[HN Gopher] Heat pump sales outpaced gas furnace sales in the US... ___________________________________________________________________ Heat pump sales outpaced gas furnace sales in the US in 2022 Author : mfiguiere Score : 176 points Date : 2023-03-31 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (electrek.co) (TXT) w3m dump (electrek.co) | jonatron wrote: | I'm in the UK, and got an air-to-air heat pump (more commonly | known as air conditioning). It made sense because of extremely | high electricity prices, and I have an insulated house without | gas, electric only. There's a lot of houses / flats similar to | mine, that could switch from resistive to heat pump heating. | Unfortunately, the government are focusing on very expensive | retrofitting of air-to-water heat pumps in older uninsulated | houses, which doesn't make a lot of sense. | jansan wrote: | I was not aware until recently that most air conditionings can | produce heat really efficiently. For hot water, efficiency is | quite low, so using a simple air conditioning for room heating | combined with an electric boiler for shower water would achieve | a lot at quite reasonable price. | jonatron wrote: | It's air to air, so it's for heating air only. I still use | resistive heating for hot water. | davidw wrote: | I have been asking about this locally, here in Oregon, and it | seems that in the US we're _likely_ to get some financial | incentives. But nothing seems sure yet. Anyone here happen to | know anything? | mkozlows wrote: | There are incentives in the IRA, but (except for ground-source, | which is a straight up 30% uncapped tax rebate), they're | limited by income and capped to certain dollar amounts. | jdeibele wrote: | https://www.energytrust.org/residential/incentives/furnace-a... | | Some of the incentives may be limited if you have too much | income. | | I was able to get the latest Ecobee thermostat for $90 instead | of the list price of $250. | | Fortunately or unfortunately, I started reading about how 3rd | party thermostats can't talk to multi-stage furnaces or air | handlers except in very blunt increments. Maybe as blunt as on | or off. Each manufacturer has their own, undocumented protocol | for doing fine adjustments. I tried running the fan all the | time (now I do 10 minutes every hour) and it was quite | expensive for that month. Anyway, I'm hesitating about putting | in the nice Ecobee thermostat because it could conceivably cost | quite a bit more in electricity. | ben7799 wrote: | We have had them here in Massachusetts for a while. | $10,000-15,000 rebate depending on what the house requires. | rainsford wrote: | Oregon seems like a perfect use-case for heat pumps. It has a | lot of renewable energy and relatively mild winter temperatures | (at least near the coast where most of the people live), two | things that make heat pumps a lot greener of a solution than | natural gas heating. | jandrese wrote: | I recently learned from an NPR piece that only about 13% of US | households have a heat pump. | | This floored me. One because in my mid Atlantic area nearly every | house has a heat pump. When house shopping many years ago we | never saw a listing that didn't have one. | | The other is that if you have central air then it seems like you | should have a heat pump. You're basically just running the heat | pump backwards to provide heat instead of air conditioning, but | apparently the vast majority of central air installs are only set | up to do cooling? This makes no sense to me. Even if you area | gets too cold to be efficiently warmed by a heat pump in the | winter you can still use it for several months out of the year | and switch to gas only when you need to. It's not like gas is | especially cheap. | imglorp wrote: | Misaligned incentives. A traditional furnace is a bunch of | sheet metal, a burner, a fan, and a thermostat and that's it. | Sold for thousands, it seems like enormous, criminal markup. Of | course they'll keep selling that and price it less than heat | pumps, which have an actual complex closed loop coolant system | in addition to what a furnace has. | toomuchtodo wrote: | https://www.rewiringamerica.org/ira-fact-sheets | | Progress is being made. | | > The 25C and 25D tax credits incentivize household | electrification by lowering the total cost of qualified | electrification upgrades. 25C provides a capped 30 percent | tax credit for heat pumps, heat pump water heaters (HPWHs), | qualifying electrical panel upgrades, select weatherization | measures, and energy audits. For the first time, air source | heat pumps for space heating/cooling and HPWHs will be | eligible for a tax credit of up to $2,000 per year, and | electrical panel upgrades installed in conjunction with a | heat pump or HPWH will be eligible for a tax credit of up to | $600. | mrexroad wrote: | Yep, grew up in that area in a house w/ a heat pump. However it | also had oil furnace (aka diesel) to supplement as it'd get | down in the teens during coldest parts of winter. Also stacked, | dried, carried in and burned a fair amount of firewood growing | up. | vanilla_nut wrote: | There are a lot of US households on places like New England and | the Midwest where historically very very few houses have | central air and most have a furnace running on oil, propane, or | natural gas. The upgrade path is hard there: do you accept the | multiple thousands of dollars