.

kspacewalk2• 2 years ago

The only thing that's holding me back in electrifying more of my life is my jurisdiction's track record in long-term planning for grid and supply capacity. If I switch water heating, home heating and transportation to electricity, and they fuck up again, that'll affect me way more when rates start rising or shortages begin. I'd rather they work out the kinks without me and be a late adopter. For example, I will not be among the first 50% of drivers to switch to fully electric. Being a one-car household I believe we've already done more for the environment than 2 car EV households simply by taking one vehicle off the roads.

01HNNWZ0MV43FF3• 2 years ago

Yeah I'm waiting for a carbon tax to pass somewhere. I'm an environmentalist but why spend extra money being good when there are still assholes driving lifted pickups with loud exhausts and widened axles they don't need?

My next car will be a plug-in Prius though. My old boss had one and almost never had to put gas in it. All-electric commute with a range extender / emergency heater

vdaea2• 2 years ago

“It’s a really strong signal from states that they’re committed to accelerating this transition to zero-emissions residential buildings,”

Heat pumps are zero-emissions now. Shipping them and replacing your gas furnace also emits no carbon.

firebat45• 2 years ago

Have you ever tried running a gas furnace off of a solar panel?

"Accelerating a transition" != "this has been 100% accomplished"

vdaea2• 2 years ago

I skipped the part of the article that says that the heat pumps will always be accompanied by solar panels.

seiferteric• 2 years ago

Heat pumps look great and definitely planning on getting one (or many) when my hvac system needs replacing, as well as a heat pump water heater. In NorCal I think they are a no-brainer since it doesn't get that cold to begin with, though I am unsure of what options exist to replace a central AC/furnace system, or if it is better to get several smaller ones throughout your house. Though I have to laugh since it was only a few years ago there were news articles decrying air conditioning as a climate disaster are now claiming heat pumps are a climate savior...

Slevin11• 2 years ago

It is technically the correct climate; but unfortunately the incorrect place for them, given the electricity costs and propensity for large power outages during storms (read: times when you actually need heating).

If you are in one of the cities with public utilities where electricity is cheap, then go for it, great choice. But on PG&E, the monetary proposition is awful compared to a gas heater, modern wood stove, or masonry / rocket mass heater.

Given the extreme excess of wood in the region (that otherwise ends up in huge forest fires), it makes a lot of sense to be running an efficient wood stove / masonry / mass heater.

The big loss is of course automation, so it pays to have some automated backup source of heat for when you are out of town, but that could just be whatever heating method you are using already.

If you are already heating using electric baseboards though, yes, definitely move over to a heat pump. It will save you a lot of money. Not as much as natural gas or the others, but savings are savings.

Also, there are plenty of ducted air source heat pumps that work as drop in replacements for gas furnaces. Use one of them if you already have a ducted system that works well and do a heat pump replacement.

masklinn• 2 years ago

Though I have to laugh since it was only a few years ago there were news articles decrying air conditioning as a climate disaster are now claiming heat pumps are a climate savior...

Because they’re completely coherent but for some reason you’re not thinking any further than “they’re essentially the same device”?

samatman2• 2 years ago

It's substantially cheaper in energy to cool buildings in the hot parts of the world than it is to heat buildings in the cool parts of the world. I've seen the sort of articles you're referring to, in the US at least, they're thinly-disguised political screeds based on nothing other than the fact that there are more Republicans in the air-conditioned parts of the country.

scythe2• 2 years ago

https://archive.ph/NkfeK

scythe2• 2 years ago

Hijacking my own comment:

I feel like I started talking about heat pumps a long time ago. I'm unable to find evidence for this before 2021. Anyway, it's certainly hit the cultural mainstream really fast over the last couple of years, and the story on the street is... manufacturers are running at capacity, installers have long waiting lists, some people are getting systems installed that aren't right for their space (too big or too small) and regretting it.

It's good that we're doing this, but it feels like a microcosm of our general cultural impatience. There's a limit to how much government subsidies can speed the adoption of a new technology. There are going to be issues with hiring a bunch of technicians to install heat pumps really fast if they suddenly don't have as much work in five years. The Spanish solar-energy debacle of the early 2010s rings in my head.

Maybe instead of setting big, distant, ambitious-sounding targets, we should set shorter, smaller, more gradual targets, and update every couple of years to accelerate in a sustainable way. It's pretty easy to say that the way to decarbonize the economy is "as fast as reasonably possible"; forecasting how fast that will be is hard, unnecessary, and potentially distracting.

chankstein38• 2 years ago

Thank you, that's all I really cared about but I had "read my last free article" so I couldn't even find that out. I'm so tired of the internet.

mrpopo• 2 years ago

I want a "Netflix of information". Let me pay 30€/month for unlimited information access, quality, no clickbait and no ads.

Of course, seeing what happens with Netflix now, I guess it wouldn't last long until things turn back to the old way...

jzawodn• 2 years ago

I guess that's sort of the value proposition of Apple News+ if you're in their ecosystem, right?

pocketstar• 2 years ago

inkl has pretty good variety of news sources for a reasonable subscription fee, i subbed for years then started using apple news. Unfortunately i cannot recommend inkl because you have to email support to cancel your subscription, they offer a 50% discount if you try to cancel but that business practice of sign up with one click, email support to cancel i cannot condone.

deeviant• 2 years ago

It's the most obvious thing ever, and it, of course, will never happen.

The new media companies seem completely oblivious to how people consume information. I touch 10+ news sources a day, at a minimum. There is no way in hell I'm going to subscribe to 10+ new services.

ryandrake• 2 years ago

I want a "Netflix of information". Let me pay 30€/month for unlimited information access, quality, no clickbait and no ads.

Used to be you simply paid your ISP and -bam- that was it: you had the Netflix of information at your fingertips. Now everyone has their hand out.

sev1• 2 years ago

You can read it on Ars: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/these-states-are...

malermeister• 2 years ago

archive.ph will help in cases like that :)

dang• 2 years ago

(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39315648)

rconti• 2 years ago

Bay Area, just beginning a remodel+expansion of our home. We've never had air conditioning, and our gas furnace is well over 20 years old. We'd likely need to upsize the furnace anyway, and for resale reasons if nothing else, adding A/C (and the attendant larger ducts or whatever else) is a no-brainer while we have the house apart.

A heat pump is absolutely a no-brainer in our case. I like being able to get away from natural gas, although I must say, moving all electric means we'll be held hostage more and more to PG&E. (We have solar, but it'll be well below our needs once we had square footage and the heat pump, and don't want to get screwed by NEM 3.0).

zbrozek7• 2 years ago

PG&E electric rates are so high that it's operationally more expensive to use a heat pump than a condensing gas system. The heat pump is the better deal practically everywhere else in the contiguous US.

I'm installing a heat pump system in PG&E territory as part of a remodel, but pairing it with a large solar system.

TheBlight2• 2 years ago

Aren't PG&E gas rates substantially higher than their electric rates?

ChatGTP4• 2 years ago

Honestly, just make sure you’re spending as much money as you can afford in insulation and double or tripled glazed windows. It makes all the different. We used cellulose fiber on our latest renovation , even between the slab in the ground and the floor, it’s wild how warm our place is.

readthenotes1• 2 years ago

Every state should be doing it it's a part of the inflation reduction act

https://www.rewiringamerica.org/app/ira-calculator

Plus a lot more

david4224• 2 years ago

I recently got heat pumps in the hopes that I could phase out my oil furnace. What I can say so far is:

The temperature is wildly inconsistent. I don't know if this is a software issue, a hardware issue, or just the way heatpumps work. I've had the installer come back and look at it, I've had the heat pump rep come and look at it too. They basically checked everything and tried to convince me this is normal.

With oil, I can set the temperature to, say, 70, and the temperature will stay at 70.

With heatpumps, I can set a temperature and it can vary by ... let's say 8 degrees. That's a lot. I have my bedroom temperature at 66, and the wall thermostat often gets up to 73+. I look at the software and it tells me the room is 68. Is the hardware not reporting the right temp? Does the software just suck? The heatpumps also vary in efficiency, so when it's warm outside it tends to overheat, and when it's cold outside it tends to struggle.

Wondering whether I got lemons or if other people have similar experiences.

thehoff• 2 years ago

We got a heat pump put in about a year and a half ago. We kept the oil as backup for the days its too cold (which if I remember right it switches over to oil somewhere around 40 F.

Our situation is the opposite. The house feels more comfortable overall. Its still a little warmer upstairs where the home office and bedrooms are but generally around the house it feels a little more consistent.

You can definitely tell when the oil furnace kicks in as the air is noticably hotter. But when that happens the house gets warmer faster and gets a little too hot before it turns off again. And stays a little too hot for too long.

We went with a midrange system. In hindsight I do kind of wish we went with a different installer who was pushing a more "cadillac" type system where the fan (according to him) would always be (or just about) on but be variable in speed basically keeping the house at the right temp more often and slightly more savings.

oramit2• 2 years ago

It sounds like something is wrong with your installation. That behavior certainly isn't normal for heat pumps and I would get a new vendor. I had a heatpump in my Condo and those things were rock solid, from 20 degrees to 110 I never had issues. In my new house we have a gas furnace and are experiencing the same behavior this winter you describe where the programmed temp and the actual temp in the room wildly diverge.

Just this morning I woke up to it feeling chilly. The thermostat said it was 65 and the programmed temp was 68 but it wasn't running. When the furnace runs it works great but something is off with the controller system. I need to call the heating people....

theogravity2• 2 years ago

I had my heat pump installed in Dec. The contractor really screwed up where they wired the zoning incorrectly - the upper floor thermo controlled the lower damper and vice versa, meaning that the pump would run almost indefinitely because the thermostat would never register the temp of the opposing floor.

It took me a full week to troubleshoot this (what helped was I bought a thermometer and placed it next to the thermostat to verify temperature readings) and when I realized what was happening, the contractor came and re-wired things, and now things work like how it should. The temperature stays consistent for both floors.

So definitely test your dampers.

david4224• 2 years ago

the upper floor thermo controlled the lower damper and vice versa

I have 2 floors with multiple units and I was running around with a wall thermometer taking measurements. This was actually my guess as well since the temperatures seemed to align this way. But the installer assured me it was wired correctly .... I might need to find someone else to check things.

dralley• 2 years ago

That is simply not normal. I have a heat pump downstairs (albeit a fancier Mitsubishi one) and it stays within one degree of the target temperature at all times. It's much more comfortable and stable than it was with the previous gas furnace or the gas furnace we still use for the upstairs, and it handled the temperature dropping into the low teens overnight with no issues.

Siecje2• 2 years ago

8 degrees is not normal+/- 1 C is what I experience.

nsguy5• 2 years ago

I'll put in another "not normal". I have a heat pump and the temperature stability seems better than the furnace. It takes longer to change but once it gets there it's very stable. With every AC system it can be a challenge to get different regions to be perfect but that shouldn't be worse with an air pump.

gniv• 2 years ago

Did you check the hysteresis value? I've had similar issues with some radiators, and the hysteresis was set to 0 (don't know why it's even allowed), which caused it to run a lot more than normal.

rudedogg• 2 years ago

If you have a mini-split, some of the remotes have a "follow me" feature, where it will go off the remote temperature instead of the indoor unit temperature (which is usually much higher since it's mounted close to the ceiling). Not sure if this applies to your situation. I found using the remote/follow me temperature worked better for me, since there are less fluctuations further away from the unit. But, you can't place it too far away or the IR on the remote doesn't work to report back the temp and control the indoor unit. It took some time to figure out, but now we leave it alone for the most part.

notyourwork3• 2 years ago

Do you have ducted or ductless system? They are different and can result in different experiences.

