Transparency is great, but let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables. We only have one nice planet to live on, and there are others who want to keep being able to live comfortably on it, I've heard. Oil/gas is a potent drug that is difficult to vane off of.
(Arguably solar/battery has the same problem as oil: let's dig and refine stuff from the ground, and not care about how to take care of the concentrated product once we're done with it. But to a much lesser extent.)
> let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables
Here in the UK, natural gas is used to provide electricity[1], so switching to a heat pump right now isn't likely to help with the environment and (because gas is vastly cheaper per unit energy) nor the utility bill. You might as well spend the capex on the insulation upgrades required for a heat pump anyway, but then stay on gas. The bottleneck seems to be on us weaning ourselves off gas for electricity first.
You get more heat out of using a given quantity of gas to generate electricity which is used to to power a heat pump than you do by burning the gas directly for heat, even when considering generation and transmission losses etc.
Given that even during a time of low output from renewables we still only rely on 53% gas for electricity generation it's still much more beneficial environmentally to use a heat pump.
The monetary cost is another story though, and I agree we do need to work on weaning ourselves off gas.
In areas with moderate outdoor temperatures. Anywhere that the heatpump is going through defrost cycles, that statement is likely false because the COP is likely 1 or less when that starts happening.
Then on the generation side, its worse if the NG generation isn't a modern combined cycle plant. which also tends to nix places with a lot of renewable generation because the NG plants are just peaker gas turbines with much lower efficiency than plants designed for continuous use. So, its all situational, but at the same time if one has the choice for cheap NG using that as a second stage and setting the crossover heatpump temperature at the cost/BTU intersection between the heatpump and NG second stage is a rough approximation of the enviromental costs as well as the actual cost.
> In areas with moderate outdoor temperatures. Anywhere that the heatpump is going through defrost cycles, that statement is likely false because the COP is likely 1 or less when that starts happening.
While heating, That isn't even a particularly efficient unit (EER 9), and not all all unusual for r410 (which is basically banned for new sales in the USA since jan 1st)
But it has a 150W pan heater, but I don't think that is its primary defrost mode, at least its not going to be at 50k btu at those temperatures unless its also really dry. The pan heater is probably to just assure that the coil melt water doesn't build up in the base pan.
For most of the forced air systemms in the USA, the deforst mode is as I mentioned triggered via outdoor coil temp/runtimes and somewhere below an ambient of ~30F, which will be a coil temp of ~20F. The exact algorithm changes from AC unit to unit, but you get say 20 mins of heating, and then it will flip to 5 mins of AC while not running the oudoor fan, where an electric (or maybe gas) furance will heat the indoor air after it flows over the indoor coil which is cooling the air. So its a double wammy, its taking 5+ mins of operation back at an even higher wattage.
AKA the COP goes negative for 5 minuites... Which will pull the SEER numbers down pretty hard, and that unit actually has pretty poor numbers for being variable speed compressors/etc.(edit: should be SCOP, since SEER(2) is just the ac side, that unit looks to be optimized for heating. Either way, depending on which efficienty spec you pay attention to, the 'problem' tends to be that the SCOP/HSPF/etc numbers are calculated using 'moderate' temp data, so below freezing temps are a minority of the calculation)
I poked around a bit looking for the install/service guide for that unit but didn't find one detailing the defrost algorithm.
Not your parent. We had a Fujitsu AOU15RLS3 installed ~10 years ago. 25.3 SEER apparently, EER 13.9. Also r410A. We mainly got it for AC in summer but we'll take the heating of course. Pretty cold winters here.
Minimum Outdoor Temperature for Heating: -5°F
Yeah that's about as cold as it's right now actually. During the day!
We'll definitely use the propane fireplace in winter, especially when the power goes out, which has happened more frequently in recent years, as "proper winter" has given way to more freeze / thaw type stuff with ice storms.
A heat pump can be well over 100% efficient based on the energy input for equivalent resistive / chemical heating. E.g. your heat pump could use 100w of electricity to move 400w worth of heat (if generated resistively) from the outside to inside.
There have been multiple studies done that show that current generation heat pumps are quite a bit more efficient for a given volume of gas to burn it in an electrical generation plant and use a heat pump than it is to burn it in the house / building.
> Here in the UK, natural gas is used to provide electricity[1], so switching to a heat pump right now isn't likely to help with the environment
Efficiency of a typical combi boiler is 90%. The notional efficiency of a heat pump in UK climate will be around 300-400% (or rather 3-4 COP). Even accounting for transmission losses etc. a heat pump powered from gas turbines is better for the environment than a combi boiler.
And that's assuming the grid doesn't become more green over time. It's not exactly uncommon for cold snaps to be windy too, so it could be 80% renewables. Put it this way, a gas boiler is never going to become more green, a heat pump is going to become more green over it's lifespan (especially in the UK which has very aggressive grid decarbonisation plans).
The incentive structure is broken right now. It costs ~4x to operate a heat pump compared to a gas furnace in California right now. Even with very low use and roof top solar my electric bill is $250 a month when, before heat pump it was $80 with heavier use.
Yes... that's because we're talking about externalities that an electorate wants to go away, but doesn't want to actually pay for.
The entire problem is that we aren't paying the actual cost of what we are consuming, and the cost of a product without these externalities is slightly more, but without making people pay for the externalities, it's not marketable.
This is the tragedy of the commons, and it's only a conundrum because the electorate wants to have their cake and eat it too.
I see this argument a lot that "if only they priced in externalities the numbers would come out in favor of electricity" but I haven't seen a calculation of those externalities that isn't effectively just making up a number.
Like I just picked one from a .edu https://scarab.bates.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi and it's just comical with 980% externalities. A number that can be turned into actual policy seems impossible to reach.
It seems like the way forward is just make the thing you want people to do cheaper than the status quo, artificially or not, and let people's economic incentive kick in. But if it's artificial you can't do a California and rug pull net metering.
But the efficiency of a gas power plant is only 20-60%. I'm all for electrification but unless my sums are wonky, a percentage of gas that was used to create electricity for heat pumps would have been better off burnt in a boiler. Over half the UKs power came from gas this last week.
We need to turn back to nuclear until we've figured out grid level storage.
51% renewables as I write this, and it’s only going to increase over time. I bet the people were arguing about the coal generation until we switched that off.
Looking at the prices, and considering heat pumps are 300-400% efficient per kWh it looks like heat pumps may be slightly more expensive, although on a low night tariff it might be closer or cheaper if you consider 8 hours at 7p/kWh.
>the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables
That argument won't work in practice though. You have to make it make financial sense to each and every individual to encourage them to switch, "Do it because it's the right thing to do" is a tall order when people are already on a tight budget.
I'm sure the new US president will assist in this matter.
... for the high income techies that make most of the HN audience.
Ask a normal person how they feel about paying for the heat pumps and having an extra hundred or two on their ongoing heating bill and you may get a different answer. Up to and including them not being able to cut expenses anywhere else to compensate for this.
Agreed, but you only tend to accept that when the other needs in that famous pyramid are taken care of.
Regulation that increases cost of living is only going to cause resentment and we already see where that leads to.
Can't do it with feel good statements, you need the authorities to support/push towards cheaper electricity. Like the Denmark poster said elsewhere on this thread. Is this going to happen globally? I somehow don't think so...
What about in the case of a township offering "natural gas"/methane that would ordinarily be lost to the atmosphere anyway? Isn't it better to burn it rather than leave it as is? Methane is pretty awful stuff in terms of the greenhouse effect.
You can DIY an usable solar setup, complete with battery, for a couple thousand euros, panels and inverters are already quite cheap and the battery prices is coming down.
If you have the space to put it, you can be self-sufficient for most of the year. Equipment is VAT-free in Germany and Austria, too.