to install a heat pump _on top_ | of your existing heating solution? For the couple of fringe | months where a heat pump can actually heat your house, and the | extra cost of cooling in the summer (money many don 't have)? | | It probably makes a lot of sense to just switch to a heat pump | if you live in the south these days and give up any backup | heating system entirely. But it is worth noting that only in | the past 5 years or so did we finally get heat pumps that | didn't totally suck at 0C. Until then, it made sense for even a | lot of Southern households to stick with backup furnace + | central air, assuming they already sunk money into the backup | furnace for the 5 days a year they actually need it. | jandrese wrote: | Heat pumps have always had a built-in resistive heating | element as a backup option for when it gets too cold out. | This is terribly energy inefficient, but if you're talking | about a few days a year at most it is fine, no need to | install a second heat source. | | Besides, 0C is far too conservative an estimate for heat | pumps. -10C was no problem even for 30 year old units. | michaelt wrote: | _> Heat pumps have always had a built-in resistive heating | element as a backup option for when it gets too cold out. | This is terribly energy inefficient, but if you 're talking | about a few days a year at most it is fine,_ | | Won't it be a problem if heating becomes much less | efficient across an entire city, just as demand for heat is | at its highest? | bbatha wrote: | Counter anecdote. I just bought a house in the mid atlantic and | 0 of the houses I looked at have a heat pump. | | > The other is that if you have central air then it seems like | you should have a heat pump. You're basically just running the | heat pump backwards to provide heat instead of air | conditioning, | | These days sure. But the cold weather compatible heat pumps are | relatively new, electricity was and still is a whole lot more | expensive than gas, running it as both an air conditioner | decreases its overall life span, and finally a dedicated air | conditioner can be more energy efficient especially on older | models. | jandrese wrote: | When I was a kid in the 80s my house had an electric heat | pump and the aux (resistive) heater coil didn't kick on until | about 0F (-18C). You could tell because it smelled a bit when | it happened, which was pretty rare. I guess it probably | kicked in some more times overnight and I didn't notice, but | overall the heat pump did the lion's share of the work. | | Heat pumps have become much more efficient since then. I | replaced an old and rusty unit on my first townhouse and cut | the electric bill by $100-$200/month in the middle of summer | and dead of winter. | dragontamer wrote: | Natural Gas heating is surprisingly good in practice, | especially in the days where we only had fossil fuels on our | electricity grid. | | If you go fossil fuel, you have only 40% efficiency for Fossil | Fuel -> Electricity, then Electricity -> Traditional heat is | only 100% efficient. So 100W of chemical energy turns into 40W | of electricity, and then turns into 40W of heating. | | --------- | | Today, a Heat Pump can be like 200% efficient, so you 100W of | chemical energy turns into 40W of electricity, then turns into | 80W of heating from the heat pump. | | Alas, a Gas Furnace is like 90% efficient (10% of the heat | escapes in the steam / waste products that needs to be pushed | out the chimney, but everything else turns into home heating). | So your 100W of chemical energy turns into 90W of heating, and | you're done. And that's why our infrastructure in the USA is so | much around gas heating, because its better. Especially since | we are very rich in domestic natural gas production. | | Yeah, we're getting to the point where Heat Pumps + Solar | Electricity are coming. But... we're not there yet. On today's | grid, Natural Gas heating is likely the most efficient option. | | EDIT: Got my units wrong. It should be 100J of energy, not 100W | of energy. Watts are power. Though in USA, we don't use Joules | for energy, but instead "BTUs". Whatevs.... I think my point is | still clear :-) | HDThoreaun wrote: | But having a furnace means you also have central air. So the | question isn't furnace or heat pump, it's furnace and one | directional heat pump or just a heat pump. Yes, on cold days | the furnace will be cheaper, but on most days the heat pump | is cheaper and requires less maintenance since you're turning | two appliances into one. | sokoloff wrote: | Many places in heating-dominated climates do not have | central air. | nfriedly wrote: | FWIW, modern heat pumps can exceed 400% efficiency, so the | math is starting to work out in their favor even for fossil | fuels burned at a power plant. | radicaldreamer wrote: | You lose a lot of heat due to improper insulation or in the | case of northern california, no insulation whatsoever. | cobertos wrote: | > Alas, a Gas Furnace is like 90% efficient (10% of the heat | escapes in the steam / waste products that needs to be pushed | out the chimney, but everything else turns into home | heating). | | And there exists even more efficient options today. Like high | efficiency furnaces that use the heat from the flue in a | second heat exchanger to bring it closer to 99% | rainsford wrote: | You're at the low end for heat pump efficiency, but more | importantly, you're overlooking the fact that the fossil fuel | usage of heat pumps benefits from the ability to use | electricity generated by non-fossil fuel sources. In the US | that's a significant fraction of electricity generation and | in many places it's the majority of electricity. The ability | to combine the electricity produced by chemical energy with | nuclear, hydro, solar, wind, etc, gives heat pumps an | significant advantage over directly burning fossil fuel for | heat if what you care about is fossil fuel usage. | xxpor wrote: | >Today, a Heat Pump can be like 200% efficient, so you 100W | of chemical energy turns into 40W of electricity, then turns | into 80W of heating from the heat pump. | | This isn't true today. The absolute minimum COP is 3.1 in the | US. | | https://www.pickhvac.com/heat-pump/basics/cop/ | ericpauley wrote: | This appears to be the minimum for geothermal. The vast | majority of heat pump installs would be air source, and | while these can often get 3+ it's highly dependent on | climate and local grid efficiency. | | It also depends on local prices. In Madison, WI our implied | (not actual) electric grid efficiency based on prices is | under 20%. | xyzzyz wrote: | You will not get the COP of 3 during most of the winter in | the interior US with an air source heat pump. Their | efficiency go down significantly once the temperature is | below freezing, due to required thawing cycles, and because | the bigger delta between inside and outside temperatures | reduces pumping efficiency in general (efficiency is best | when outside is not much colder than inside). | | Air source heat pumps are really good tech overall, | especially because they also double up as AC in summer. | However, in winter, in a head to head comparison, they only | handily win in areas with mild climate, like eg. all west, | or much of southern US. In the northwest or midwest, they | are unlikely to beat efficient gas furnaces. | maxerickson wrote: | Not for air source. | | Source: your link. | | Air source heat pumps are a lot easier, so they are the | majority of installs. | | I expect the national code doesn't give a minimum COP for | air source because the performance changes with air | temperature. The bulk of my heating cost occurs when it is | 10-20 0F outside, where someone located in a warmer spot | might have most of their heating at 35-45 or whatever. | kevstev wrote: | I'm in NJ just west of Manhattan and I could not make the | numbers work at all. I have averaged about $1.05 a therm for | gas and my heat bills are very low even in Jan/Feb. On the | other hand I pay 16.5 cents /kwh for electric. | | I ran the numbers through a spreadsheet and I would be paying | an extra $100 a month for heat and an initial cost of 10k more | for the install, and the ac side would have a slightly lower | seer than the best ac systems available. | | I would need a COP of 5 for a heat pump to be more efficient. | They don't exist for air source. I live in a | brownstone/townhouse and while geothermal is theoretically | feasible ( I have a small yard) I called every installer I | could find in the tristate and none would attempt it. | | I was immensely disappointed but I cant be paying more upfront | and ongoing. If I had solar it would be a bit better but last | time I attempted it I only got 2 bids out of the 30 installers | I called and then COVID hit. The numbers weren't especially | encouraging. I can't get that many panels on my roof due to | firecodes. | surfmike wrote: | If only someone made a good thermostat for them. Nest and Ecobee | integration doesn't work very well since they need to go through | a two-stage controller interface. | rthomas6 wrote: | I am using an Ecobee thermostat with a heat pump and it is | working, for both heating and cooling. Is it doing something | inefficient or wrong? What am I missing out on? | | Edit: Ecobee says they support heat pumps. | https://support.ecobee.com/s/articles/What-types-of-HVAC-sys... | cpncrunch wrote: | Comfortnet works pretty well, and I can control it via an app. | nfriedly wrote: | I use a Nest thermostat with a 2-stage ground sourced heat pump | (a.k.a. geothermal) that also has backup resistive heating. It | works perfectly fine. It will run a single stage most of the | time, or both stages if it's trying to change the temperature | by more than a couple of degrees. | | I have mine set to treat the resistive heating as emergency | backup, but I believe I could also configure it to treat it as | a third stage and run it automatically. | jmcphers wrote: | I very nearly bought a heat pump for my house to replace (or | augment) my natural gas furnace, but was dissuaded by the | salesperson. | | He who pointed out that, while heat pumps are miracles of | efficiency, the electricity in my area is primarily generated by | burning fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas. Due to | transmission losses, it is cheaper, efficient, and greener to | combust natural gas for warmth directly than to burn it at a | power plant, feed the power into the grid, and use grid power to | run a heat pump. | | Of course, running a heat pump allows you to take advantage of | greener power sources when they become available, but his claim | was that in a lot of places they don't really benefit the | environment right now. Anyone have any numbers to back this up or | refute it? | maccard wrote: | > Anyone have any numbers to back this up or refute it? | | Don't know where you are, but here in the UK right now the | split is 34% wind, 29% gas, remaining <other> [0]. If you | migrated from a modern condensing boiler with 90% efficiency to | a heat pump with 300% efficiency (1 unit of electricity outputs | 3 units of heat), then with the gas condensing boiler you're | getting 0.9 units of heat per unit of gas, and with a heat pump | you're getting 0.87 units of heat per unit of gas, _plus_ 1 | unit of heat from wind. | | Over the last year, the _majority_ of the time the split in | generation sources looks like this. It's occasionly heavier on | gas, but for 11 months of the year, it's a no brainer, and I | don't think that outdoes the 1-2 weeks per year that you're | using an almost equivalent amount of gas. | | [0] https://grid.iamkate.com/ | rainsford wrote: | Whether or not that's true for your particular situation is | going to be very location dependent, but I think the | salesperson is fairly wrong in the general case in the US. | Fossil fuel generation accounts for about 60% of US electricity | and natural gas electricity generation is around 50% efficient. | Another 5-10% is lost due to transmission, so say around 40% of | the energy potential of a natural gas power plant makes its way | to your house as electricity. Combine those and it means that | every 1Wh of electrical energy generated takes the equivalent | of 1.5Wh worth of natural gas. | | That doesn't sound particularly good, since new natural gas | furnaces can be around 90% efficient, meaning that same 1.5Wh | of natural gas could produce 1.35Wh worth of heating. Except | heat pumps have an efficiency of around 2.5-3, meaning for | every 1Wh of electrical energy they consume, they produce | 2.5-3Wh worth of heat. That means producing 3Wh worth of heat | with a heat pump consumes 1.5Wh worth of natural gas in the | standard US electrical energy mix. Getting that same 3Wh worth | of heat directly from a natural gas furnace would take over | twice the amount of natural gas. Even if your electricity | generation is 100% natural gas, the heat pump would be very | competitive with natural gas. | | Now if you live in an area that gets really cold (meaning heat | pump efficiency on average is lower) and all your electricity | is generated by an old coal power plant (which is less | efficient and dirtier), natural gas heating may actually be a | greener option for now. But on average that's not the case and | many places in the US have much better green fundamentals for | heat pumps thanks to mild temperatures and/or lots of non- | fossil fuel energy generation. | the_third_wave wrote: | > natural gas electricity generation is around 50% efficient | | The real number is far lower for the majority of power plants | using simple/single-cycle turbines which end up somewhere | between 32% and 38% [1]. Combined-cycle can go up to 60%, CHP | (heat and power) can be up to 80% efficient. | | [1] https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power- | plants/72369-comp... | jeffbee wrote: | Doesn't sound like this person is educated in thermodynamics. | Which is why the law needs to step in and just outlaw or tax | mineral gas appliances. Letting some petro-poisoned goof talk | citizens out of buying electric heat pumps is suboptimal. | ben7799 wrote: | He's probably ignoring the externalities like the gas leaks on | the way to your house or the power plant being able to have a | huge scrubber that reduces emissions compared to what you can | have at your house. | | The most important reason is there was probably a financial | incentive from the manufacturer of the gas/oil furnace that | made it more profitable for him to sell you that. | | Here we have such a massive state rebate on heat pumps, you | have to literally have a lot of money and politics that equate | to having your head up your backside to get a new gas/oil | furnace. It's larger than an EV rebate and a much higher % of | the total cost so you'd have to have a really good reason to | stick with fossil fuels. | the_third_wave wrote: | > He's probably ignoring the externalities like the gas leaks | on the way to your house | | Where I live (Sweden) and come from (the Netherlands) gas | leaks tend to get fixed since they are both costly as well as | dangerous. Let's assume that this is not a real issue unless | you have some data which points out the opposite. | | > the power plant being able to have a huge scrubber that | reduces emissions | | We're not talking about heating a house using coal - which is | where those scrubbers come in - but with gas. Gas fired power | plants do not need scrubbers since they do not produce fly | ash or sulphurous oxides, nor do gas-fired heaters. | | Total systems efficiency for a single-cycle gas-fired power | plant lies between 32% to 38% for simple cycle gas turbines, | most of those in the USA are closer to the first number. | Combined cycle gas/steam turbines can run at up to 60% total | efficiency which is about as high as it is possible to get | using a thermal power generator [1]. The efficiency of gas- | fired heaters lies somewhere between 70% and 95% or more, the | upper range is common here in Europe. A good indicator for | the efficiency is the fact that these appliances often use | plastic flue pipes which is made possible by the fact that | flue gas temperatures