Siecje2• 2 years ago

8 degrees is not normal+/- 1 C is what I experience

young_rutabaga2• 2 years ago

It's worth checking if room temperature is measured at the thermostat or at the return. It's a common issue with ducted Mitsubishi systems.

Also, a thermostat should be away from the air flow from supply registers to measure representative temperature

beej71• 2 years ago

Our neighbors are getting one (Central Oregon). Install price: $15,000. Or $20k with two additional heads.

I have baseboard heaters, and even I don't know if I could make up that cost before the heat pump needs replacement.

Every year now, though, it seems like we add one to the number of days we need AC, something that was unnecessary when I first moved here, so that would be nice...

ChrisArchitect• 2 years ago

[dupe] wasting our time OP

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39288940

readingnews2• 2 years ago

I just replaced a furnace... everyone I called for a quote would not touch a heat pump with a 20foot pole, or they wanted prices that were 2X what a separate furnace and AC would cost to install. It was very strange. This is the second home where I had this experience.. basically, they really did not want to install it. I ended up going with gas as no local person would install/warranty a heat pump, or, it was priced so high it was a non-starter (e.g. a gas furnace is $4k, the AC is $4k, making it $8k, _but_ if you want a heat pump, well, that is going to be $15,999.85.)

This was recently, btw, as in last month. I am still kind of shaking my head.

huytersd3• 2 years ago

If you’re somewhat rural the contractors just don’t have the experience to do it so they try to quote you out of the decision. I had to shop around until I found a contractor that had done this before and I was able to get a whole home heat pump for about the same price as a regular furnace/AC system (because of the rebates).

TheBlight2• 2 years ago

How well do they function? Do they provide nice consistent heat? How's the noise? Sorry to clog up HN with a random request of a product quality review but I'm in the market right now to replace my furnace as well. Thanks.

TuringNYC• 2 years ago

> I had to shop around until I found a contractor that had done this before and I was able to get a whole home heat pump for about the same price as a regular furnace/AC system (because of the rebates).

Not sure the trouble is over. You are only good until you need servicing, and then you need to shop around again. Servicing is even worse, because it is an acute problem and you are under so much time pressure to solve the issue.

Sometimes even the company that sold the unit does not honor their warranty. They shut down. They re-incorporate under a new company, etc.

bonton89• 2 years ago

A guy at work doesn't have a heatpump, just some really high efficiency oil boiler. He lives in a rural area and basically had to become an expert on maintaining and repairing it himself because no one seems to know how to service the thing.

My father had similar issues with his new boiler although in his case after constant failed repair attempts his local place finally hired some guy who knew what he was doing.

There's also rebates on heatpumps around here but local forums seem to suggest that the installers are super backed up and quote "go away" prices. You can't get the rebate unless you go with a state approved installer, so even if you can install it yourself you're out of luck. Seems like they've just raised their prices to compensate for the rebate since they already had to much work.

bluedino• 2 years ago

If you’re somewhat rural the contractors just don’t have the experience to do it so they try to quote you out of the decision.

Or they're so busy they can pick and choose their jobs. I had a quote to replace a 12 foot section of pipe come in at $700, not even two hours worth of work.

readingnews2• 2 years ago

I thought of that, I am not rural (town is about 300,000 people)... Perhaps that is rural in some areas I guess.

The HVAC contractors here are pretty small, maybe they do not want to take the risk.

As someone else said, if I had more time, I would have purchased a few DIY split systems... I might do that for AC only, as I did not replace the AC at that time.

jazzyjackson• 2 years ago

wait I didn't know I could replace my AC with a heat pump, can I replace my noisy AF condenser that's always grinding and hissing or do heat pumps make the same noises

lolinder2• 2 years ago

A heat pump is just an air conditioner that can be run in reverse. Replacing your air conditioner might help if it makes the noise because it's old and broken, but if you just really dislike the sound of an air conditioner it probably won't help much.

SOLAR_FIELDS2• 2 years ago

A heat pump is the same technology as what your condenser is doing, just in reverse. So you could otherwise just think of an air conditioner as one half of the heat pump in this case. So no

jlawrence68092• 2 years ago

A heat pump is just an AC that can move heat in either direction so you should be able to.

wtallis2• 2 years ago

AC is just a heat pump that doesn't give you the option of running it backwards. There can be good and bad implementations of either.

twiceaday• 2 years ago

No, it's actually worse. The heat pump will make that same compressor noise when cooling in the summer AND heating in the winter.

epistasis2• 2 years ago

Your experience is extremely common. Residential HVAC contractors tend to be extremely conservative, and don't adopt new technologies quickly, or even attempt to understand them. I had some flexibility in time in replacing my 50 year old gas furnace, so I was able to call about 8 contractors before I finally found one who was comfortable with the tech and wanted to do it.

ajross5• 2 years ago

Yeah, it's not an innovative sector, though a lot of the blame belongs with the hardware manufacturers and not the installers. FWIW, the quotes I got for installation weren't that awful. But getting it hooked up to the Nest thermostat turned out to be a 2-day process and require a subcontractor to show up.

alistairSH• 2 years ago

But heat pumps aren’t new. And aren’t much more complicated to install than a stand-alone AC. And certainly less complicated and less labor (overall) than than AC+furnace.

Dowwie2• 2 years ago

where are you located? I was quoted 14k to replace a gas furnace for a single family in NJ

ecshafer• 2 years ago

Unless that's a massive furnace that's robbery. In philly I replaced my furnace for $6k 2 years ago.

losvedir2• 2 years ago

I had our gas furnace replaced this past November, a 100k BTU Rheem one, for $2,200. This was outside Chicago in Northwest Indiana, though, which is a pretty low cost of living area.

I spent some time trying to get a heat pump instead, but no one around here was familiar with them. I worried that if it failed service would be a pain.

UncleOxidant2• 2 years ago

Had exactly the same experience recently. It seems like there are plenty of good mini-split heatpump systems that will work down to 0F (or even lower) without any kind of backup heat source. But if you're replacing a forced air furnace that feeds an existing ducts the only options are heatpumps that need to have backup heat under 30F. So essentially you're buying 2 furnaces in one which increases the cost. I'm in the PNW where it rarely goes below 10F so the minisplit systems would work fine without backup.

bluGill11• 2 years ago

That is what I got: a heatpump good to about 28F, and natural gas backup. I still save a lot of money over the previous 50 year old propane furnace. However so many variables changed at once I can't say if it was worth it.

sgerenser• 2 years ago

There's plenty of central split heat pumps that can function just fine below 30F. Look for ones marked "hyper heat" or advertised for use in cold climates. As long as the heatpump can handle down to 0F or so, then your backup heat only really needs to be an electric resistance heat strip (inefficient, but very cheap) since it would be used so infrequently.

OTOH, if you're replacing a gas furnace and already have A/C, then installing a new gas furnace + heat pump shouldn't cost much more than a new gas furnace + new A/C.

rainbowzootsuit2• 2 years ago

A "multi position air handler" which match the aspect ratios of traditional air handler furnaces are available from the major manufacturers like Daikin or Mitsubishi.

They will pair to low ambient temperature capable condensers.

Daikin FXTQ series models

Mitsubishi SVZ series models

If you are searching.

I don't think having backup heat is a terrible idea, but it could be any fuel source. The fan should still function with minimal power to circulate air as long as there's some heat to move around.

lsllc6• 2 years ago

The ideal design (IMHO) for a cold-climate (such as New England) is forced air ducting with a heat pump (better GSHP than ASHP if possible) with a 2-zone high efficiency natural gas boiler for domestic hot water and AUX heat.

People always forget the hot water. A GSHP usually has a de-superheater that can provide some heat during the shoulder seasons, but you can't rely on it and need the backup heat (as you do for the AUX heat for both when it's super-cold out and for the defrost cycle).

yterdy3• 2 years ago

Reminds me of the hissy fit plumbers made over no-flush urinals.

lazide7• 2 years ago

Turns out they were right about that one though.

IndrekR• 2 years ago

That sounds like a fantastic opportunity for a fresh company to take over the market. Heat as a service.

It costs about 2kUSD to get air to air exchange heatpump installed here (minisplit, includes the cost of the pump, EU). Takes approx 3 hours.

turtlebits5• 2 years ago

Yes, HVAC contractors in the US massively overcharge.

I saved ~ 10k doing the install myself. The equipment is inexpensive, labor can be upwards of 2x equipment cost.

jxramos• 2 years ago

what were the justifications, did you ask out of curiosity for them to share what was driving their decisions?

Casteil• 2 years ago

Price gouging seems like standard practice for HVAC companies.

I'd like to replace my 25+ yr old system (gas furnace/AC) with a new gas furnace & heat pump so I can have the option of heating with gas or electricity... but when I ran this by an HVAC technician who was here for a service call, I got the same kind of exorbitant figures thrown at me with the heat pump in the equation.

Same technician wanted $750 to replace a control board when my furnace had gone out during a blizzard - I sourced my own & did it myself for <$150.

pkulak2• 2 years ago

I got three quotes for a new water heater just this week. One was more than twice the other. I'll see where number three comes in. $1900 for a resistive electric water heater seems steep, but at least there's an argument that it's reasonable. 4 grand is just so out there that I have to believe it was personal somehow.

acchow2• 2 years ago

For heat pumps, you actually want to start at the manufacturers. Their website or customer service will help find servicers in your area.

tilwidnk2• 2 years ago

We've owned three homes, our first one had a heat pump. In Virginia. It generally sucked. It wasn't as good as real A/C in the summer and wasn't as good as gas or electric heat in the winter. I hope to never end up in a place that uses a heat pump.

ikiris3• 2 years ago

... what do you think real ac is?

hasbot• 2 years ago

It may have been low on refrigerant. I'm in Virginia now and most of my neighbors have heat pumps including me. Mine is 17 years old and is definitely low on refrigerant so I use the original baseboard heat instead.

ghufran_syed• 2 years ago

I’m in Northern california, I just got a heat pump installed by these guys: https://www.heliosclimate.io/ - a YC company btw, for those who think they just fund consumer apps :)

Overall it was a great experience, there were some minor issues immediately after installation that got dealt with quickly and efficiently. I think the list price was similar to what you were quoted, but in northern california (menlo park, peninsula clean energy) there were around $5000 of grants/tax incentives, and an interest free loan from pce for the rest, over 5 years meaning our monthly repayment should be about equal to the reduction in our gas bill.

We already had solar and batteries, otherwise I would NOT want to put myself at the mercy of PGE and their crazy electricity rates. But as they reduce the payment rates for solar electricity, the heat pump becomes a better deal.

JeremyPOsborne2• 2 years ago

Thank you Ghufran! It was great working with you. -- Jeremy from Helios

ssuds• 2 years ago

Shreyas here, one of the co-founders of Helios.

So great to have you as a customer! We're stoked we were able to help you ditch natural gas and decrease your carbon footprint.

Menlo park (and much of the peninsula) are such a no brainer for heat pumps. Like you mentioned, ~$5500 in incentives plus interest free financing can net to almost no out-of-pocket costs for most homeowners in San Mateo County. Many contractors aren't as familiar with heat pumps, and their quotes are often so expensive that it doesn't make economic sense to fuel switch. We are focused on offering affordable heat pump installations that have a positive ROI for homeowners.

pkulak2• 2 years ago

Tradesfolk are _so_ political, it boggles my mind. I own a house, and need to get quotes for HVAC and plumbing stuff occasionally, and holy shit, I do not look forward to those conversations. Just nodding my head for 15 minutes while they look over my setup ranting about what they heard on cable TV last week.