The big problem with solar, is that winter days are cold and dark, so when you need heating the most, it's the least available.
Lots of people who are not exactly high income live in the countryside, too..
Additionally, living in shared housing does not disqualify you from having solar panels installed either - if you live in an apartment complex that's a modestly sized 2x2x2 - meaning it has 4x the surface area, and 4x the roof area, the math generally works out the same - for longer houses, it's better, for taller ones its worse, but I think there are a ton of sweet spots, but tall and skinny apartment buildings will lose out.
I think it depends on the country. In some places electricity is cheaper than gas (already) and it starts to go the direction of a no-brainer. But see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
On the other hand, with less demand from part of the population, gas prices should ultimately start to come down a bit; if we look at straight spot prices and pure economic theory.
However, for some reason utilities don't always care about theory. And we probably want to stop using gas and oil in Europe anyway; would be smarter. (We're pretty much literally paying for wars waged against us; now and in future)
So, I'm thinking maybe some sort of subsidized replacement program; perhaps interest-free loans with government backing or some such; which can be paid back with (part of) the efficiency gains?
Exactly that. There was not a single global civilization on Earth that had low per capita energy use. High energy use per capita starts with the price.
I don’t know where this person is, but electricity is wildly expensive in many places. On a cold day, a good heat pump might give you say a COP of 2. So with 5 kW, you get out 10 kW of heat, or 35,000 BTU/hour. In say MA, at $0.25 per kWh retail, that’s $1.25/hour. In Boston, natural gas costs $1.5/therm, which is 100,000 BTUs. With a 96% efficient condensing boiler, you’re looking at $0.55/hour for the same 35,000 BTU/hour output, or less than half the price.
To be comparable to natural gas, you need electricity to be about $0.10 per kWh retail. That’s basically the PNW, the mountain west, and parts of the Deep South.
PG&E is basically California, where it can hit north of $0.50/kWh pretty regularly.
I think it's worth noting in this article too that the author mentions they can now heat and cool parts of their house they weren't previously, so I'm gonna guess their actual usage went up and this is basically surprise for no reason.
If you look at the thermal design of a house, this strategy doesn't make a lot of sense. There's no thermal barriers between rooms, and plenty of airflow if the HVAC circulation is functioning.
After I installed a high-COP, cold-climate heat pump in my Boston area house in 2020, I figured the wintertime running cost was about half again the cost of gas heat. However, the cost was about the same as that of running the somewhat ancient oil furnace the house came with.
Electricity prices in MA are high and are controlled by the marginal cost of gas to run generators, even though we have a significant fraction of renewable, hydro, and nuclear generation. Gas prices are also high because we're at the far end of the east coast natural gas pipeline network.
It's interesting to think about the whole chain -- burning gas in a high efficiency condensing furnace at home approaches 100% efficiency of conversion from chemical to heat energy.
Whereas utility generators that convert heat to electricity are upper bounded by the second law to ~60% efficiency, and then you have transmission losses on top of that. But you win roughly all that lossage back because your heat pump can pump ~3 units of outdoor heat energy into your house for every ~1 unit of electrical energy it consumes.
Add transmission costs and unfortunately heat pumps are more expensive here for now. But CO2 wise of course it still wins because of that renewal and nuclear share I talked about
More importantly, I can also install solar and start getting some energy "for free" (obviously, much more so in the summer than in the winter). And over time of course our renewable share will go up.
You really need to be calculating costs based on seasonal performance (SCOP) which is going to depend on your area. In my climate the worst case COP is around 2, but the seasonal performance of an air-to-water heat pump would be between 3.5 and 5, depending on various factors.
Granted it doesn't make a difference in your example because your gas is cheap at $0.05/kWh, but for me (EU), the price for natural gas would be around $0.11/kWh while electricity is around $0.25/kWh.
> To be comparable to natural gas, you need electricity to be about $0.10 per kWh retail. That’s basically the PNW, the mountain west, and parts of the Deep South.
Shouldn't that also take into account the variations in natural gas prices?
For example electricity in Delaware is more expensive than electricity in Washington, but so is natural gas by about the same percentage. Same when comparing Kansas to Washington.
Using natural gas rates by state from here [1] and electricity rates by state from here [2], here are the states where the ratio of natural gas price to electricity price is higher than that of Oregon and so should be places where you have the best chance to same money switching from gas to electric. The second column is the price ratio.
Georgia 3.3
Oklahoma 3.2
Ohio 3.1
Florida 2.9
West Virginia 2.9
Texas 2.7
Kentucky 2.6
Louisiana 2.5
Delaware 2.4
Missouri 2.3
Wyoming 2.3
Mississippi 2.3
Washington 2.2
Kansas 2.2
North Dakota 2.2
Arizona 2.2
North Carolina 2.1
Arkansas 2.1
Alabama 2.0
South Carolina 1.9
Virginia 1.9
Indiana 1.9
Oregon 1.9
> To be comparable to natural gas, you need electricity to be about $0.10 per kWh retail. That’s basically the PNW, the mountain west, and parts of the Deep South.
I think Chicago is pretty close? Abundant nuclear is great.
In the Seattle area we're up to $0.13-0.14/kWh, but also rarely see the kinds of cold temperatures that lead to low COP figures.
If you look at the PGE bill that is visible before article gets cut off, his electricity use went way up year over year and his natural gas use went down. I'm guessing he got an electric heat pump to replace his gas furnace, and just pays a lot more per kWh for electricity than he was paying per therm or cuft or whatever of natural gas.
Hi there. Author of this post. The content gate is on by default for all of my newsletter content, but I figured out a way to turn it off. You should be able to read the full article now without putting in an email.
Thank you for making your article's text available. This seems to be the key quote people were looking for:
"Many homeowners with heat pumps are likely on the wrong rate plan and paying more than they should. The right plan can make the difference between saving money and spending more money with the exact same equipment."
> Def not making an account on whatever random website heatpumped.org is.
Yet another example of a paywall that can be defeated by disabling JS or using a text mode browser. Those are my second favorite. The most entertaining are the ones that pack the article text into some JSON, and then use JS to generate the readable version. At least then I get a minor puzzle to solve.
Protip - it's often cheaper to heat with burning buffalo chips than electricity even if your heat pump is super efficient. Do a spreadsheet and maybe get some solar panels to feed the new beast. Otherwise you may just need to bask in the glow of self satisfaction and enjoy not poisoning yourself with VOCs and CO.
It gets interesting with batteries, panels, and spot prices. You can eg. offset (some of) your winter costs in summer. And it does depend on your latitude and local market. It's an interesting optimization problem.
Maybe - but then you end up in a situation like author where delivery costs trump generation, because the additional winter capacity does not come from nowhere. And the actual best case is what happens in California - mass deployment of batteries.
Ah, so ultimately the author did end up paying less. The problem was they were on the wrong plan.
And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof.
This varies per house/plot, per contract, and per latitude. But in some situations you can end up at net 0 or better.
>And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof.
Yep, that's the ideal case - given you're in the region where you have reliable sunshine in the winter. It's not the case where I live, when we had total of 7 hours of sun in December 2023.
The idea would be to sell excess power in summer to offset the cost of buying power in winter.
For sure this won't work equally well everywhere, and I'm not sure if this would still work once practically everyone has solar; but right now it's plausible.
Okay, but the "excess power in summer" does not magically materialize in winter. The current systems where it works like that are accounting trick meant to solar power industry.
In reality, we have no realistic mechanism for long-term energy storage on a grid scale - we barely start to breach scale where storage can handle daily fluctuations - like in California. And it's not free - it's being costly affair.
You're looking at this from a very different angle than I am, I think. While I acknowledge that at the system level we still have a way to go, we're already at the point where individual homeowners can sell power in summer and use that money to offset a significant portion of their winter costs - if they play their cards right. This won't solve all our global or national energy challenges, but it can make financial sense at the individual household level.
