(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.)
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...
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.
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.
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
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.
Minimum Outdoor Temperature for Heating: -5°F
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.
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.
It was from a "what is the best way to lower our use of fossil fuels" perspective, and acknowledged that switching out all boiler systems for heat pumps would be a high cost, but it wasn't really a study on the economics of it. Just a resource usage perspective.
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 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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_analysis_of_climate_c...
We need to turn back to nuclear until we've figured out grid level storage.
Don’t need to reengineer the entire grid then…
Storage allows demand-shifting to localities, lessens the burden directly on central stations and stabilises costs. Getting people to buy their own storage also helps but it's hecking costly and much more economical at scale.
This stuff all needs a bit of an upgrade anyway, but we can defer that if design houses/developments to smooth their own load spikes.
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.
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.
In the past year, natural gas provided 27.4% of the generated electricity. Wind provided 31.1%. Scroll down on https://grid.iamkate.com and choose "Past year" to see the full breakdown.
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.
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.
You mean using energy sources that have a much better / kwh performance (both in terms of reduction of ecological footprint and price)?
... 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.
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...
If your country has to import oil and gas there is a financial reason to change.
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.
High income people living in detached houses again...
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.
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?
But like a payday loan, it's hard for most of us to think about those future costs until they're being collected.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
[2] https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
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.
Some data from a U.K. funded study suggested the median was 2.44 here in winter and 2.8 not in winter.
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.
"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."
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.
I'm not subscribing to your newsletter...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
Seeing the monstrosities people build I think we have a long way to go
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.
:) 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.
I like pedantry as much as the next person but that feels like a pointless distinction here.
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.
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.
If you have electric heating (resistive or heat pump, doesn't matter), you will pay €0.01 / kWh in energy tax for all electricity consumed above 4000 kWh per year.
The 4000 kWh is the "expected average" consumption for a household for a year, and of those you pay the full energy tax, which is currently DKK 0.9 / kWh including 25% VAT.
If you drive an EV, you can also get a refund for the energy tax of the electricity used to charge your car, provided you have an approved EV charger with a supported energy meter, which is most of the common chargers. You will need to enter into an agreement with a "charging company" to apply for the refund, so no individual refunds.
This of course doesn't apply if you have reduced energy tax, as you're not paying energy tax in the first place (except the first 4000 kWh)
Why €0.01 ? It's the minimum energy tax allowed by the EU, and i assume it's to avoid some spreadsheet breaking somewhere if it was 0.
These are exactly the same thing in the end unless a subsidies were to exceed tax revenue.
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...
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.
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.
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
Great idea with spamming sites hehe
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
> I'm paying 10 cent pretty kwh electricity
Electric rates are ~4x that where the author lives.
Until that happens, I'll hang onto my gas furnace and water heaters.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
Mini-splits are commonly used for retrofits because they're much cheaper than installing or repairing leaky ducting. Incorrectly sized or leaky ducts lead to poor efficiency, comfort, and air quality, regardless of heat source.
"Well built passive solar" is all well and good for the tiny percentage of Americans that get newly built passive homes. The rest of us need solutions as well. The idea that building a new home is more economical than $1000 per ton of capacity for heat pumps off Amazon is hardly worth addressing.
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.
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.
Can't it be much simpler?
Not all people have the brains AND assuming that they do, the time to go through these hoops to make their heat pump investment pay off.
Most people will shut down and just stick with their gas furnace because it’s the path of least resistance. We need a blend of technology, policy and education to make this dead simple.
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.
The author has seen the light? :)
Works most of the time.
Mailinator is great if the website wants you to click a link or enter an OTP to verify whatever it is that they verify.
Unless electricity is seriously cheap or free
but realistically, very few people do it when they update hvac system. in fact, most (all?) of hvac installers simply refuse to do it.
Like with all models, it depends on how accurate you need to get. Very few energy models (mainly TRNSYS or eQUEST) that I've been involved with go to the level of blower door testing. They generally take design information (materials, orientation, etc.)
>they are most definitely out of question for home owners
Maybe the general home owner, but my comment was geared towards the HN crowd. I think running an energy model is within the grasp of most tech-savvy people if they have the inclination. Again, it depends on the accuracy you want. Even Excel can be used for a bin energy model approach (and is even advocated for in some commercial energy auditing texts as a suitable approach for of ASHRAE Level II audits). For example, eQUEST is free from the DoE and there are plenty of tutorials out there.
Edit: for anyone interested, this link gives an example of spreadsheet load calculations for residential applications (scroll to "ResLoad22")
curious, does it take into consideration heat gain/loss by walls and insulation through the day ? or is there any model that does it ?
In the simplest terms, they're all derived from the heat transfer equation of Q=U*A*deltaT so all load calculation models will seem similar to an extent. It ultimately comes down to how nuanced you want the model to be.
>does it take into consideration heat gain/loss by walls and insulation through the day
Yes, it has factors like heat gain coefficient that are used in conjunction with U-factors, weather, and the orientation of the structure. Most of the more widely used models include those aspects.