I mean, it's good to force me out of my bubble, but maybe not right into the deep end where, and this is from about 8 hours ago, "heat pumps are no good in the Pacific Northwest because they use more electricity than resistive heating". The PNW: a climate renowned for two things: rain and mild temperatures, where heat pumps are no good. All I can do is nod and say "uh huh".

mlrtime• 2 years ago

I have the same thought when someone gives me an opinion on the car I drive or the food I eat and how I'm killing the earth, meanwhile they take 10x the number of flights I do and have no idea how their food gets to them.

slicktux• 2 years ago

Any HVAC tech worth their salt should be able to work on a heat pump…

BatFastard• 2 years ago

I had the same experience, twice as much for a heat pump as a traditional gas/electric AC here in Atlanta GA. Got quotes for multiple companies, then on a whim I talked to the guy at Costco who stands by the door on the way out. Turned out you get a ~15% discount for going thru Costco, so I saved the 1500 bucks and got Costco credit! And they used top of the line equipment!

nostrademons6• 2 years ago

These states really need to get their electric rates down if they want to accelerate adoption of electrification technologies.

We were planning to fully electrify our house + transportation in the next few years. PG&E rate hikes and net metering policies put the damper on that. It's now more expensive to fuel a vehicle with electricity than gas, so I'm charging my PHEV at work and using gas for the rest. We have solar + battery sized for the existing usage of our house (gas heating, cooking, and vehicles), because that's what PG&E would let us interconnect. Upgrading the size to support a heat pump or EV would make us lose NEM2, so we've just chosen to defer those upgrades until NEM3 is rolled back or NEM4 comes out or there's new technology or the Californian government falls.

In a way this is the market doing what it's supposed to. There's a shortage of electricity because of everyone doing electrification upgrades, so the price of electricity rises, which incentivizes people to defer further electrification upgrades until the grid can handle it. But if states actually want adoption, they need to solve the utility bottlenecks and increase generation capacity to support all the new usage.

shadowpho• 2 years ago

It's now more expensive to fuel a vehicle with electricity than gas

How is that possible? Even at 20c/kWh it's still a good 4x cost difference I though

widdakay2• 2 years ago

PGE goes up to 66c/kwh during peak now and in San Diego I think is >70c/kwh. Off peak base is 34c/kwh for PG&E. Gas is $4.5-$5/gal so break even I think ends up being near 50mpg ish for a 300wh/mi EV.

floatrock• 2 years ago

Napkin math:

My crossover EV gets 2.5-3.5 mi/kWh. Call it 3. / $0.2/kWh = 15 mi/$

Avg fuel economy in US ~ 25mpg. At $3.50/gal that's 7 mi/$

So at 20c/kWh, your dollar goes roughly twice as far on electric. California has been seeing brutal rates, though -- 40c/kWh not uncommon.

Californians can play games with Time-of-Use rates (charge at night), get onto EV-specific rates, be on a CCA which tend to not have the try-to-not-burn-down-the-state adjustment fees, get solar +/- NEM2 vs NEM3, etc., so your numbers may vary. And different cars will have different MPG's of course. But all of that is to say, "more expensive to fuel a vehicle with electricity than gas" is not necessarily wrong in California.

callalex4• 2 years ago

PG&E charges more like $.50 and it will soon be $.60-&.70. The regulator is corrupted and the infrastructure is failing because PG&E spent money that was supposed to be for infrastructure maintenance on share buyback programs. As a result the infrastructure failed and killed a ton of people, so now the utility is in even more debt because of the restitution owed.

gertlex2• 2 years ago

20c/kWh? Not in California... Try 35c/50c peak or worse.

Even if you have solar, and got in before NEM3.0, that's still not an incentive to electrify, when you're just selling the non-peak energy to the grid for the increasing rates that PG&E is charging/planning... (if that income-based minimum monthly bill thing happens, this maybe changes a bit)

Not sure about the current gas/electricity per mile costs as I'm still driving a 15 y/o gas car.

sokoloff7• 2 years ago

At 20c/kWh, that's ~5c/mi. For there to be a 4x cost difference, a gas car getting 30 mpg would have to be paying $6/gal for gas.

In MA, I bought gas yesterday in our ICE car for $3.10/gal. Our electricity is $0.27/kWh. An ICE car getting 31 mpg is $0.10/mi for energy. Our EV getting just under 4mi/kWh is $0.07/mi for energy.

gnicholas18• 2 years ago

I have a not-terribly-efficient PHEV (2014 CMAX), and depending on where we are in our tiered monthly usage it may be more expensive to use electricity. We still do, since the cost difference isn't huge and it's nice to ride with less emissions/noise. But it is maddening that PG&E charges so much that this is even possible (in CA, where gasoline prices are also sky-high!).

turquoisevar• 2 years ago

Can’t speak for PG&E, but I know from experience that it’s cousin SDG&E (the most expensive in the country I believe) will charge more than 60¢/kWh in the summer during certain times of the day and I’ve even had it be over 80¢ at certain times if memory serves me right.

They’ve recently retired and restructured a bunch of rate plans, but almost all historical and current rates can be found on their website[0]. Somehow they still managed to keep things nice and complex.

Keep in mind that none of these reflect so called CCA pricing, which is another story in of itself. Same for the “baseline allowance” after which rates go up, although they’ve now seemed to have structured is a discount to somewhat simplify rate comparisons.

0: https://www.sdge.com/total-electric-rates

Edit: Got curious so looked at some statistics. Top lists of most expensive electricity rates all mention Alaska and Hawaii, ok fair enough, but even in the contiguous states California isn’t even mentioned somehow.

At the same time there are articles like[1] these[2] that claim SDG&E was the most expensive (at the time).

So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not sure.

1: https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/fox-5-asks-sdge-why...

2: https://www.cbs8.com/article/money/amped/san-diego-has-the-h...

nostromo4• 2 years ago

These states really need to get their electric rates down if they want to accelerate adoption of electrification technologies.

I wish. Instead they'll just do what they're doing in my home city, Seattle: ban gas furnaces and other forms of heating entirely while raising electric rates even further. The masses will cry that you have to be rich to live here, and they'll respond to that by raising taxes and spending the raised funds on consultants and bureaucrats studying electric utility inequities. I wish I was making this up.

whateveracct• 2 years ago

Come down to Tacoma. I got > $1k in rebates from the gas company replacing my 20yo furnace + water heater with a HE gas furnace and a gas tankless water heater.

Housing prices are up now, but early pandemic it was like just south of $600k for a 3k sqft house built in the late '90s in a nice neighborhood.

tomohawk• 2 years ago

Just looking at my street, which is not old infrastructure, they would have to replace all the electric lines, all the transformers, and all the panels in all of the houses if everyone here decided to have EVs. If everyone went to 100% electric heat, it would be even worse.

We have dual fuel heating (heat pump, oil burner). It's prohibitively expensive to run the heat pump below 32F (0C), but the oil works great then, and is way cheaper. Just like the heat pump is cheaper at warmer temps. The heat pump won't work at all at 0F (-18C), so it's a non-starter to only use air based heat pumps for all of our needs. We've tried to get quotes for geothermal, but we'll just have to wait for the next big recession to do that.

As an engineer, I just have to shake my head at the unrealistic timelines being pushed by politicians. All that does is increase cost and drama.

remotefonts• 2 years ago

>As an engineer, I just have to shake my head at the unrealistic timelines being pushed by politicians. All that does is increase cost and drama.

Do you really think that's a coincidence? Not being snarky, just curious.

paulmd• 2 years ago

it isn't just california either, deficient and neglected infrastructure is basically a national-scale problem.

around my area we blew up two substations during a heatwave last summer. we constantly get brownouts at 4-6pm during the post-work peak load such that I'm almost not even comfortable running the freezer/etc anymore (brownouts are really hard on motors). and now you want to push all the gas heating (and this area gets cold!) onto the grid too?

a lot of this is that urban and suburban areas are subsidizing rural and ex-rural areas - more than half of my bill is already capacity-charges and delivery fees and not the actual cost of the electric, and we're still blowing up substations regularly due to strained and overloaded infrastructure. Where is the money going? Mostly to keeping miles and miles of power lines out to the middle of nowhere, I'd think.

That's a problem America is going to face in a lot of "ghost town" scenarios - when "the mine dries up" or "the train doesn't stop here anymore" and a place stops existing, the infrastructure costs to service the 20 people still living there don't. Repaving the roads every couple of years, plowing and salting them during the winter, etc aren't free and the reality is that in some areas there's really almost no economic activity anymore to justify the cost. We just have covenants and mandates that prevent ever undoing it. And that runs up the bills for everyone else.

We have 400k people in this county of 700mi^2, and that's suburban, not-particularly-dense either. Another county we have 40k people in 2700 mi^2. Should everyone in the former have to subsidize the lifestyle of the latter? We are talking about 2 orders of magnitude less density here, while it's not quite 1:1 there's no doubt they are incurring significantly higher infrastructure costs for their lifestyle and we are paying for it.

And since people won't pay for it, what we end up with is everyone's infrastructure falling into neglect, to pay for a handful of rural customers.

callalex4• 2 years ago

In a way this is the market doing what it's supposed to. There's a shortage of electricity because of everyone doing electrification upgrades, so the price of electricity rises

PG&E electricity rates have absolutely nothing to do with free markets. The only thing setting PG&E rates is corruption and incompetence, but mostly corruption.

nostrademons6• 2 years ago

Customer choices in response to electric rates is absolutely free markets, though.

I think that there's a lot wrong with the utility system in California (and the corruption actually incentivizes incompetence - the only way for executives to increase profits, make the stock go up, and get higher bonuses is to increase their costs, so PG&E is very good at inflating costs by doing stuff like burning down cities). But given that PG&E is as incompetent as they are, the logical market response is to make yourself as independent from them as possible.

burkaman4• 2 years ago

It's now more expensive to fuel a vehicle with electricity than gas

This is very hard to believe, what are you paying for electricity? California gas prices are also way above the national average at the moment. Here's a per-state comparison from last year, I'm sure it's a bit out of date but I doubt things have completed flipped in a single year: https://energyinnovation.org/2023/07/27/ev-fill-up-savings/

GloriousKoji• 2 years ago

I live in the Bay Area California and get electricity from PG&E. I use a minimal amount of electricity and I paid 43 cents/kWh last month. Gas from Costco is $4/gal right now. I have a plugin-hybrid which does 4miles/kwh and 45mpg or in terms of money: 9.3miles/$ on electricity and 11.25gas-miles/$ on gasoline.

But maybe you don't actually care about fuel efficiency, then you have an argument that it's cheaper to fuel a Tesla Model 3 instead of a BMW M3.

nostrademons6• 2 years ago

PG&E is 62 cents/kwh for peak rate above-baseline, I believe 52 cents/kwh for off-peak (which most EV charging would be). Gas prices where I'm at are around $4.20/gal. I ran the numbers for my Mazda CX-90 PHEV SUV, which gets about 1.7 mi/kwh on electric and about 23 mpg gas. It's about 30 cents/mile on electric and about 18 cents/mile on gas.