Personally i save about 75% with my heatpump over my old gas furnace.
We used around 1500m3 - 1800m3 worth of natural gas per year, and for the past couple of years we've used between 4000kWh and 5000kWh on the heat pump per year.
Granted, natural gas is expensive in Denmark, and while electricity is also normally expensive, if you have electrical heating you're excempt from paying taxes on electricity usage above 4000 kWh per year.
Currently, with heat pump and an EV, i'm paying less in electricity per year than i did in natural gas before.
> while electricity is also normally expensive, if you have electrical heating you're excempt from paying taxes on electricity usage above 4000 kWh per year
:) So it can be done with state subsidies, but worldwide even the one time bonuses for EVs are being canceled. States aren't likely to give up on even more revenue.
It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. It’s usually in these country’s national security interests, let alone environmental interest, to push away from gas and oil given that they are often imported from hostile nations. America doesn’t really have that same problem, but Denmark and China do.
If you think of it from the American perspective maybe, but imagine there was a 100% tax on cars, ok, that’s definitely not just a revenue thing anymore but trying to restrict people from driving. Now make that 100% tax less for EVs, then you have more people driving around in EVs.
In America, cars and gasoline are ridiculously cheap, so the EV tax break comes from real tax revenue, rather than a tax designed to actually limit consumption. But in Norway and Denmark, where cars are taxed harshly, I doubt they say much revenue drop at all as EVs probably spurred people to buy cars who otherwise wouldn’t have.
>I like pedantry as much as the next person but that feels like a pointless distinction here.
One is a payment you receive, the other is a bill you don't receive. They can be similar to your bottom line, but they are definitely not the same thing especially if there is a middle area where you wouldn't have paid the extra tax anyway, so you aren't even getting an advantage.
It's still the same concept though. One is a bill you pay and other is free money you receive. There are all sorts of reasons for the bill you pay to be different based upon different criteria, that's not the same as getting free money directly.
Except when they do. They make all sorts of deals with commercial users and such, it's not a big deal to make exceptions for certain levels of home usage.
My average price during 2024, with taxes was DKK 0.88/kWh ($0.$12). This number is biased as it includes EV charging typically done at night where electricity prices are low, and the EV takes up about 40% of our electricity consumption. It is however the average price reported by my smart meter for 2024.
The average price for electricity with taxes was DKK 2.77 / kWh [1] ($0.39)
I spent 4600 kWh on the heat pump during 2024, so DKK 4048 ($562) without taxes and DKK 10.764 ($1497) with taxes.
I haven't checked my COP for 2024, but it's usually around 4, meaning I've gotten 18400 kWh worth of heat from those 4600 kWh electricity.
Natural gas has around 10 kWh worth of heat per m3, and assuming an optimistic efficiency of 90% for the gas burner, that is equivalent to 2044 m3 natural gas.
The average price of natural gas in the first 6 months of 2024 in Denmark was DKK 11.09 [1], so DKK 22.667,96 ($3.152,63) would be the price to produce the same heat with natural gas.
So even if paying the full price for electricity, I would still only be spending less than 50% for heating with the heat pump compared to natural gas.
If you want the masses of households to convert to electricity, then electricity should be dirt cheap (and stay cheap) and any solution should be idiot-proof.
Electricity being cheap gives people the confidence to make the large investments in home optimization (i.e. isolation), a heat pump, EV, etc.
The upper middle class will convert regardless but the big masses need this carrot, else it will all move to a grinding halt. I don't care how we make electricity consistently cheap, I'm just saying its a precondition.
As for simplicity. I mostly live around the working class, not the educated glass. They are unable to grasp an energy contract. There's just too many variables at play. They would struggle to understand the article too.
And that's just the conceptual part. The actual custom implementation part can be complicated as well. People are overwhelmed by it and feel they're running an energy central, watching it like a penny stock trader.
The goal is worthy, but when it's expensive, complicated to understand and hard to use, people will resist it.
I want the nuclear future with practically emission free power that's 'too cheap to meter'. I want to stop caring about SEER ratings and be able to leave windows cracked all seasons to bring in fresh air. I want power companies that keep brush and trees away from their lines.
Until that happens, I'll hang onto my gas furnace and water heaters.
That future will never come. Nuclear power has several fundamental barriers to scaling, and given that the world population is still growing and the demand for energy per person in the developing is growing, those barriers will become an issue.
The biggest barrier in the end is that if we scale up nuclear by an order of magnitude or two, the heat output will cause global warming effects that approach that of CO2 emissions.
There are panels that can radiate the heat directly to space. But then you have the same area usage problems as solar power.
While some nuclear can be good I think the path to abundant energy is solar, geothermal and energy storage. There is more than enough solar and geothermal energy all around us to cover all our needs, and more. Solar will eventually mostly be in forms that also provide useful shading or act as roofs. Agrovoltaics is a field that’s growing very rapidly.
Going back to nuclear, one path to potential extremely abundant and cheap nuclear power is Helions fusion reactor. It should require a lot less cooling for a given output of useful electric power.
The future is now: Modern houses around here often feature a "Ventilation system with heat recovery": You get fresh air that's heated using the air it replaces. And just let the system run 24/7. You can also recover/regulate humidity.
These systems can sometimes be retrofit into older buildings (we're doing that for our 1950s SFH), but the necessary piping is often labor intensive to install and hence prices can be insane (we were able to combine it with other measures and significantly reduced costs - I installed pipes while the roof was removed). It's much easier for new buildings of course.
I've heard about these systems, and they indeed sound really cool. Unfortunately living in a 50 year old home with a patchwork of poorly sized ducts, no attic and a tiny crawlspace this will never be economical for me to do.
Usually heat pumps are installed with a second stage heating. In places with inexpensive gas, or low temperatures that will frequently be a gas furnace rather than resistive coils. Then the calculation is usually to take the electric price and convert it to price/BTU and divide by the heatpump COP at a given outside temperature to get a final system price/BTU and then set the compressor lockout second stage enable point where the gas price/BTU intersects the heatpump price/btu as it falls. Usually one should get this number before installing a new system for both gas and an electric second stage, and depending on system price/etc a decision can then be made about what to actually install.
EX: in places with high electric prices and low NG prices or really cold temps, skipping the heatpump might be the right choice.
OTOH, reddit/etc are full of people asking and finding out that their AC installer didn't do this calculation and just set the lockout temp at 40F or some other back of the hand value they have been using for a few decades.
And yes, its possible to get heatpumps that work well below 35F, but they also have defrost cycles which absolutly destroy their efficiency because the defrost cycle is usually just running the heatpump in AC mode, while using the second stage to keep the air temp from falling in the house.
> The example.{com,org,net} domain was created for this purpose, of a valid but not real domain.
No it wasn't. IANA is hosting example.com and paying for the traffic.
example.com is a writing convention to provide safe examples in documentation. The reason example.com exists, is to make sure documentation writers can use a domain, make it obvious it is an example, and make sure nothing bad comes up with a user happens to click it.
The fact that example.com is a domain with a DNS record is irrelevant to its intended use. IANA is doing the internet a favor by preventing confusion, and it is rude to send them a bunch of traffic.
> While incidental traffic for incorrectly configured applications is expected, please do not design applications that require the example domains to have operating HTTP service.
The real point of this article is how busted the PG&E rate plans are. The author says:
> Do we really need 106 different rate plans in California? Why don’t utilities automatically put people on the cheapest rate plan for them, and reevaluate monthly based on usage?
And I think it makes sense to simplify, but I would bet that the old plans are required to persist for existing customers. That's how the NEM 2 folks are sticking with their previous contracts. It would be more efficient for everyone if PG&E could rationalize these various plans, but to do so, they'd also need to forcibly migrate people to other plans.
