25 States Agree To Quadruple Number Of Heat Pumps In America::The US Climate Alliance met in New York City this week to explain the benefits of heat pumps, including better health for American families.
The article doesn’t say just how much more expensive heat pumps are when comparing to gas furnaces. I live in one of the states at the top of that picture and just replaced my 20+ year old furnace and AC compressor. I specifically asked about heat pumps and they were reluctant to even price it out for me. It was over twice the cost. In addition they said the area I live in would almost certainly require an aux heat source, which they recommended gas for because direct electric heat is so horribly inefficient. I ended up going with the 98.5% efficient gas furnace, which also came with incentives and rebates from the power company.
And what is the problem with a gas hybrid heat pump? It’s an ideal solution for places that get very cold, use the gas furnace for the weeks when it’s below -5 and use the heat pump for many months around that. It’s one of the most efficient ways to use a heat pump as you don’t have to bully it through the coldest part of winter with very bad COPs, you’re only using it when it’s most efficient. And when your heating period is very long, that will only benefit your seasonal COP. So of course it’s more expensive than a simple furnace, but it will also save loads of energy and redeem itself after 5-10 years.
The best part about this is you already have an AC, aka a heat pump, but you don’t use it for heating?
Direct electric heat is very efficient. Practically 100%.
My understanding is that you would only need the aux source during extreme cold. So very rarely.
That’s a misleading number. In most other cases where we are using electricity–motors, CPUs, lighting, etc–we consider the heat generated to be inefficiency. It might be more accurate to say that electric resistance heating is 100% inefficient.
If you’re using resistance heating to heat your home, using electricity that’s originally produced by natural gas, then you’re using more natural gas compared to burning that gas for heat directly in a home furnace. Now, electric resistance heating can be a choice when it’s fed by clean electrical sources otherwise. Even then, though, you would prefer a heat pump if possible.
And a heat pump powered by a natural gas power plant will bring more heat into the house for the same amount of gas, including losses in transmission. It will likely be more expensive to install and run, though.
My heat pump is around 300% efficient. It adds 3X the energy into the house than it spends by stealing that energy from outside.
Except when it’s very cold outside, which is what was discussed here. Heat pumps are great (have one in my home), but it might not be ideal in very cold areas, especially if electricity prices are high compared to other energy sources.
You need to be in a very, VERY cold area for that to matter. While these places exists, I’m sure it’s not the case for a lot of the states I’ve seen marked in that article. Heat pump can heat the inside of your house even when it’s freezing outside.
…and it will never go below 100% because most have resistive heating as backup.