For this tank only I have been charging at home (and at work, and anywhere I can), because I want to see how much mileage I can get out of a tank with full PHEV driving. In this regard it hasn't disappointed; I'm at 1200 miles and just passed half a tank of gas. But once I have a baseline for how much of my driving can be done on electric, I'll probably switch to just charging at work (where it's free) and using gas for most other driving, because it's so much cheaper.

qqqwerty• 2 years ago

The PG&E rate increases have a lot more to do with wildfires than it does with supply and demand. Look at SMUD rates, super affordable. I will agree though that it has been super frustrating for these rate increases to be hitting right around when electrification is picking up steam.

With that said, unless you are comparing the most efficient ICE against the least efficient EV's you should still see savings with an EV. If I charged our EV at the peak electricity rate (which I rarely do) it still costs about half as much as a fairly average ICE vehicle on a per mile basis. Compared against some of the most efficient ICE vehicles (hybrids like the Prius) I would still come out ahead, maybe by only 20% though. But again, that is comparing the worst case scenario where I only charge at peak rates. In practice we probably average around half of the peak rate from a mix of at home, at work and around town charging.

I will admit though that it is not a particularly good look for CA regulators to be pushing electrification so hard while also allowing huge rate increases. It ends up looking like a huge handout to the investor owned utilities. And the proposed rate changes that implement an income based fix charge are absolutely idiotic. With batteries coming down in price we could soon see the economics of going off grid become much more attractive, which would further exacerbate the situation (CA IOUs will need battery adopters to stay connected to the grid to help with intermittency)

oramit2• 2 years ago

This is one of my big annoyances as well. Whatever happened to the idea of electricity that was too cheap to measure?

selectodude• 2 years ago

We had a collective meltdown at the idea of nuclear power. I'm currently paying 1.7 cents per kWh in Chicago.

yellow_postit• 2 years ago

moved from oil furnace to heat pump in Seattle (with electric strip backup)

Seems like a perfect fit for our weather patterns but was definitely not the most economical option as it kicked off a domino effect of upgrades I wasn't missing before.

Its no where near as "cozy" as the oil heat was, and the temperature of airing coming from the vents is significantly lower than the oil system. So the domino of upgrades is now looking at insulation, windows, etc. Which likely all needed upgrades in our old home anyway, but it's been a journey.

nsguy5• 2 years ago

I did the same in Vancouver, BC. We took advantage of incentives to improve our insulation and to make the switch. E.g. we just fixed our crawl space.

The heat pump did struggle a little during the more extreme cold weather we saw a few weeks back (going down to -15C) but we've kept our natural gas fireplace as backup and "assist".

I'm pretty sure it's a little more expensive to run with a heat pump, so you need to be willing to pay more for reducing your carbon footprint. The incentives do help though. Similar to switching to an EV which we also did for similar reasons. I think if you're purely looking at $$$ then it's not necessarily the optimal decision.

bullfightonmars• 2 years ago

I did the same this past thing, the best part about it is the reduction in cost for heating from 300+/mo to ~25/mo, The downside is that it was terribly expensive to install, it ran me 40k to install the new heat pump and air handler.

brewdad2• 2 years ago

That's why I stuck with a gas furnace and traditional AC when I was looking a few years ago. My heating and cooling costs are only about $800-1000 a year. Spending an extra $8-10k up front in hopes of reducing that figure simply doesn't pencil out. Maybe by the time I'm in the market for a new system it will.

ebcase• 2 years ago

I'm going through this process currently (getting estimates from local HVAC contractors, SF Bay Area), and their general guidance so far is to get a Hybrid electric + gas heat pump config.

The electric heat pump alone isn't sufficient compared with gas, and the "add-on" you get to add more heat to the heating output is like a space heater, thus very expensive month to month.

turtlebits5• 2 years ago

In Seattle as well. I kept my oil furnace and added mini splits to each room.

What helped the most for my old house was attic insulation. I spent around $700 to buy blown-in packs (and got free machine rental) and got my attic to around R-40. I'm able to set my thermostat 5 degrees higher without any change to my energy bill.

bagels19• 2 years ago

How is it not cozy?

nostromo4• 2 years ago

I have mixed feelings about our heat pump system.

Yes, it's efficient. But it breaks about once every other year. Last winter the compressor circuit board malfunctioned and cost $5k to fix. Two years ago it was another issue entirely.

All of our savings have been lost to service calls. I'm not super price sensitive, but it's still a pain when the heat goes out in the middle of winter and all the service techs are booked up.

This is a Daikin system, which I thought was a pretty standard, respected brand. But like a lot of things built today, it just wasn't built to last.

If we ever have to replace it, we're going to have to rip open half of the house to remove the heating lines. It'll be a nightmare.

I had a heat pump water heater at our previous home, and the compressor also broke after a few years. We just operated it as an old-fashioned electric water heater after that because it would cost more to fix than it would to replace. And both sounded like a pain.

nsguy5• 2 years ago

I got a TOSOT. So far so good.

liminalsunset• 2 years ago

I'm wondering if many of the failures in electronically controlled equipment are due to power surges etc. It may be worth having a whole-home (or equipment specific) surge protective device installed, which will protect the power electronics (which have very minimal surge protection built in) from anything else happening on the line (particularly if there are storms where you live often)

stephen_g5• 2 years ago

Whole house surge protectors are now mandated in some country’s codes already. It’s a good idea, I’m looking at installing one here myself just because I have some expensive electronics.

cyberax2• 2 years ago

If we ever have to replace it, we're going to have to rip open half of the house to remove the heating lines. It'll be a nightmare.

Why? Assuming you have a split unit, the lines are just copper pipes and will work with any other heatpump.

nostromo4• 2 years ago

Potentially, yes. But when we asked about this we were told that not all heat pumps and head units are compatible -- so we seem to be locked in based on brand, model, and refrigerant type.

teaearlgraycold• 2 years ago

How cold are your winters? My heat pumps are doing fine but it’s NorCal so they never have to work too hard.

ikiris3• 2 years ago

Sounds like you got seriously taken advantage of by the contractors you've been using.

antisthenes2• 2 years ago

Last winter the compressor circuit board malfunctioned and cost $5k to fix.

Ok, so it sounds like you got scammed. HVAC circuit boards cost $100.

Two years ago it was another issue entirely.

Which was?

All of our savings have been lost to service calls. I'm not super price sensitive

Yeah, obviously, if you're willing to spend $5k on a service call.

If we ever have to replace it, we're going to have to rip open half of the house to remove the heating lines.

Heat Pump units can just go in place of a regular AC unit. They can use existing ductwork and coolant lines. Not sure why you ran heating lines everywhere? Do you have a mini-split unit per room or something?

stephen_g5• 2 years ago

I’m going to second that one, that seems mind-bogglingly expensive. Definitely seems like a major rip-off. I can even buy a whole 14 kW Daikin ducted system for under US$4K here (outdoor unit and one air handler) in my country!

interroboink4• 2 years ago

HVAC circuit boards cost $100.

This very much depends on the brand and the board, no?

A quick search for the brand the OP mentioned (Daikin) shows some boards easily in the $1000 range.

Just one example: https://airconditionersrus.com/en/components-parts/2423-daik...

I don't know the details of OP's situation, but I'm not sure what makes you say such things so confidently.

prpl• 2 years ago

Which models are y'all using out there on HN, and for what square footage/location?

I'm in SF and have a gas heater, but a 115 year old house with only 4 vents (none in bedrooms), and it's been cold. I'd like to replace, maybe DIY, but not sure.

robszumski• 2 years ago

One issue with heat pumps is they are more complex in terms of modes they can be in, especially if you have multiple zones. I was troubleshooting an auxiliary heat issue and had to pull from the Ecobee API just to make sense of what was happening on cold nights across zones.

aidenn04• 2 years ago

Anyone know what sort of electrical requirements there are for these? We currently have a gas furnace and gas range. My electrical panel is full (we used up the last of it installing 220V for the clothes dryer), and the furnace is on the opposite side of the house from the electric panel, under a different roofline.

I'm going to at some point get an electrician in to look at things and see what the options are, but my house just isn't wired for it currently.

spamizbad• 2 years ago

Assuming your home has 200 amp service you should be fine. Typically if your panel is out of space and more circuits are needed, you'll need a subpanel installed (just a smaller panel that handle some of your circuits). Alternatively an electrician may just recommend you upgrade to a bigger panel. Either way most of your costs are likely going to be on the labor side.

ajross5• 2 years ago

You don't need space in the panel as clearly you already have a circuit breaker for your existing air handler. It will be a bigger line though, my house in Portland got a central heat pump and handler that wants 40A.

aidenn04• 2 years ago

I would not put it past the people who wired this house to have shared circuit for the furnace blower with the bathroom right next to it, but we'll see.

mapmap• 2 years ago

If you have lighting circuits that previously were incandescent but are now all LED, you might be able to combine some of them on a single 15 amp breaker.

bluGill11• 2 years ago

If you have AC, this replaces the AC and so uses that breaker. If you don't have AC you need space for a breaker in the panel - but this is easy to get (add a sub panel - $500)

The real question is what kind of service you have. If the power company cannot deliver enough power then you need more power and this will cost you at best $4000 to replace your panel, and could be in the tens of thousands depending on what your power company wants.

mdasen• 2 years ago

One of the big problems with heat pumps in New England is that our electricity costs 1.7x the US average (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...).

If you're in the South, a heat pump makes perfect sense. You're going to want AC anyway and it'll be way more efficient and save a ton of money when you want heat. In most of the country, even if it gets cold your electricity prices are still a ton cheaper. Iowa/Kansas/Missouri/Nebraska get cold, but their electric rates are less than half ours.

Heat pumps do work into freezing New England temperatures, but they're a bit less efficient as it gets to zero fahrenheit. That wouldn't matter if our electric rates were more reasonable, but at our high rates a heat pump would probably cost me an additional $50/mo in the winter (compared to natural gas). That isn't so bad and our electric rates might come down as offshore wind actually starts happening. Plus it might actually be cheaper than gas given that mini-splits would mean I could choose which rooms I want to heat rather than heating the whole place as a single zone. Plus there's the option to get solar power to drive down prices.

But I think the biggest issue in New England (and California) will probably be the high cost of electricity. In most of the country, heat pumps are a huge no-brainer.

bruce511• 2 years ago

I'm not in NE, so forgive me if this is obvious, but high electricity prices might make solar attractive to you. (Unrelated to the heat-pump question.)

I'm in a similar high-priced environment, but we get a fair amount of sun. I'm getting around a 16% return on capital based on electricity usage reduction.

jauntywundrkind• 2 years ago

New England just doesn't have a lot of light. The time to return on investment is commendurately longer. And in the winter it's much worse.

NREL has solar availability maps. Alas the scale sucks; there's great monthly average views, but all done with the same yearly average scale, so during the summer everything is the same full-red potential (>5.75 kWh/m^2/d) and during the winter everything is (mostly) the same low potential (<4kWh/m^2/d). Still, one can kind of read some pattern from fall/spring & see how a lot of NE looks a lot like, say, Seattle (<<4 average). https://www.nrel.gov/gis/solar-resource-maps.html

colechristensen3• 2 years ago

Solar is so cheap it usually still makes sense financially even in areas without a lot of sun, but less so.

Lots of cold places in northern latitudes have short winter days that are overcast more often than not yielding only a little solar energy for a big chunk of the year.

david4224• 2 years ago

I use solar, but using heat pumps and an electric car uses maybe 3x more electricity than my roof can produce.

lex-lightning5• 2 years ago

Alright, maybe I’m out of touch, but I don’t think electricity is expensive in California.

Even during 115 degree heatwaves in a 70-year-old, 3-bedroom, single-family home. Most I paid was $100 in a month with 2 people with gaming computers working from home.

Not everyone has that kind of money, but my point is that most people have cell service and other services which add up to more than electricity costs.