Good article though the combination of the clickbait headline and the (later removed) subscription wall makes many of the comments less useful as they are reacting mostly to the headline.
It should in theory be possible to have "no regret" government support for this similar to the price collar used for renewables.
People are not rational economic actors and some kind of insurance for the worst case scenario can help make markets work better.
I think in California they have some kind of support for efficiency improvements which is funded based on evidence of lower bills afterwards so that might also help to incentivized good heat pump installs (including the physical install, the controls, being on the right tariff and promptly fixing any issues that comes up).
Realize the main point was the differing electric and gas costs, but the briefly mentioned behavior change can be a significant cost factor. We went through this with solar, and to a lesser extent, our heat pump water heater. We just don’t have the same gut wrench when the thermostat is low. And, if we are controlling temperature mostly for comfort when it’s expensive, why not dial it in more accurately when the cost doesn’t change much and our state utility tells us our high production burdens them? Increasing kwh cost will eventually fix this. :)
Just had a heat pump installed, cost £7430 with £7500 kindly donated by the government. House was built in the 1930's. No Cavity walls, used most of the old 1980's radiators, replaced 4 out of 18. Kept the hot water tank. Disconnected the mains gas.....
Guess what? Just had our first energy bill - £192 CHEAPER than the previous equivalent quarter last year when we were using our gas boiler. AND, the house is so much more warm. So warm, we now have the system thermostat on its lowest setting. Hot water supply is regular and heats in 30 mins after a couple of (very hot) baths.
So much nonsense and misinformation being spread these days about heat pumps. Gas is dead, don't listen to the politicians and vested interests. Get a reputable firm to install and enjoy a nice warm house.
Hey! Yeah, I figured out how to turn off my content gate last night soon after their comment. Was never my intention to force people to put in their email who didn’t want to and I love seeing a healthy discussion around the content of the article and not just the headline. That gate is on by default on my newsletter platform so I didn’t think much of it when I originally submitted the link but totally understand why some folks were frustrated.
This is both hard to explain to people and hard to get them onboard even once it's been explained and understood.
I think more people should think about things this way: I'm building a house now, so am I betting that in 30 years the price of gas will decrease or increase? Will electricity decrease or increase in price?
Anyone who has seen a graph of solar, battery, wind, and other renewable power grid solution costs should probably be betting that gas will increase in price over time and that electricity should decrease in cost over time, at the very least relative to one another.
I also think that more homeowners and especially builders need to stop choosing the cheapest installation options every single time as a default. I know that building a home is expensive and housing is already at a very high cost, but the US housing market is positively riddled with short term thinking when it comes to homebuilding.
At some point the comfort and safety benefits of a heat pump should be worth it. For example, a fully electrified home essentially eliminates carbon monoxide risk. You also lose the need to pay for two transmission fees (the part of your bill that involves the base service cost and not the metered usage).
While the price of energy production is likely to continue to fall, I fear that this will be completely overshadowed by the necessary investment in the grid. Both energy storage and the need to adapt the grid to the more decentralised nature of renewables could lead to a plateau in end user prices.
> that electricity should decrease in cost over time
On the back of decades of experience - year in, year out the only constant is that utility bills go up. This time it might be different, but I doubt it.
Inflation is a given, but one can increase faster than the other. Electricity can be generated in many different ways, so has flexibility, while natural gas must be piped in.
The flip side of that is that the natural gas infrastructure is pretty well established and isn't likely to increase in cost drastically unless the supply starts running out. If anything we should start using natural gas instead of coal for power plants and raise the residential cost of it while lowering the cost of electricity, but I'm sure there are a bunch of incentives against doing that.
You could say the same thing about electricity infrastructure, pretty well established and unlikely to increase in cost drastically.
Except with electricity, the likelihood of supply running out is a lot lower because it has a diverse set of generation options, which includes natural gas.
On top of that, you can generate your own electricity at home and store it in batteries (obviously, only if you have a roof you own), and the cost of doing that has only been decreasing.
Depends on time and place. I know there's spot price contracts you can get that will -at times of day and year- go negative. That is to say, they'll pay you to use electricity (or alternately, they'll actually charge you if you feed in solar power). At other times of day the price is positive again.
It takes a bit of savvy -and panels, and batteries- to actually make optimal use of this, I figure. That said, prices sometimes going negative, however the circumstances, is definitely a bit of a change.
Heat pumps use electricity. If your electricity costs more than Nat Gas you may not save money. Seems obvious, do we need a whole website to explain it?
So many crazy issues! Why would you put a fence around the heat pump compressor?!
On the east coast, they are great, lowering cost of heating and cooling especially in the shoulder months when you're thinking it's time to turn on your system.
Personally, I prefer them because they keep the air in the room and don't need ducting systems which is something radiator houses might not have. They seem to work well even in our drafty old houses.
In PA gas is extremely cheap so it's hard to beat with an electric system. Author is in CA, so maybe a bit different. Title is clickbait.
Only if you have few years worth of data that shows indoor temperature, hvac runtime and how quickly house gains/looses heat, you can figure out if "amazingly efficient heatpump" will run cheaper than gas furnace.
if you do fresh manual J calculation, with updated design temperature (which in reference manual is still incorrect) and blower door test, than maybe. And it still very theoretical
but realistically, very few people do it when they update hvac system. in fact, most (all?) of hvac installers simply refuse to do it.
Transparency is great, but let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables. We only have one nice planet to live on, and there are others who want to keep being able to live comfortably on it, I've heard. Oil/gas is a potent drug that is difficult to vane off of.
(Arguably solar/battery has the same problem as oil: let's dig and refine stuff from the ground, and not care about how to take care of the concentrated product once we're done with it. But to a much lesser extent.)
> let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables
Here in the UK, natural gas is used to provide electricity[1], so switching to a heat pump right now isn't likely to help with the environment and (because gas is vastly cheaper per unit energy) nor the utility bill. You might as well spend the capex on the insulation upgrades required for a heat pump anyway, but then stay on gas. The bottleneck seems to be on us weaning ourselves off gas for electricity first.
[1] 53% natural gas during the recent cold snap, and only 16% renewables, according to https://news.sky.com/story/britains-gas-storage-levels-conce...
You get more heat out of using a given quantity of gas to generate electricity which is used to to power a heat pump than you do by burning the gas directly for heat, even when considering generation and transmission losses etc.
Given that even during a time of low output from renewables we still only rely on 53% gas for electricity generation it's still much more beneficial environmentally to use a heat pump.
The monetary cost is another story though, and I agree we do need to work on weaning ourselves off gas.
In areas with moderate outdoor temperatures. Anywhere that the heatpump is going through defrost cycles, that statement is likely false because the COP is likely 1 or less when that starts happening.
Then on the generation side, its worse if the NG generation isn't a modern combined cycle plant. which also tends to nix places with a lot of renewable generation because the NG plants are just peaker gas turbines with much lower efficiency than plants designed for continuous use. So, its all situational, but at the same time if one has the choice for cheap NG using that as a second stage and setting the crossover heatpump temperature at the cost/BTU intersection between the heatpump and NG second stage is a rough approximation of the enviromental costs as well as the actual cost.
> In areas with moderate outdoor temperatures. Anywhere that the heatpump is going through defrost cycles, that statement is likely false because the COP is likely 1 or less when that starts happening.
Modern heat pumps have a COP close to 2 at 5F/-15C while still delivering 50k+ BTUs. Here's one example: https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product/68628/7/25000/95/7500/0///0
While heating, That isn't even a particularly efficient unit (EER 9), and not all all unusual for r410 (which is basically banned for new sales in the USA since jan 1st)
But it has a 150W pan heater, but I don't think that is its primary defrost mode, at least its not going to be at 50k btu at those temperatures unless its also really dry. The pan heater is probably to just assure that the coil melt water doesn't build up in the base pan.