That’s fine, I make no judgement of what people spend. I’m just setting a comparison. For how much value electricity provides us and how much we use it, I wouldn’t call it expensive, even in California.

YMMV by city, but it wasn’t an issue in Sacramento. The real monster is climate change, and so here we have a chicken-and-egg problem combined with wealth disparity.

I think we need comprehensive social program packages to address this.

bagels19• 2 years ago

How? It's $0.52/kwh here, and before that rate increase, we were paying (edit) $278/mo in the summer for similar (70 year old 3 bedroom house), and slightly lower temepratures.

GoatOfAplomb• 2 years ago

With the latest PG&E rate hike, my off-peak rate is 33c/kwh and the highest peak rate in 66c. I think the national average is 19c? That seems like a pretty drastic difference to me.

acchow2• 2 years ago

Can you share your rate during that period? Makes for a simpler comparison

gnicholas18• 2 years ago

When I looked into this, I learned that we pay 2x what neighboring states pay.

nkingsy• 2 years ago

Let’s say 30 kWh per day is the norm to run ac in the summer.

Assuming $.40 per kWh, which is lower than my PGE rate, that’s $360 per month just to run the ac.

Not sure what kind of setup you have. $100 is my bill if I’m not home in the winter and leave everything off.

losvedir2• 2 years ago

FYI, a monthly bill is essentially useless information. How big is your house? What are you using it for? How efficient is your fridge? Your A/C? How much is the fixed cost part of the bill? Etc.

I'm assuming, since you mention Sacramento and peak hours, these[0] are your rates? Next time, share those so folks in other places can compare. That page has these:

Summer:

* Off-peak: $0.1425 kWh

* Mid-peak: $0.1967 kWh

* Peak: $0.3462 kWh

Non-Summer

* Off-peak: $0.1151 kWh

* Peak: $0.1590 kWh

That's pretty high, but I think middling to low for California. For comparison, in my town outside Chicago, we have a year-round all-day rate of $0.12 kWh.

[0] https://www.smud.org/en/Rate-Information/Residential-rates

TheOsiris2• 2 years ago

yeah, there's absolutely no "maybe" about it, you are definitely out of touch :). I don't know in what way exactly, but something is off. What is your per kwh rate exactly? You might be getting some kind of subsidies that you are not aware of, perhaps? I used to live in a 1200 sqft house in LA without any AC or anything consuming too much electricity, and 10 years ago before all the rate hikes I was still paying more than $100/month in west LA.

BobaFloutist2• 2 years ago

That's because you're on SMUD, not PG&E, so you're not getting charged to cover the maintenance and liabilities of above-ground high-voltage power lines going into a forest on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

bagels19• 2 years ago

Right, the heat pump will reduce energy use to maybe 1/3 of a gas furnace, but natural gas is something like 6x cheaper for the same amount of energy, so it is an expensive folly.

If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities to reduce prices and or stop the attacks on solar installation.

mullingitover2• 2 years ago

Southern Cali resident here: I got a mini split system installed a couple years back, and last year's eye-popping surprise gas bill inspired me to start running it backward for heat instead of using the furnace.

Pricewise, it's actually a wash. My electric bill went up by about $100 a month, whereas during the winter my gas bill was running about $100 a month to run the furnace (aside from that one random $600 bill one month last year that inspired this change). I've been using the mini split all winter and it's been great.

exe342• 2 years ago

Is there a reason heat pumps use electricity? I would have thought the same approach would work with gas - you only need to burn a fraction of the gas to drive the "fridge" backwards?

colechristensen3• 2 years ago

Utilities cost excesses in California are largely PG&E paying for its liability for causing wildfires in places where people probably shouldn’t live anyway.

For example Silicon Valley Power which serves Santa Clara (or something like that) has rates that are literally half as much as PG&E.

In Minnesota I’m paying for Xcel Energy’s mistakes in Texas.

gnicholas18• 2 years ago

stop the attacks on solar installation

I've not heard of any attacks, just reductions in subsidies (tax credits, net metering). Can you share what you're referring to?

GenerWork• 2 years ago

If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities

Why would they reign in one of the best ways to ensure that Calpers remains solvent?

gregwebs2• 2 years ago

There are second order effects from natural gas use in an actual furnace that aren't taken into account in price of energy comparisons. A furnace has to either

1) exhaust out air initially drawn from the house which must be replaced by cold outdoor air coming into the house (this requires more heating of the house) 2) take in fresh cold air for combustion and exhaust that (which requires extra energy to heat up the cold air)

TheSoftwareGuy• 2 years ago

Or, they could increase the price of natural gas (perhaps using a tax)

Retric9• 2 years ago

In the continental US you get ~2x the heat from burning natural gas in a combined cycle turbine to run a heat pump than you would from using a high efficiency gas furnace.

The market price of electricity vs gas varies quite a bit through time and various distortions of the market. Currently gas is cheap, but you want to compare historical averages when buying something that lasts 15+ years not simply look at current rates.

newZWhoDis5• 2 years ago

The point you’re missing is electricity should never be expensive, if it is then you’re doing something very stupid.

smcleod2• 2 years ago

Natural gas won’t stay cheap. It was cheap here in Australia 10 years ago and now it’s so expensive no one can afford to run gas heating and it’s only going up. Now (thankfully) the government has banned the installation of new gas heating and a lot of people are getting rid of gas cooking, hot water heating etc… it’s for the best.

Areading314• 2 years ago

Solar isn't a useful source of energy for heating in California, since the demand is almost entirely during winter mornings/evenings where the sun is down.

nonethewiser2• 2 years ago

If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities to reduce prices and or stop the attacks on solar installation.

Why do you think electricity prices are high?

michaelt• 2 years ago

stop the attacks on solar installation

I don't know if the experience of a Brit with a roof covered in solar panels applies in California, but: during months when you want to run the heat pump, your solar won't be producing shit.

tootie• 2 years ago

6x cheaper

It will have a lower price but not a lower cost. At this point we can't wait for price efficiency we have to pay whatever dollar amount to avoid the catastrophic human costs of burning fossil fuels.

valenterry3• 2 years ago

Modern great heatpumps, installed correctly, are rather between 5 and 7 in terms of COP. Also, even the best gas heating systems only achieve 90% efficiency. In other words, it either be very very very cold in your area, or you have to screw up the installation before gas has lower running(!) costs.

Besides that, a gas power plant easily achieves 33% of efficiency for generating electricity from gas, rather 50% for the new ones. In other words, if the price for electricity is more than 3 times as high as gas, there is a high chance that it's due to tax, regulations, etc. Though, the price for maintaining a stronger power grid comes on top.

Schnitz• 2 years ago

Natural gas prices have gone through the roof in CA, people with old gas furnaces are the hardest hit in winter. We saved quite a bit when we upgraded to a heat pump.

jabart• 2 years ago

Natural gas may be cheap but the cost of the meter and other admin fees cost about as much as the gas.

FooBarBizBazz2• 2 years ago

It's probably academic, but if natural gas is that cheap, then I wonder about more thermodynamically-efficient uses of it.

The classic thing is cogeneration. It's a thermodynamic sin to create a large temperature difference (say, furnace combustion chamber vs. house) without running that heat through a heat engine. In the Nordic countries, in parts of Russia, and on some university campuses in the US, that's done with a "neighborhood power plant" and district heating (steam pipes). Heat engines get less efficient as they get smaller, but possibly a house-scale cogeneration setup could still make sense?

But I'm also now curious about something more interesting: In the same way that you can have, say, a propane powered refrigerator, is it also possible to have a natural gas powered heat pump? Suppose it's a cold winter day, and you're burning natural gas in a combustion chamber in an appliance in your basement. There are three temperature reservoirs: The outdoors, the house, and the combustion chamber, at temperatures T1 < T2 < T3, respectively. By harnessing heat flow (Q32) from the combustion chamber into the house, can additional heat (Q12) be pumped from the outdoors into the house? Then the house will get a total flow Q = Q32 + Q12.

From Q32, work

W = (1 - T2/T3) * Q32

is available. That can then be used to pump

Q12 = 1 / (1 - T1/T2) * W

= ((1 - T2/T3) / (1 - T1/T2)) * Q32

additional heat. And thus

Q = Q32 + Q12

= (1 + (1 - T2/T3) / (1 - T1/T2)) * Q32

= B(T1, T2, T3) * Q32 .

Here, B (a function of T1, T2, T3) is the coefficient by which the natural gas' energy is effectively multiplied, for heating purposes.

oooyay5• 2 years ago

Yeah, I made this mistake this year. I pumped $20k into a heat pump system, coming from what used to be Natural Gas. I wasn't given any kind of relief because I live in Oregon where most relief is income based. Then at the beginning of the year PGE announced a 20% rate hike. My house is covered in trees, so solar isn't really an option. I really regretted my decision once I got a $300-$400 bill for heating three months in a row. In the summer I now have AC where I didn't at all before, but it hardly makes up for the cost of a heat pump during winter. I probably won't be doing any of these kinds programs again.

jdeibele• 2 years ago

I'm moving from Portland to McMinnville in a couple of months. Price of kwh goes from $.1945/kwh to about $.0720. I've noticed that McMinnville Water & Light doesn't help pay for EV connections, etc. compared to Portland General Electric but at almost 1/3rd the cost, they probably don't need to.

MW&L is community-owned, PGE is traded on the NYSE. They both buy a ton of hydro from the Bonneville Power Administration.

https://findenergy.com/providers/mcminnville-water-and-light... gives an average. Actual per kwh rate is cheaper but there's a $16.10 customer charge to have an account. https://www.mc-power.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/pdf/ra...

https://portlandgeneral.com/about/info/pricing-plans

newZWhoDis5• 2 years ago

$20k for a heat pump is sky high, you better have gotten a 24 SEER2 state of the art fully variable system for that.

If they sold you a 14 SEER1 for that then you got absolutely screwed.

sgustard• 2 years ago

For those installation comparing costs, the subreddit has a Heat Pump Quote Comparison Survey:

https://www.reddit.com/r/heatpumps/comments/raocha/heat_pump...

theteapot2• 2 years ago

Heat pumps do work into freezing New England temperatures, but they're a bit less efficient as it gets to zero fahrenheit.

What's the temperature in the ground? Did you look at a ground source heat pump (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump)

bluGill11• 2 years ago

I have - the cost of installing such a system makes it questionable if it will ever be worth it. I've seen a few places that have it and they work great year round and are cheap to operate. However the payoff from the install if 50+ years despite the cheap costs. Everyone hopes the install lasts that long, but a lot can go wrong in 50 years. (the equipment probably won't last 50 years, but that will be cheap enough to replaces, it is the pipes in the ground that better last 50 years)

aurizon• 2 years ago

The big cost for ground source HP, is the large area you have to dig with 4 foot deep trenches. I have seen one where the installer digs 2 trenches about 16 feet apart and 30 feet long down to 6 feet. They then use a soil drill to make about 50-60 holes between the trenches and insert 17 foot plastic pipes(1 inch diameter) They then connect the pipes on each side to a common pipe(3"), all well sealed ABS pipes below the frost line. This allow for a large volume of coupled and warm(55 degrees) that the heat pump extracts/deposits heat as needed for heating/cooling the home. This drilling is a lot cheaper than a dozen or more 3 foot trenchs for the water loops.

smeej2• 2 years ago

There's a reason NH is called "The Granite State."