For most of the forced air systemms in the USA, the deforst mode is as I mentioned triggered via outdoor coil temp/runtimes and somewhere below an ambient of ~30F, which will be a coil temp of ~20F. The exact algorithm changes from AC unit to unit, but you get say 20 mins of heating, and then it will flip to 5 mins of AC while not running the oudoor fan, where an electric (or maybe gas) furance will heat the indoor air after it flows over the indoor coil which is cooling the air. So its a double wammy, its taking 5+ mins of operation back at an even higher wattage.
AKA the COP goes negative for 5 minuites... Which will pull the SEER numbers down pretty hard, and that unit actually has pretty poor numbers for being variable speed compressors/etc.(edit: should be SCOP, since SEER(2) is just the ac side, that unit looks to be optimized for heating. Either way, depending on which efficienty spec you pay attention to, the 'problem' tends to be that the SCOP/HSPF/etc numbers are calculated using 'moderate' temp data, so below freezing temps are a minority of the calculation)
I poked around a bit looking for the install/service guide for that unit but didn't find one detailing the defrost algorithm.
Not your parent. We had a Fujitsu AOU15RLS3 installed ~10 years ago. 25.3 SEER apparently, EER 13.9. Also r410A. We mainly got it for AC in summer but we'll take the heating of course. Pretty cold winters here.
Yeah that's about as cold as it's right now actually. During the day!We'll definitely use the propane fireplace in winter, especially when the power goes out, which has happened more frequently in recent years, as "proper winter" has given way to more freeze / thaw type stuff with ice storms.
Can you elaborate on the statement in the first para? Is it a guess, calculation, or there are real-world data?
A heat pump can be well over 100% efficient based on the energy input for equivalent resistive / chemical heating. E.g. your heat pump could use 100w of electricity to move 400w worth of heat (if generated resistively) from the outside to inside.
There have been multiple studies done that show that current generation heat pumps are quite a bit more efficient for a given volume of gas to burn it in an electrical generation plant and use a heat pump than it is to burn it in the house / building.
> Here in the UK, natural gas is used to provide electricity[1], so switching to a heat pump right now isn't likely to help with the environment
Efficiency of a typical combi boiler is 90%. The notional efficiency of a heat pump in UK climate will be around 300-400% (or rather 3-4 COP). Even accounting for transmission losses etc. a heat pump powered from gas turbines is better for the environment than a combi boiler.
And that's assuming the grid doesn't become more green over time. It's not exactly uncommon for cold snaps to be windy too, so it could be 80% renewables. Put it this way, a gas boiler is never going to become more green, a heat pump is going to become more green over it's lifespan (especially in the UK which has very aggressive grid decarbonisation plans).
The incentive structure is broken right now. It costs ~4x to operate a heat pump compared to a gas furnace in California right now. Even with very low use and roof top solar my electric bill is $250 a month when, before heat pump it was $80 with heavier use.
Yes... that's because we're talking about externalities that an electorate wants to go away, but doesn't want to actually pay for.
The entire problem is that we aren't paying the actual cost of what we are consuming, and the cost of a product without these externalities is slightly more, but without making people pay for the externalities, it's not marketable.
This is the tragedy of the commons, and it's only a conundrum because the electorate wants to have their cake and eat it too.
I see this argument a lot that "if only they priced in externalities the numbers would come out in favor of electricity" but I haven't seen a calculation of those externalities that isn't effectively just making up a number.
Like I just picked one from a .edu https://scarab.bates.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi and it's just comical with 980% externalities. A number that can be turned into actual policy seems impossible to reach.
It seems like the way forward is just make the thing you want people to do cheaper than the status quo, artificially or not, and let people's economic incentive kick in. But if it's artificial you can't do a California and rug pull net metering.
But the efficiency of a gas power plant is only 20-60%. I'm all for electrification but unless my sums are wonky, a percentage of gas that was used to create electricity for heat pumps would have been better off burnt in a boiler. Over half the UKs power came from gas this last week.
We need to turn back to nuclear until we've figured out grid level storage.
> Here in the UK, natural gas is used to provide electricity[1], so switching to a heat pump right now isn't likely to help with the environment
You can view the live production here:
https://electricityproduction.uk
51% renewables as I write this, and it’s only going to increase over time. I bet the people were arguing about the coal generation until we switched that off.
> because gas is vastly cheaper per unit energy
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/energy-price-cap
Looking at the prices, and considering heat pumps are 300-400% efficient per kWh it looks like heat pumps may be slightly more expensive, although on a low night tariff it might be closer or cheaper if you consider 8 hours at 7p/kWh.
Great comment, from a carbon perspective it’s even better than 51% .
16% is nuclear, and 19% is imported from France which is about 60% nuclear.
Right now only 10-12% of our electricity is coming from burning gas.
>the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables
That argument won't work in practice though. You have to make it make financial sense to each and every individual to encourage them to switch, "Do it because it's the right thing to do" is a tall order when people are already on a tight budget.
I'm sure the new US president will assist in this matter.
> to each and every individual
Not to each one. I'm willing to pay more (within my means and within reason) if it pollutes less and/or produces less CO2.
> that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables.
You mean using energy sources that have a much better / kwh performance (both in terms of reduction of ecological footprint and price)?
It's not only potent, but fantastically cost-effective. There is a reason it's popular, or so I've heard.
It's not so cost effective when you include the future costs.
But like a payday loan, it's hard for most of us to think about those future costs until they're being collected.
That sounds good and altruistic...
... for the high income techies that make most of the HN audience.
Ask a normal person how they feel about paying for the heat pumps and having an extra hundred or two on their ongoing heating bill and you may get a different answer. Up to and including them not being able to cut expenses anywhere else to compensate for this.
Yes but... the externalities are really expensive, and are going to be paid by somebody. It's a hidden cost
Agreed, but you only tend to accept that when the other needs in that famous pyramid are taken care of.
Regulation that increases cost of living is only going to cause resentment and we already see where that leads to.
Can't do it with feel good statements, you need the authorities to support/push towards cheaper electricity. Like the Denmark poster said elsewhere on this thread. Is this going to happen globally? I somehow don't think so...
China is pushing hard; EU is pushing less hard but a little; only the US (says) they're going to lag behind these next few years.
America has vast natural gas reserves there's no need to invest.
If your country has to import oil and gas there is a financial reason to change.
What about in the case of a township offering "natural gas"/methane that would ordinarily be lost to the atmosphere anyway? Isn't it better to burn it rather than leave it as is? Methane is pretty awful stuff in terms of the greenhouse effect.
You can DIY an usable solar setup, complete with battery, for a couple thousand euros, panels and inverters are already quite cheap and the battery prices is coming down.
If you have the space to put it, you can be self-sufficient for most of the year. Equipment is VAT-free in Germany and Austria, too.
The big problem with solar, is that winter days are cold and dark, so when you need heating the most, it's the least available.
> If you have the space to put it
High income people living in detached houses again...
Lots of people who are not exactly high income live in the countryside, too..
Additionally, living in shared housing does not disqualify you from having solar panels installed either - if you live in an apartment complex that's a modestly sized 2x2x2 - meaning it has 4x the surface area, and 4x the roof area, the math generally works out the same - for longer houses, it's better, for taller ones its worse, but I think there are a ton of sweet spots, but tall and skinny apartment buildings will lose out.
I think it depends on the country. In some places electricity is cheaper than gas (already) and it starts to go the direction of a no-brainer. But see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
On the other hand, with less demand from part of the population, gas prices should ultimately start to come down a bit; if we look at straight spot prices and pure economic theory.
However, for some reason utilities don't always care about theory. And we probably want to stop using gas and oil in Europe anyway; would be smarter. (We're pretty much literally paying for wars waged against us; now and in future)
So, I'm thinking maybe some sort of subsidized replacement program; perhaps interest-free loans with government backing or some such; which can be paid back with (part of) the efficiency gains?