Planning to put things underground in at least that part of New England is not likely to go very well. It can be done (plenty of places have septic tanks, for example), but it's not easy.

xutopia• 2 years ago

I'm in Canada and we have heat pumps with secondary heat sources for when it gets really cold. Mine is with gas.

jefftk5• 2 years ago

These sorts of programs generally require you to disable your existing heating system, and don't allow you to run it only in warmer weather.

Ex, Massachusetts: https://www.masssave.com/-/media/Files/PDFs/Save/Residential...

fnbr2• 2 years ago

Yup, me too. And with my Nest thermostat, I can manually configure the crossover point. I did so at the economic balance point (where the heat pump is cheaper than my gas furnace).

jefftk5• 2 years ago

That's right. In MA I'm paying a marginal $0.316/kWh for electric and $1.999/therm for natural gas, heating a two-family 10-person building. Switching to a heat pump would be an additional $1k/y in heating costs, and that's ignoring the cost of the system (which is substantial even after the $20k MA subsidy this article discusses).

More: https://www.jefftk.com/p/running-the-numbers-on-a-heat-pump

1minusp• 2 years ago

Large drilling costs from where I am in the south due to ground being mostly (lime?)stone: makes it cost-infeasbile. Other areas might have it easier though.

PaulDavisThe1st6• 2 years ago

It can vary over the micro-scale. Where I live in NM, we could go down very deep and never hit rock, because we're sitting on the soft sandy soil(ish) alluvial deposits at the bottom of large (20 mile diameter) basin. But neighbors who live less than 1 mile away are sitting on metamorphic rock just inches below the surface.

thelastgallon2• 2 years ago

If electricity is costly, it makes sense to put solar panels. Consolidate all energy (transportation - EV, HVAC - electric, induction stove, heat pump water heater), put solar panels, and wipe off all energy bills. Every household can save $400 - $800 on utility bills.

lotsoweiners• 2 years ago

I’m not in New England but I’m imagining that the cold winters there are accompanied but plenty of cloudy skies as well. In that case solar might not be a great option.

taude• 2 years ago

Also, doesn't states like MA import a not-insignificant amount of natural gas from elsewhere to convert to electricity? Would like to hear about what's more efficient: direct natural gas heating vs natural gas -> electricity -> heat pump...

twoodfin• 2 years ago

Yes, and for nominally climate-driven reasons MA has constrained the construction of pipelines and other facilities that would allow the cheaper delivery of natural gas for cheaper electricity… thus discouraging consumers like me from moving to electrical utilities that would net reduce emissions.

deepsun• 2 years ago

Why wouldn't heat pump work on gas?

It's already done -- RV fridges work on propane directly, without converting it to electricity. A fridge is a heat pump.

RandallBrown• 2 years ago

Apparently they do, but they're not common for houses yet.

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/absorption-heat-pumps

bitbckt• 2 years ago

I didn’t pay anywhere near that price per kWh here in Maine. It was $0.16 in November 2023, and is $0.10 as of January 1.

[ETA] I just did the math to include delivery as well as generation cost if that’s what the table is meant to reflect, and I’m still below $0.20/kWh in November. Shrug. I was paying nearly $0.50 in California before moving here…

lr4444lr• 2 years ago

Thing is, HVAC people rob you blind when you need emergency repairs to gas or oil furnaces in the middle of the season. If you have a heat pump as a backup, that can tide you over until you can get off season repair pricing again. That's well worth it to me, even at the higher electricity rates.

beerandt• 2 years ago

We tried one in the south and it was a pretty horrible experience, because of our high humidity in the cold.

The outside unit constantly froze up, which even ideally requires a defrost cycle (wasting energy pumping heat back outside), or worse, uses heating element outside just to make operable.

While those cycles run, heat couldn't. Except that even emergency heat (heating element inside) would disable the outside defrost, supposedly to meet EPA set energy budget, not technology limits.

That's not the kind of BS you want to put up with on frozen nights, whether from a technology or policy standpoint.

newZWhoDis5• 2 years ago

You likely had an old, low SEER heat pump. The fact that it had emergency heat at all says so.

bilsbie• 2 years ago

If heat pumps get inefficient at low temps could we not program them to run full blast during the warmest parts of the day and preheat the home. Thus needing to run less at night.

smeej2• 2 years ago

Maybe, but unless your house is very well insulated, this would probably require making the home so warm as to be very uncomfortable.

I live in New England in a small house (<700 sqft), and it easily drops 5 degrees an hour when it's 65 inside and 15 outside.

delfinom• 2 years ago

Pretty much the majority of north east homes are not that well insulated. Then you get to bigger buildings where by health and building code you must always have a certain % of fresh air intake otherwise you'll end up choking on your own carbon dioxide lol.

evandev2• 2 years ago

With an air to water heat pump, you typically add a buffer tank that among other things helps keep preheated water warm. It is basically a hot water tank so doesn't last through the night

However for other hydronic applications such as solar water heaters there is typically a thermal storage tank which can help store heat like a battery.

Keep in mind a few things. One is some heat pumps are now operating down around -22*F. Second is geothermal is a water to water heat pump that isn't affected as much by the limitations of air temperature (but has other limitations). Third is radiant heat flooring with tubes in concrete acts as a thermal storage tank. Finally heat pumps for heating work best at low temperature hydronic water and can also be used for other applications such as DHW (domestic hot water) which needs to be at slightly higher temperatures than a buffer tank has.

jhallenworld6• 2 years ago

It's a big problem for electric cars too... Here are the current prices per kwh for me in MA:

Electricity = $.26 / kwh

Propane (LPG) = .134 / kwh

Heating oil = .095 / kwh

Gasoline = .091 / kwh

Natural Gas = .082 / kwh

Reason0773• 2 years ago

You still need to account for efficiency of the various fuels when working out which one is cheapest.

An electric vehicle is on the order of 5X more efficient than a gasoline vehicle per kWh (that is, an EV that will go 5 km on 1 kWh of electricity would be lucky to get 1 km per kWh if it were running on gasoline).

So in this case, it's still cheaper to operate an EV than a gasoline vehicle in MA, even if electricity costs more per kWh.

jhallenworld6• 2 years ago

I found the coal price:

https://www.blaschakanthracite.com/dealers/pricing/

6250 kwh / ton... "$200 / ton at the mine" in Pennsylvania..

So this works out to: $.032 / kwh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TewWb8xmyzk

$.06 / kwh bagged and delivered (to Ontario) according to above video.. ($7.50 / 40 lb bag)

ijhuygft776• 2 years ago

The heat pump that I had also had an heating element.. so it could possibly automatically switch from one method of heating to the other....

lsllc6• 2 years ago

The big issue in New England is that heat pumps (ASHP or GSHP) are only really possible for new builds. Most existing homes will likely be forced hot water and there isn't any heat pump out there that will produce water hot enough (e.g. 185F), so your only option is to retrofit ducting (or go mini-split but then you need one in every room).

Even homes with ducted AC, it's likely they are sized for cooling only, not heat (not enough CFMs).

evandev2• 2 years ago

While I agree that a heat pump can't work with hot water baseboard, there is an alternative.

The alternative is removing the baseboard and with a calculated heat load, replacing with panel radiators which run with much lower temperatures. The retrofit wouldn't be too difficult (compared to ducting) as it would involve running 1/2 inch PEX to each room.

kenmacd2• 2 years ago

here isn't any heat pump out there that will produce water hot enough (e.g. 185F)

For 185:

https://www.arcticheatpumps.com/high-temperature-heat-pump.h...

Or much more common, if you can deal with 176F, the SANCO2 ones will generate that down to -20F.

The hydronic temperatures you're talking about are only required if you have to stick with the existing radiators. They make radiators with little fans that work at lower temperatures, or larger panel radiators. There's lots of options for lower temperature forced hot water.

gmerc3• 2 years ago

Essentially: We will only accept climate change action if it’s not degrading our standard of living which is predicated on consuming unsustainably.

The end.

horns4lyfe• 2 years ago

Well good luck trying to get people to lower their standard of living in pursuit of an abstract solution to a problem that can only be represented with predictive modeling.

bongodongobob• 2 years ago

Yeah, people should freeze or die of heat stroke.

Tell me more about your frictionless spherical world.

Arn_Thor• 2 years ago

You're barking up the wrong tree. (i) systemic change on a global scale is needed, individual actions don't "matter". (ii) corporations and governments are the only entities large enough to make changes. Governments need to force companies and incentivize individuals to make better choices, and help those that would be financially disadvantaged by those choices. (iii) paradoxically, while individual actions don't "matter", they add up of course. Both in energy usuage, and in voting. The latter is more important if we want governments to force and incentivize companies and individuals to make positive changes. So giving the environmental cause a bad name by yelling at individuals for making sensible financial choices is going to cost the green cause voters, which we sorely need.

Stop it.

gmerc3• 2 years ago

I like how this comment spawned anger from both extremes.

coryrc3• 2 years ago

Warning: two- and three-head units are 30% less efficient than single-head units, and units with more than three heads are 50% as efficient (based on real-life measurements, in MN IIRC). So at least pick one single-head hyper-efficient unit, like a Gree Sapphire, to heat the largest and most-used room. If you don't mind the extra condensers, one outdoor unit per head is the best

inferiorhuman7• 2 years ago

  But I think the biggest issue in New England (and California) will probably
  be the high cost of electricity. In most of the country, heat pumps are a
  huge no-brainer.

PG&E charges about $2.44/therm (100,000 BTU) here. So yea that's well cheaper than electricity – I think it works out to about half to a third the cost of resistive electric heat. So (for now) a heat pump that's about twice as efficient as a gas furnace would work out to about the same cost. Unless you do something like a mini split where you're heating a smaller area.

The big thing to keep in mind is that California natural gas prices spiked for a bit last year. All of a sudden gas heat was very, very expensive.

whatindaheck• 2 years ago

I grew up in western PA with a heat pump. We’d easily hit sub-20F. Maybe not as cold as New England but it worked into some serious cold weather.

rr808• 2 years ago

less efficient as it gets to zero fahrenheit

Here in NJ there aren't any days like that any more. Its like heat pumps wouldn't be great in the old days but in today's new climate they're great.

jwells892• 2 years ago

I have an aging gas furnace that’s about due for replacement and a heat pump may be in the cards.

Something I’ll need to research is how a heat pump would compare to electric heated flooring, though because the way my house’s HVAC system is set up the upper floor is heated before the lower floor, which exacerbates the natural temperature difference that results from heat rising and means the lower floor can be chilly while the upper floor is warm. My AC is fairly new still too which makes me think that installing heated floor in the base floor, letting heat rise to heat the upper floor with the old furnace remaining as a backup might be smarter.

Electricity costs aren’t too bad here ($0.10-$0.14/kWh) so switching from consuming gas to consuming electricity won’t impact bills too much.

sgc• 2 years ago

You can do both. For example: https://www.arcticheatpumps.com/radiant-floor-heating-with-h...

jwells892• 2 years ago

Had heard of this and it’s cool, but would involve tossing my still-good AC unit which doesn’t feel great unless the installer offers trade-ins or something (which doesn’t seem likely).

Will consider going with a heat pump nonetheless.

mypgovroom• 2 years ago

Eh I don't hate heat pumps, but they are not the answer

progman32• 2 years ago

Answer to what?

ChatGTP4• 2 years ago

Why Jews invaded Russia ?

billfor• 2 years ago

Has anyone found a good way to control all the features of a heat pump with home automation? I’ve been lookin at Daikin and Mitsubishi but Daikin no longer has an open api and I don’t see much on Mitubishi. It seems like every heat pump comes with its own proprietary remote, and the thermostats and Wi-Fi modules (if available) don’t integrate well.

qmarchi2• 2 years ago

I have a suite of LG Minisplits installed in my apartment. While there isn't a distinctly open API, there's an integration that you can add to Home Assistant for access to the platform.

From there, I've got a few automations including:

  - Automatically turning off "conflicting" units (Heat vs Cool)
  - Schedules (set bedroom to cool at night) and "Away" modes
  - Temperature overrides using custom built temperature sensors (BME280 to the rescue)
  - Access and control via voice (via Google Assistants)

Unfortunately, the integration is reliant on the cloud, but you can connect a "traditional" relay based thermostat to them as well (with the loss of variable load control for the outside unit).

thebestmoshe• 2 years ago

I’m in the same boat as you. As far as I can tell the only option is something like Sensibo, which uses IR.

I would love to know if there is a better way to do this.

lsllc6• 2 years ago

I have a Trane/Mitsubishi mini-split for a garage and it works via a Nest thermostat, so that's how I monitor/automate that. Google have APIs for Nest ... YMMV.

callalex4• 2 years ago

Every home in America should have a Heat Recovery Ventilator. They are extremely simple mechanically, yet because of their rarity they are still way to expensive to justify the cost instead of just opening a window. Policy could help a lot here.

newhotelowner• 2 years ago

We use PTAC at the hotel and we only buy with a heat pump. It reduces electricity bills significantly in winter. It's not a new tech, but it has gotten more efficient over the years.

I am surprised that all these companies are charging arms and legs for heat pump units. PTAC is about $100 extra if you get it with a heat pump.

If you don't have access to natural gas, heat pump water will save you a lot in winter.

readams• 2 years ago

I recently had to replace my air conditioner, and I looked into a heat pump, which in theory should be almost the same thing as an air conditioner, but it was so much more expensive than the AC that it was impossible to justify.

photonbeam• 2 years ago

Need to bring down electricity prices for this to be viable in many places

endisneigh• 2 years ago

I looked into heat pumps in north east - didn’t make any sense financially given cost of installation. break even was 10+ years. With that timeline I might as well wait.

ursuscamp• 2 years ago

As always with these things, if they actually increase the value for home-owners, then people will naturally begin to select them on their own over time. However, if they do not increase value, then you will just be hamstringing your state by forcing people to use inferior products.

freetime22• 2 years ago

I hear a lot of horror stories on HN every time the subject of heat pumps comes up. Things like high costs, units not defrosting properly in winter, etc. Most of these stories tend to be for central air conditioning units.

I think that mini-splits could be a much better introduction to heat pumps for a lot of folks. They are cheap, easy to install, and the units in my house have been running 12 years as our only source of heating/cooling with zero maintenance. (The manufacturer recommends replacing after 10 years, but they are still working fine). This is in an area where we get a lot of snow in winter, but temps almost never fall below -10c.

And you can keep your existing furnace as a backup or secondary heat source.

exitzer0• 2 years ago

Mini-splits seem like they are the future for the value conscious and light-weight DIY crowd.

These systems are quite simple in design and implementation while also offering a pretty effective way to control temperature in a zoned way in various parts of the house. They also can be had in 120V sizes making them far easier to accomidate for solar-powered households, etc.

bamboozled4• 2 years ago

I run mine in a similar climate to what you’re describing. Air based, not ground or water. Absolutely zero problems at all.

Either I have some magic heat pump or a lot of the horror stories are overblown or based on using out of date technology.

freetime22• 2 years ago

I also suspect that the heat pumps may be undersized relative to the home’s heating needs, particularly in older homes that are not well insulated.

stainablesteel• 2 years ago

those states specifically? every time they do something in unison it turns out bad imo

JustLurking20222• 2 years ago

The only thing stopping me from buying a great pump is how unreliable the power grid is in my area. Lines are above ground, with numerous trees overhanging them so a snow storm is high risk for a power outage at a time I can least afford it, as road conditions may prevent seeking shelter elsewhere. Conversely, with a furnace and a small generator to run the blower, I can keep heat on through a couple days without power.

bagels19• 2 years ago

We lose gas heat when the power goes out (frequently) here too because the forced induction fans need electricity to run.

JustLurking20222• 2 years ago

Yes, but it only takes a very small generator to power the fans vs. a huge one to power a heat pump.

torpid4• 2 years ago

I live in an old furniture factory converted into lofts. LEED certified of course, with mini splits instead of forced air in each unit. This is in the midwest.

For the past 11 years, every season it's failed to maintain minimum temperature of 68 degrees when it hits below 5 degrees outside, or maintain cooling in the summer. Another adjacent building built 2 years after this one with the exact same setup, same story. The complex had resorted to providing residents temporary space heaters up until this year where now they are prohibited by the city from using it to maintain minimum temps thanks to changing the code.

The sheer amount of costs associated they've dumped into the maintenance of this mini split system, along with the electricity costs (electricity is included with rent) is mind boggling and certainly will offset any gains.

jrockway3• 2 years ago

Emergency heat was under-installed. In the midwest, you have to have it, and it will suck down a ton of electricity for the handful of days a year you need it. Being entirely reliant on mini-splits without resistive emergency heating is a very strange choice, and it's not what heat pump advocates are recommending.

The idea behind heat pumps is to eliminate the need for the natural gas distribution infrastructure. As the infrastructure ages, more pipes will crack (emitting greenhouse gasses, not to mention blowing up), and the cost will go up. Meanwhile, more renewable electricity is coming online, driving the cost down. (It is a much harder problem to replace every gas furnace in the US versus replacing every power plant in the US. That's why the process is starting early with "hey, maybe you don't want to replace your furnace".)

Right now, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to have a heat pump for the average midwestern house unless you have a pretty big solar installation. But in the future, the day will come where "we're going to pipe explosive gas into your house" is simply not done anymore. That will come in the form of gas companies not being able to maintain their infrastructure at the prices they charge, declining fossil fuel reserves, international demand to lower emissions, etc. It's not a crisis today, but today is not a bad day to start looking towards the future.

(I'm looking forward to replacing my gas stove with an induction stove. CO2 levels are through the roof whenever I cook to the point I have to open windows. I don't need to be breathing all of that.)

clhodapp• 2 years ago

Aren't space heaters and emergency heat essentially the same thing? It seems strange for the city to ban space heaters when they really ought not to be worse than any other resistive heater

waynesonfire• 2 years ago

it's not what heat pump advocates are recommending.

sure seems like someone is. could it possibly be the heat pump salesmen? the idea behind heat pumps is to sell heat pumps.

In the event you're cold, maybe you should get a furnace too. But that wasn't part of the sales pitch. Regardless, there are now two appliances you have to maintain. Tell me again how much money this saves?

torpid4• 2 years ago

We have natural gas running into the building but not for the residents. All the first floor commercial tenants, and the hallways have the luxury of forced air. Just the apartment units that are cold.

There's several apartments with broken mini split head units, and last I heard the other adjacent building, they've been working to connect the apartments to the forced air ducts in the hallways they think will take the load off.

justin66• 2 years ago

Being entirely reliant on mini-splits without resistive emergency heating is a very strange choice, and it's not what heat pump advocates are recommending.

If you'd followed the topic long enough you'd know that what the heat pump advocates are recommending is suffering. It sounds like the OP's building has that covered.

worik• 2 years ago

What are "mini splits "?

karaterobot• 2 years ago

A split system has two parts, an indoor air-handling unit (the thing on the wall you point the remote at) and an outdoor compressor, connected to each other with a hose. Mini- because it's small.

Whatarethese• 2 years ago

Sounds like some pretty poor planning. Modern heat pumps including the ones that I'm familiar with work down to around -5F. They aren't very efficient obviously at that low temp but mine also has a resistive backup that fires up if needed.

kccqzy6• 2 years ago

OP said "for 11 years" in their post. So I assume they have a unit that's at least 11 years old. Not really comparable with a modern unit.

icehawk3• 2 years ago

I've had the same issue with an apartment complex, the AC it could never properly maintain <80F during a summer day.

The issue was that builders didn't properly size the AC unit for the amount of heat it needed to reject in a 5th floor apartment when it was 100F outside.

or maintain cooling in the summer

Here's the key phrase.

This isn't an issue with a heat pump. They just undersized the unit.

bamboozled4• 2 years ago

It’s so strange why we’re doing all this now. Why not 20 years ago?

Better late than never but it’s a shame…

kccqzy6• 2 years ago

20 years ago the best heat pumps still weren't good enough for cold days.

bamboozled4• 2 years ago

Do you really think it took twenty years to bring them up to speed ? Honestly ? I’m mean if the interest and investment were there innovation would’ve happened sooner ?

switch007• 2 years ago

I don’t have a good feeling about retrofitted heat pumps at all. The government is pushing too hard.

In the UK we have poor insulation, noise concerns (dwellings very close together), high electricity rates, periods of sub zero temperatures in winter and from what I can gather a lack of skilled fitters in this space.

All together it doesn’t make a convincing argument

Plus all the comments here about broken systems, high electricity costs, inadequate temperatures etc doesn’t fill me with hope

Yes I’ve heard every rebuttal (“but Nordics”, “your fitter was bad”, “you under specced”, “you over specced” etc)

Building code should have solved insulation issues decades ago. Heat Recovery systems etc instead of relying on drilling holes in to window frames as the primary source of ventilation

nelblu• 2 years ago

I have mixed feelings about heat pumps. Where we live winters aren't too harsh - our coldest night would be around -18C and for the most part January/February hovers around -10C at night. Our main heating is oil-based hot water baseboard radiator which I think is THE BEST type of heating solution from comfort standpoint. But few years ago we installed two mini-split heat-pumps which work great and save us a ton of money - BUT they don't heat the house evenly and you must leave all indoor doors open for effective heating. There is an option to convert the main heating to a geothermal heat-pump heating up the water but that is quite an expensive solution right now. For now I am never giving up oil in the foreseeable future.

smcleod2• 2 years ago

-18C is very cold!

bouncing• 2 years ago

FWIW you can also get heat pumps that feed into regular central heating. The split units are nice because you can heat different rooms to your liking but if you prefer a central approach, that’s also possible, just like it is with a furnace.

jcalvinowens3• 2 years ago

I have NEM2 solar, so obviously a heat pump is a big win. But I'm convinced the heat pump I installed a couple years ago would save money even without the solar:

I pay $0.30-$0.40/KWh for electricity, and $0.08/KWh for natural gas ($2.35/therm) *.

My heat pump has a COP of 3.62 when the outdoor temperature is 47F: it uses 1KWh of electricity to move 3.62KWh of heat into my home. The old gas furnace was 80% efficient ("AFUE"): it used 1KWh of gas to dump 0.8KWh of heat into my home.

So, at 47F, as long as the ratio between the cost of electricity and natural gas is less than 4.53x (3.62 / 0.8), the heat pump saves me money. In my case, this means I save money when electricity costs less than $0.37/KWh, which it does almost all the time.

At $0.30/KWh-electricity, I effectively pay $0.083/KWh-heat with the heat pump, a 17% total heating cost savings over the $0.10/KWh-heat the old gas furnace cost.

Heat pumps do become less efficient as it gets colder outside: at an outdoor temperature of 17F, my heat pump COP is only 2.44, which would cost more than my old furnace ($0.123/KWh-heat vs $0.10/KWh-heat).

Extrapolating linearly between the 17F and 47F COPs from the manual (it only gives those two points; this isn't strictly correct, but close enough), the temperature below which my heat pump starts to cost me more money than my old gas furnace is roughly 30F (3.0 COP). In the decade I've lived in the bay area, I've never seen it get that cold, which is why this is such a perfect climate for heat pumps.