Exactly that. There was not a single global civilization on Earth that had low per capita energy use. High energy use per capita starts with the price.
I don’t know where this person is, but electricity is wildly expensive in many places. On a cold day, a good heat pump might give you say a COP of 2. So with 5 kW, you get out 10 kW of heat, or 35,000 BTU/hour. In say MA, at $0.25 per kWh retail, that’s $1.25/hour. In Boston, natural gas costs $1.5/therm, which is 100,000 BTUs. With a 96% efficient condensing boiler, you’re looking at $0.55/hour for the same 35,000 BTU/hour output, or less than half the price.
To be comparable to natural gas, you need electricity to be about $0.10 per kWh retail. That’s basically the PNW, the mountain west, and parts of the Deep South.
PG&E is basically California, where it can hit north of $0.50/kWh pretty regularly.
I think it's worth noting in this article too that the author mentions they can now heat and cool parts of their house they weren't previously, so I'm gonna guess their actual usage went up and this is basically surprise for no reason.
Cost of 1 therm from pg&e is $2.66 so variable speed heat pump can still be cheaper
If you look at the thermal design of a house, this strategy doesn't make a lot of sense. There's no thermal barriers between rooms, and plenty of airflow if the HVAC circulation is functioning.
After I installed a high-COP, cold-climate heat pump in my Boston area house in 2020, I figured the wintertime running cost was about half again the cost of gas heat. However, the cost was about the same as that of running the somewhat ancient oil furnace the house came with.
Electricity prices in MA are high and are controlled by the marginal cost of gas to run generators, even though we have a significant fraction of renewable, hydro, and nuclear generation. Gas prices are also high because we're at the far end of the east coast natural gas pipeline network.
It's interesting to think about the whole chain -- burning gas in a high efficiency condensing furnace at home approaches 100% efficiency of conversion from chemical to heat energy.
Whereas utility generators that convert heat to electricity are upper bounded by the second law to ~60% efficiency, and then you have transmission losses on top of that. But you win roughly all that lossage back because your heat pump can pump ~3 units of outdoor heat energy into your house for every ~1 unit of electrical energy it consumes.
Add transmission costs and unfortunately heat pumps are more expensive here for now. But CO2 wise of course it still wins because of that renewal and nuclear share I talked about
More importantly, I can also install solar and start getting some energy "for free" (obviously, much more so in the summer than in the winter). And over time of course our renewable share will go up.
You really need to be calculating costs based on seasonal performance (SCOP) which is going to depend on your area. In my climate the worst case COP is around 2, but the seasonal performance of an air-to-water heat pump would be between 3.5 and 5, depending on various factors.
Granted it doesn't make a difference in your example because your gas is cheap at $0.05/kWh, but for me (EU), the price for natural gas would be around $0.11/kWh while electricity is around $0.25/kWh.
> To be comparable to natural gas, you need electricity to be about $0.10 per kWh retail. That’s basically the PNW, the mountain west, and parts of the Deep South.
Shouldn't that also take into account the variations in natural gas prices?
For example electricity in Delaware is more expensive than electricity in Washington, but so is natural gas by about the same percentage. Same when comparing Kansas to Washington.
Using natural gas rates by state from here [1] and electricity rates by state from here [2], here are the states where the ratio of natural gas price to electricity price is higher than that of Oregon and so should be places where you have the best chance to same money switching from gas to electric. The second column is the price ratio.
[1] https://www.chooseenergy.com/data-center/natural-gas-rates-b...[2] https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
> To be comparable to natural gas, you need electricity to be about $0.10 per kWh retail. That’s basically the PNW, the mountain west, and parts of the Deep South.
I think Chicago is pretty close? Abundant nuclear is great.
In the Seattle area we're up to $0.13-0.14/kWh, but also rarely see the kinds of cold temperatures that lead to low COP figures.
Def not making an account on whatever random website heatpumped.org is. Owner of the site needs to stop pretending their the WSJ.
Anyways the phrasing of the non-blocked article seems to imply the title is a red herring, and their bill actually went down. I'll never know though.
If you look at the PGE bill that is visible before article gets cut off, his electricity use went way up year over year and his natural gas use went down. I'm guessing he got an electric heat pump to replace his gas furnace, and just pays a lot more per kWh for electricity than he was paying per therm or cuft or whatever of natural gas.
He was out of town for 3 weeks the year before. He then compared to previous years and his use is way down.
He said this himself in the article.
(when I made the comment above, most of the article was behind a subscribe-to-view wall.)
Hi there. Author of this post. The content gate is on by default for all of my newsletter content, but I figured out a way to turn it off. You should be able to read the full article now without putting in an email.
I appreciate it. The article is really well thought out, it looks like it took some real research & effort. Bookmarked the domain.
Thank you for making your article's text available. This seems to be the key quote people were looking for:
"Many homeowners with heat pumps are likely on the wrong rate plan and paying more than they should. The right plan can make the difference between saving money and spending more money with the exact same equipment."
> Def not making an account on whatever random website heatpumped.org is.
Yet another example of a paywall that can be defeated by disabling JS or using a text mode browser. Those are my second favorite. The most entertaining are the ones that pack the article text into some JSON, and then use JS to generate the readable version. At least then I get a minor puzzle to solve.
Protip - it's often cheaper to heat with burning buffalo chips than electricity even if your heat pump is super efficient. Do a spreadsheet and maybe get some solar panels to feed the new beast. Otherwise you may just need to bask in the glow of self satisfaction and enjoy not poisoning yourself with VOCs and CO.
I'm not subscribing to your newsletter...
In many places of the world winter means no or barely any sun. Panels won't help.
It gets interesting with batteries, panels, and spot prices. You can eg. offset (some of) your winter costs in summer. And it does depend on your latitude and local market. It's an interesting optimization problem.
Maybe - but then you end up in a situation like author where delivery costs trump generation, because the additional winter capacity does not come from nowhere. And the actual best case is what happens in California - mass deployment of batteries.
Ah, so ultimately the author did end up paying less. The problem was they were on the wrong plan.
And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof.
This varies per house/plot, per contract, and per latitude. But in some situations you can end up at net 0 or better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building
>And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof.
Yep, that's the ideal case - given you're in the region where you have reliable sunshine in the winter. It's not the case where I live, when we had total of 7 hours of sun in December 2023.
The idea would be to sell excess power in summer to offset the cost of buying power in winter.
For sure this won't work equally well everywhere, and I'm not sure if this would still work once practically everyone has solar; but right now it's plausible.
Okay, but the "excess power in summer" does not magically materialize in winter. The current systems where it works like that are accounting trick meant to solar power industry.
In reality, we have no realistic mechanism for long-term energy storage on a grid scale - we barely start to breach scale where storage can handle daily fluctuations - like in California. And it's not free - it's being costly affair.
You're looking at this from a very different angle than I am, I think. While I acknowledge that at the system level we still have a way to go, we're already at the point where individual homeowners can sell power in summer and use that money to offset a significant portion of their winter costs - if they play their cards right. This won't solve all our global or national energy challenges, but it can make financial sense at the individual household level.
7 hours of sun in a month? How do you survive? I think I'd go crazy.
We don't, we go crazy.
>In many places of the world winter means no or barely any sun. Panels won't help.
Good thing those places aren't where the vast majority of the population is located. Your point is basically unrelated to the conversation being had.
Personally i save about 75% with my heatpump over my old gas furnace.
We used around 1500m3 - 1800m3 worth of natural gas per year, and for the past couple of years we've used between 4000kWh and 5000kWh on the heat pump per year.
Granted, natural gas is expensive in Denmark, and while electricity is also normally expensive, if you have electrical heating you're excempt from paying taxes on electricity usage above 4000 kWh per year.