* These numbers are from August 2022

vladgur• 2 years ago

Is your $0.30-0.40/kwh rate based on your Solar cost?

The non-solar rates[1] in Bay Area right now range starting from $0.42/kwh on tiered plan which you will blow through if you elect heat-pump heating and going all the way to higher than 50 cents per KWh if you are on one of the Time of US plan.

[1]https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/resid...

As much as i love the efficiencies offered by heat pumps, unless i splurge $10-$20k on a solar system with a battery backup, heat pumps are too expensive to operate with CA electrical rates.

My gas(which i use for heating) during same period cost $2.54 per therm, although i dont know how to compare it to kwh for heating purposes. Update: I just checked my electrical bill for January.

My total cost for generation and delivery of 478 kwh which is what my household used in 32 days, cost me $209 after fees and taxes which makes my rates around 44 cents per kwh on average.

jcalvinowens3• 2 years ago

Is your $0.30-0.40/kwh rate based on your Solar cost?

It's just out of date from the math I did two years ago, I should have mentioned that.

heat pumps are too expensive to operate with CA electrical rates.

It depends on your furnace. Typically it's going to be 80AFUE. $2.54/therm is $0.087/KWh-gas. If you pay $0.42/KWh-electricty, a heat pump with a COP >= 3.7 saves you money. Heat pumps with COPs above that at bay area temperatures are widely available.

If you have a 96AFUE furnace, the necessary COP is 4.6. That's a lot harder to find: I'm no expert on the heat pump market, but it seems like the standard units are mostly 3.5-4.0. I can find mini splits up to 4.5 (like [1]), but they're more expensive.

[1] https://www.homedepot.com/p/GREE-Sapphire-9000-BTU-0-75-Ton-...

bagels19• 2 years ago

Converting from a gas furnace to a heat pump costs tens of thousands of dollars, needs to be factored in as well.

jcalvinowens3• 2 years ago

It should absolutely be under $10K, unless you live in a big house or you need other stuff done.

I don't think it would ever make economical sense to replace a working furnace: my pitch assumes the furnace needs to be replaced, and you're deciding whether to install another furnace or a heat pump.

art_vandalay• 2 years ago

Why is this here?

ab_goat• 2 years ago

I converted my small (~1400 sqft) MA log cabin house at 1500' elevation to a heat pump as main heat source in 2017. We also added a 8kW PV system at the same time.

It was a great choice, and we've been net negative since installation.

We also get a lot of passive solar via low angle sun through large windows. I think passive solar in winter is a completely under-appreciated benefit. On sunny days in winter we do not need heat for ~10 hours of the day.

We supplement our heat with a wood stove in very cold weather (< 20ºF). It's not necessary, but brings a cozy warmth.

rapjr95• 2 years ago

"supercharge the gas-to-electric transition by making it as cheap and easy as possible for their residents to switch."

If you really want to make it super easy to switch, design new heat pumps that people can install themselves without having to pay a contractor to install one. Start with window units that look like air conditioners.

Retric9• 2 years ago

Window heat pumps already exist. Ex: https://www.lg.com/us/air-conditioners/lg-lw1216hr-window-ai... or https://www.compactappliance.com/koldfront-12000-btu-heat-co...

Mini splits are also fairly easy to install and don’t take up a window.

rapjr95• 2 years ago

These units use electric resistance heating, they do not heat using heat pumps. Mini splits require some gas handling equipment like a pressure gauge that most people will not have. I'm talking about something plug-n-play that anyone can install easily without hiring a contractor. There were a few actual heat pump window units in the past but they are no longer sold and they never made many of them to start with (or promoted them much). I think window heat pumps should be ubiquitous. Even if they don't heat/cool the entire house/apartment, they would be a very quick way to reduce some significant use of fossil fuels. For any solution that requires a contractor, the contractor will become a bottleneck to deployment and also raise the cost. If you want a quick global warming benefit enlist the millions of ordinary people to make a difference. Don't wait on the utility companies and government.

rapjr95• 2 years ago

An article about small heat pumps and why they aren't very available yet in the US, it lists the few current models:

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/heat-pumps/renters-you-...

Ones sold in the US won't work below 41F temperature. Two new units that will work at lower temperatures are going to be introduced this year, but will be stupidly expensive.

justinzollars• 2 years ago

Wired is owned by Condé Nast. Condé Nast is owned by Advance Publications. Advance Publications, a private, family-held business that owns and invests in a broad range of media, communications, technology, education, and live entertainment companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, Charter Communications and Reddit.

This is corporate propaganda. Its expensive and won't be adopted. Expensive technology is stupid. People won't adopt it because no one has $100,000 to trench their yard - save a few tech workers in Atherton who wish to virtue signal.

Politicians in these states are virtue signaling.

We need abundant low cost energy. If it has to be carbon free - nuclear is the answer. I personally invest in Uranium because life is a struggle for energy and capital is really a form of stored energy. Nothing is more abundant in potential energy than splitting atoms. Its the answer we will reach.

California is experiencing huge annual increases in energy costs because of virtue signaling. This is more virtue signaling. Yes we can heat our homes with heat pumps. But it will cost 10 times as much money.

creatonez• 2 years ago

Heat pumps represent roughly the same goal as nuclear -- the physics makes it possible for great efficiency gains and just needs engineering & clever management of installation lifecycles to get the cost down.

To be clear, digging up your yard is for highly specialized geothermal heat pump installations. We should be skeptical of these projects because the geologic sites that allow it to be cost effective are quite rare. Normal heat pumps are just an air conditioner with a reverse configuration (not to minimize some of the difficulties of both implementing and then successfully retrofitting this)

ta8645• 2 years ago

Asking this question out of sheer ignorance: Aren't (air-to-air) heat pumps simply bidirectional air-conditioning units? If so, was AC incorrectly maligned for years as being inefficient and expensive?

acomjean• 2 years ago

Yes. We replaced the central air ac this house came with, with a heat pump, so we get heating and cooling.

My understanding is the tech has gotten better and more efficient.

Running heat or ac off electric can be expensive. But climate control is fairly important.

daleswanson• 2 years ago

Heat pumps are air conditioners that are run in reverse, ie, you are air conditioning the outside. Another way to think of any AC/heat pump/refrigerator is as a heat mover, you can move (or pump) heat from one place to another. So in the summer you move heat from inside to outside, and in the winter you move heat from outside to inside.

ACs/heat pumps are over 100% efficient (in terms of joules of heat energy moved/joules of electrical energy consumed), because they aren't turning electrical energy into heat, but rather using electrical energy to move existing heat.

So, a heat pump should always be more efficient than normal resistive electrical heating, because that is just converting just about 100% of the electrical energy into heat energy. Heat pumps may or may not be cheaper than gas/oil/whatever fossil fuel based heat, depending on fuel and electric prices in your area, and that will likely change over time.

The reason that AC is seen as wasteful/inefficient, I think, is just because historically most places people live, you can get away with just opening windows and being a bit uncomfortable during the warmest parts of the year. The opposite isn't really true, it's not really feasible to live without heat in most places people live. Additionally, heating or cooling in any form is just very energy intensive. So, any "optional" form of that can be seen as a luxury.

To be clear, I'm a big fan of AC, and am not suggesting people should go without it if they need it, just trying to answer the question of why it was seen as inefficient when it is technically very efficient.

Animats2• 2 years ago

Are these reversible, as air conditioners? I'd expect so, but the article doesn't say.

vgchh• 2 years ago

I live in the New England and last year got a quote for replacing my existing boiler and furnace with two heat pumps. MassSave offers a good rebate program with $10k rebate. The problem is that the installers have bumped up the prices to the point where even after the rebate it would have costed me $35K. With that kind of price, and high electricity rates, I have no hope of saving money compared to my current setup.

jakubsuchy• 2 years ago

I have heat pumps and currently pay 31c a kWh in New York. Starting to regret them. They need to address electricity prices

pie_flavor• 2 years ago

No. As technologically cool as electrification is, the power occasionally goes out. When that happens, the heat should not. Not everyone has access to a generator, but gas lines don't need that. Same reason we don't electrify toilet flushing despite potential water savings.

saalweachter• 2 years ago

Oil burners and gas furnaces also use electricity, to modulate the fire and circulate the heat. The only thing they don't use electricity for is generating the heat. In a power outage it just sits there, not able to turn on.

simonjgreen• 2 years ago

For those complaining of the cost of electricity vs natural gas, consider if the cost matters when you are comparing to burning something you shouldn’t be burning in the first place. It’s a bit like complaining it’s cheaper to steal food from a store instead of pay for it.

And I know electricity production is not renewable everywhere in the world yet, but at least it’s on a path and possible. Burning natural gas doesn’t have that course.

turing_complete• 2 years ago

Terrible analogy

kenmacd2• 2 years ago

I know electricity production is not renewable everywhere in the world yet, but at least it’s on a path and possible

And somewhat counter-intuitively, even if you are going to consume that natural gas, it still works out better for the power plant to use it to generate electricity that's used to run a heat pump than to burn it directly for heat.

naijaboiler10• 2 years ago

Your response is only true if using electricity to heat is cheaper than using gas to heat. It isn’t for resistive heating. For heat pumps it can, but it has to be high efficiency heat pumps that start efficient even at cold winter temps

GhostVII• 2 years ago

Instead of artificially boosting adoption, why not just price gas and electricity to match the negative externalities, and then people will just naturally choose the most efficient option. If heat pumps are cheaper, people will use them

DeathArrow• 2 years ago

Why fix the price and not let the free market decide?

swimorsinka3• 2 years ago

I live in Colorado, so I'm in one of the colder climates with a decent amount of time spent below freezing each year.

I've had a Mitsubishi Hyper Heat mini-split system with 2 outdoor units and 3 indoor heads for ~7 years now. I'm trying to move houses to get away from it. It's crazy noisy during the winter, the temperature control is whacky, and it's 2-3X the price to run than a gas furnace with electric vs gas rates around here. Not only that, with new 95% or 96% efficient furnaces, I'm not sure heat pumps are any greener.

Don't get me started on the install costs and the fact that your average mini split unit is barely sized to heat a room, let alone a full house. For me, it was better than the electric baseboards I replaced, but I'd still prefer a standard furnace.

I think we need to be very careful forcing everyone to convert to these until the tech is more mature, especially in the Northern states and places like Colorado. I looked on forums recently to see if the tech has evolved in the last 10 years, but many of the recent buyers still had the exact complaints I listed here.

ip263• 2 years ago

Who is your utility? It really shouldn’t be 2-3x much more expensive to operate, but could depend on your rates.

Colorado is actually a relatively heat pump friendly climate; it can reach incredibly low temperatures some winter nights, but once the sun is up it’s back to 20-40F. Compare this to months of continuous deep cold near the Great Lakes.

swimorsinka3• 2 years ago

Xcel Energy. I'm usually at $300/month for electricity from November-March. A comparably sized house with an efficient furnace would be $100/month in this area (or so I've been told). My non-heat electric usage works out to something like $50-$75/ month. Our electric rates average 13-14 cents per KWH, but we just moved to timed metering, so that can vary a lot depending on peak hours.

perryizgr8• 2 years ago

If you need the state to use its authority and other tools at its disposal to accelerate the adoption of a technology, more often than not it means the technology is not good enough. On its own merits, it can't compete, so you need to help it by creating artificial incentives using taxpayer money. Very similar to public transport services or passenger rail. It probably just doesn't make sense.

Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

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