Currently, with heat pump and an EV, i'm paying less in electricity per year than i did in natural gas before.
> while electricity is also normally expensive, if you have electrical heating you're excempt from paying taxes on electricity usage above 4000 kWh per year
:) So it can be done with state subsidies, but worldwide even the one time bonuses for EVs are being canceled. States aren't likely to give up on even more revenue.
It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. It’s usually in these country’s national security interests, let alone environmental interest, to push away from gas and oil given that they are often imported from hostile nations. America doesn’t really have that same problem, but Denmark and China do.
> It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation.
I like pedantry as much as the next person but that feels like a pointless distinction here.
If you think of it from the American perspective maybe, but imagine there was a 100% tax on cars, ok, that’s definitely not just a revenue thing anymore but trying to restrict people from driving. Now make that 100% tax less for EVs, then you have more people driving around in EVs.
In America, cars and gasoline are ridiculously cheap, so the EV tax break comes from real tax revenue, rather than a tax designed to actually limit consumption. But in Norway and Denmark, where cars are taxed harshly, I doubt they say much revenue drop at all as EVs probably spurred people to buy cars who otherwise wouldn’t have.
>I like pedantry as much as the next person but that feels like a pointless distinction here.
One is a payment you receive, the other is a bill you don't receive. They can be similar to your bottom line, but they are definitely not the same thing especially if there is a middle area where you wouldn't have paid the extra tax anyway, so you aren't even getting an advantage.
I don't think the OP is talking about an income like tax but a tax built into every kWh you pay for...
It's still the same concept though. One is a bill you pay and other is free money you receive. There are all sorts of reasons for the bill you pay to be different based upon different criteria, that's not the same as getting free money directly.
Excise taxes on end-user energy don't tend to have exceptions...
Except when they do. They make all sorts of deals with commercial users and such, it's not a big deal to make exceptions for certain levels of home usage.
> It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation.
These are exactly the same thing in the end unless a subsidies were to exceed tax revenue.
From government tax accounting perspective tax breaks are same thing as subsidies, lost revenue.
What if exemption wasn't in place?
My average price during 2024, with taxes was DKK 0.88/kWh ($0.$12). This number is biased as it includes EV charging typically done at night where electricity prices are low, and the EV takes up about 40% of our electricity consumption. It is however the average price reported by my smart meter for 2024.
The average price for electricity with taxes was DKK 2.77 / kWh [1] ($0.39)
I spent 4600 kWh on the heat pump during 2024, so DKK 4048 ($562) without taxes and DKK 10.764 ($1497) with taxes.
I haven't checked my COP for 2024, but it's usually around 4, meaning I've gotten 18400 kWh worth of heat from those 4600 kWh electricity.
Natural gas has around 10 kWh worth of heat per m3, and assuming an optimistic efficiency of 90% for the gas burner, that is equivalent to 2044 m3 natural gas.
The average price of natural gas in the first 6 months of 2024 in Denmark was DKK 11.09 [1], so DKK 22.667,96 ($3.152,63) would be the price to produce the same heat with natural gas.
So even if paying the full price for electricity, I would still only be spending less than 50% for heating with the heat pump compared to natural gas.
[1]: https://www.dst.dk/en/Statistik/emner/miljoe-og-energi/energ...
Commenting from the Netherlands. My take is this:
If you want the masses of households to convert to electricity, then electricity should be dirt cheap (and stay cheap) and any solution should be idiot-proof.
Electricity being cheap gives people the confidence to make the large investments in home optimization (i.e. isolation), a heat pump, EV, etc.
The upper middle class will convert regardless but the big masses need this carrot, else it will all move to a grinding halt. I don't care how we make electricity consistently cheap, I'm just saying its a precondition.
As for simplicity. I mostly live around the working class, not the educated glass. They are unable to grasp an energy contract. There's just too many variables at play. They would struggle to understand the article too.
And that's just the conceptual part. The actual custom implementation part can be complicated as well. People are overwhelmed by it and feel they're running an energy central, watching it like a penny stock trader.
The goal is worthy, but when it's expensive, complicated to understand and hard to use, people will resist it.
I want the nuclear future with practically emission free power that's 'too cheap to meter'. I want to stop caring about SEER ratings and be able to leave windows cracked all seasons to bring in fresh air. I want power companies that keep brush and trees away from their lines.
Until that happens, I'll hang onto my gas furnace and water heaters.
That future will never come. Nuclear power has several fundamental barriers to scaling, and given that the world population is still growing and the demand for energy per person in the developing is growing, those barriers will become an issue.
The biggest barrier in the end is that if we scale up nuclear by an order of magnitude or two, the heat output will cause global warming effects that approach that of CO2 emissions.
There are panels that can radiate the heat directly to space. But then you have the same area usage problems as solar power.
While some nuclear can be good I think the path to abundant energy is solar, geothermal and energy storage. There is more than enough solar and geothermal energy all around us to cover all our needs, and more. Solar will eventually mostly be in forms that also provide useful shading or act as roofs. Agrovoltaics is a field that’s growing very rapidly.
Going back to nuclear, one path to potential extremely abundant and cheap nuclear power is Helions fusion reactor. It should require a lot less cooling for a given output of useful electric power.
The future is now: Modern houses around here often feature a "Ventilation system with heat recovery": You get fresh air that's heated using the air it replaces. And just let the system run 24/7. You can also recover/regulate humidity.
These systems can sometimes be retrofit into older buildings (we're doing that for our 1950s SFH), but the necessary piping is often labor intensive to install and hence prices can be insane (we were able to combine it with other measures and significantly reduced costs - I installed pipes while the roof was removed). It's much easier for new buildings of course.
I've heard about these systems, and they indeed sound really cool. Unfortunately living in a 50 year old home with a patchwork of poorly sized ducts, no attic and a tiny crawlspace this will never be economical for me to do.
One of the most depressing opinions on the Internet is "pro-nuclear" folks who are actually pro-fossil fuels.
Usually heat pumps are installed with a second stage heating. In places with inexpensive gas, or low temperatures that will frequently be a gas furnace rather than resistive coils. Then the calculation is usually to take the electric price and convert it to price/BTU and divide by the heatpump COP at a given outside temperature to get a final system price/BTU and then set the compressor lockout second stage enable point where the gas price/BTU intersects the heatpump price/btu as it falls. Usually one should get this number before installing a new system for both gas and an electric second stage, and depending on system price/etc a decision can then be made about what to actually install.
EX: in places with high electric prices and low NG prices or really cold temps, skipping the heatpump might be the right choice.
OTOH, reddit/etc are full of people asking and finding out that their AC installer didn't do this calculation and just set the lockout temp at 40F or some other back of the hand value they have been using for a few decades.
And yes, its possible to get heatpumps that work well below 35F, but they also have defrost cycles which absolutly destroy their efficiency because the defrost cycle is usually just running the heatpump in AC mode, while using the second stage to keep the air temp from falling in the house.
Protip. Just insert any valid email into subscription dialog and it instantly unlocks. No need to register.
Great tip indeed.
However, please don't use anybody else's email. (No @example.com) Preferably use the domain of the website itself, or of a SEO spam website.
I use emails of politicians I don't like.
+1
>(No @example.com)
The example.{com,org,net} domain was created for this purpose, of a valid but not real domain.
> The example.{com,org,net} domain was created for this purpose, of a valid but not real domain.
No it wasn't. IANA is hosting example.com and paying for the traffic.
example.com is a writing convention to provide safe examples in documentation. The reason example.com exists, is to make sure documentation writers can use a domain, make it obvious it is an example, and make sure nothing bad comes up with a user happens to click it.
The fact that example.com is a domain with a DNS record is irrelevant to its intended use. IANA is doing the internet a favor by preventing confusion, and it is rude to send them a bunch of traffic.
See https://www.iana.org/help/example-domains
> While incidental traffic for incorrectly configured applications is expected, please do not design applications that require the example domains to have operating HTTP service.
According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com
> for documentation purposes
You can safely insert something like dnkejdjd@vwvsjs.co
Great idea with spamming sites hehe
The real point of this article is how busted the PG&E rate plans are. The author says:
> Do we really need 106 different rate plans in California? Why don’t utilities automatically put people on the cheapest rate plan for them, and reevaluate monthly based on usage?
And I think it makes sense to simplify, but I would bet that the old plans are required to persist for existing customers. That's how the NEM 2 folks are sticking with their previous contracts. It would be more efficient for everyone if PG&E could rationalize these various plans, but to do so, they'd also need to forcibly migrate people to other plans.
Good article though the combination of the clickbait headline and the (later removed) subscription wall makes many of the comments less useful as they are reacting mostly to the headline.
It should in theory be possible to have "no regret" government support for this similar to the price collar used for renewables.
People are not rational economic actors and some kind of insurance for the worst case scenario can help make markets work better.
I think in California they have some kind of support for efficiency improvements which is funded based on evidence of lower bills afterwards so that might also help to incentivized good heat pump installs (including the physical install, the controls, being on the right tariff and promptly fixing any issues that comes up).
I'm in Kitchener Ontario Canada, I'm a licensed gas and refrigeration tech
I've pulled my gas meter off my house and I'm exclusively heat pump now.
I'm saving money, absolutely.
Canada has cold ambient temps and cheap natural gas, and I'm still saving money, so I don't know how you aren't
I'm paying 10 cent pretty kwh electricity, gas here is 15 cents per cubic meter
Realize the main point was the differing electric and gas costs, but the briefly mentioned behavior change can be a significant cost factor. We went through this with solar, and to a lesser extent, our heat pump water heater. We just don’t have the same gut wrench when the thermostat is low. And, if we are controlling temperature mostly for comfort when it’s expensive, why not dial it in more accurately when the cost doesn’t change much and our state utility tells us our high production burdens them? Increasing kwh cost will eventually fix this. :)
Just had a heat pump installed, cost £7430 with £7500 kindly donated by the government. House was built in the 1930's. No Cavity walls, used most of the old 1980's radiators, replaced 4 out of 18. Kept the hot water tank. Disconnected the mains gas..... Guess what? Just had our first energy bill - £192 CHEAPER than the previous equivalent quarter last year when we were using our gas boiler. AND, the house is so much more warm. So warm, we now have the system thermostat on its lowest setting. Hot water supply is regular and heats in 30 mins after a couple of (very hot) baths.
So much nonsense and misinformation being spread these days about heat pumps. Gas is dead, don't listen to the politicians and vested interests. Get a reputable firm to install and enjoy a nice warm house.
I wanted to read this, but not enough to make an account. Whoever is publishing this blog should consider whether a $0 paywall is worthwhile.
Hey, author of the post here. I can understand your sentiment. Here's a PDF of the article if you don't want to put in your email: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17z3QUpPcWH0HH-QwI8agZIniesI...
You can enter any email and the article instantly unlocks. It doesn’t seem to be an account.
Interesting; by the time i read this i didn't get asked for an email. 7 hours later than your post.
The author has seen the light? :)
Hey! Yeah, I figured out how to turn off my content gate last night soon after their comment. Was never my intention to force people to put in their email who didn’t want to and I love seeing a healthy discussion around the content of the article and not just the headline. That gate is on by default on my newsletter platform so I didn’t think much of it when I originally submitted the link but totally understand why some folks were frustrated.
Use a temp throwaway email service such as mailinator.com
Works most of the time.
I usually put in postmaster@<yourdomain> (e.g. postmaster@heatpumped.org). Eat your own spam, idiot.
I usually put in <ceo name>@<major ad / search / social media platform>
Never thought of that, now it will be the first thing I'll try.
Mailinator is great if the website wants you to click a link or enter an OTP to verify whatever it is that they verify.
You're not alone with this one, don't need another potential source of spam.
This is both hard to explain to people and hard to get them onboard even once it's been explained and understood.
I think more people should think about things this way: I'm building a house now, so am I betting that in 30 years the price of gas will decrease or increase? Will electricity decrease or increase in price?
Anyone who has seen a graph of solar, battery, wind, and other renewable power grid solution costs should probably be betting that gas will increase in price over time and that electricity should decrease in cost over time, at the very least relative to one another.
I also think that more homeowners and especially builders need to stop choosing the cheapest installation options every single time as a default. I know that building a home is expensive and housing is already at a very high cost, but the US housing market is positively riddled with short term thinking when it comes to homebuilding.
At some point the comfort and safety benefits of a heat pump should be worth it. For example, a fully electrified home essentially eliminates carbon monoxide risk. You also lose the need to pay for two transmission fees (the part of your bill that involves the base service cost and not the metered usage).
While the price of energy production is likely to continue to fall, I fear that this will be completely overshadowed by the necessary investment in the grid. Both energy storage and the need to adapt the grid to the more decentralised nature of renewables could lead to a plateau in end user prices.
> that electricity should decrease in cost over time
On the back of decades of experience - year in, year out the only constant is that utility bills go up. This time it might be different, but I doubt it.
Inflation is a given, but one can increase faster than the other. Electricity can be generated in many different ways, so has flexibility, while natural gas must be piped in.
The flip side of that is that the natural gas infrastructure is pretty well established and isn't likely to increase in cost drastically unless the supply starts running out. If anything we should start using natural gas instead of coal for power plants and raise the residential cost of it while lowering the cost of electricity, but I'm sure there are a bunch of incentives against doing that.
You could say the same thing about electricity infrastructure, pretty well established and unlikely to increase in cost drastically.
Except with electricity, the likelihood of supply running out is a lot lower because it has a diverse set of generation options, which includes natural gas.
On top of that, you can generate your own electricity at home and store it in batteries (obviously, only if you have a roof you own), and the cost of doing that has only been decreasing.
Depends on time and place. I know there's spot price contracts you can get that will -at times of day and year- go negative. That is to say, they'll pay you to use electricity (or alternately, they'll actually charge you if you feed in solar power). At other times of day the price is positive again.
It takes a bit of savvy -and panels, and batteries- to actually make optimal use of this, I figure. That said, prices sometimes going negative, however the circumstances, is definitely a bit of a change.
> I think more people should think about things this way:
Seeing the monstrosities people build I think we have a long way to go
Heat pumps use electricity. If your electricity costs more than Nat Gas you may not save money. Seems obvious, do we need a whole website to explain it?
Next step: photovoltaic
It's not too difficult to generate your own electricity, I don't know anyone who has a natural gas production facility on site at their home.
So many crazy issues! Why would you put a fence around the heat pump compressor?!
On the east coast, they are great, lowering cost of heating and cooling especially in the shoulder months when you're thinking it's time to turn on your system.
Personally, I prefer them because they keep the air in the room and don't need ducting systems which is something radiator houses might not have. They seem to work well even in our drafty old houses.
In PA gas is extremely cheap so it's hard to beat with an electric system. Author is in CA, so maybe a bit different. Title is clickbait.
Only if you have few years worth of data that shows indoor temperature, hvac runtime and how quickly house gains/looses heat, you can figure out if "amazingly efficient heatpump" will run cheaper than gas furnace.
Unless electricity is seriously cheap or free
You can energy model it if you have the time.
if you do fresh manual J calculation, with updated design temperature (which in reference manual is still incorrect) and blower door test, than maybe. And it still very theoretical
but realistically, very few people do it when they update hvac system. in fact, most (all?) of hvac installers simply refuse to do it.
ps. manual j actually won't give you runtime i think. only needed capacity.