lie below 70degC. The effective COP for | air/air heat pumps is highly dependent on the temperature | difference between the hot and cold side, the colder it is | outside the lower the efficiency. I don't know where the | original poster lives so it is hard to calculate the expected | efficiency. If it is anywhere where the temperature goes down | below zero (Celcius) it is more than likely that the salesman | was right since the effective COP ends up below 2 - and goes | down to 1 or lower around -15degC to -30degC (depending on | the model heat pump used, the amount of moisture in the air | (moist air condenses and freezes on the evaporator which | requires a thaw cycle which markedly lowers the efficiency). | | [1] https://www.brighthubengineering.com/power- | plants/72369-comp... | fancy_pantser wrote: | > Let's assume that this is not a real issue unless you | have some data which points out the opposite. | | US-wide estimates are 1.4% and recent studies suggest as | high as 9% in tested areas. | | https://news.stanford.edu/2022/03/24/methane-leaks-much- | wors... | the_third_wave wrote: | OK, those are production leaks, not transport leaks. I | don't know how high production leaks are here in Europe | but I assume them to be lower due to stringent rules. | There is also quite a bit of natural methane leakage from | swamps, wetlands and other similar sources as well as | from agriculture. ESA has a satellite which can measure | this [1], it shows methane leakage from landfills can | also be quite large [2]. | | [1] https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/ | Coperni... | | [2] https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/ | Satelli... | pinkorchid wrote: | All those leaks contribute to the externalities of | natural gas. I don't know the relative contributions | between extraction and distribution, but leaks in the | distribution network are also a problem in Europe [1]. | It's certainly true that extraction leaks can be so | substantial as to make shale gas worse than coal [2] | (twice worse over 20 years!). | | Landfills (and agriculture) are big sources of methane. I | think this is a pretty good start to figure out what the | EU is doing to reduce all sources [3]. | | [1] https://www.uu.nl/en/publication/scientists-discover- | more-me... [2] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/ | s10584-011-0061-5 [3] | https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press- | releases/2022... | mywittyname wrote: | The USEPA claims about 1.4-2.3% of natural gas is lost to | leaks [0]. | | American is full of leaky gas pipelines. It's one of the | major reasons people oppose to large gas pipelines going | near where they live: they are an ecological disaster | waiting to happen. | | [0] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/the-u-s-natural- | gas-ind... | jtchang wrote: | What state? | fghorow wrote: | Not to mention the Carnot efficiency losses causing ~50-70% of | the heat energy at the generator to go out its cooling system. | | Yes, It's not clear at all that heat pumps are always a win -- | depending on the energy source mix of your local grid. But with | a COP of 3-4 (i.e. 3-4 times more heat is moved by the pump | than is supplied as electrical energy) if there's a decent | renewable contribution to electrical generation on your local | grid, it might well be a win in terms of CO2 emissions. YMMV. | kibwen wrote: | Keep in mind that gas infrastructure is leaky, which means that | between two to seven percent of the gas that is pumped to your | home is lost to the atmosphere before it arrives (depending on | the age and maintenance status of the gas pipes in your area). | Methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and this leakage can | easily tip the scales back in favor of heat pumps, even with | electric transmission losses. | colechristensen wrote: | But does it leak in a dose-dependent way? | | Is there a marginal increase in leakage if you pick a gas | furnace over an electric heat pump? | MrFoof wrote: | The salesman could very well be correct. The reality is the | numbers are incredibly contextual relative to specifically | where you live. | | A great example of this exercise was Harry Metcalfe actually | doing the digging and the math to attempt to objectively | measure his impact, and whether an EV or PHEV made sense as a | daily given where he specifically lives in the UK is primarily | powered by coal: https://youtu.be/k15n6QAe8cE | | For him, right now, PHEV was lower impact, but he makes it | clear that that will very likely change over time, and that if | he lived elsewhere, he likely would've went EV. | | - - - - - | | This is a classic example of, "it depends." If you live in an | era with lots of sustainable energy, it's likely a no brainer, | but the math changes if you lived in an area powered by a lot | of natural gas, or around Appalachia which is still | predominantly coal. To answer the question, you have to get the | information and do the math to understand what decision you | want to make, given your requirements and goals. | | - - - - - | | For the record, Harry's Garage _(and Harry's Farm)_ is a gem of | YouTube's car community. He doesn't need it to make money, so | he just does what he wants and goes down a lot of very nerdy | rabbit holes _(including sustainable energy, gov't farm and | energy policies)_ , and actually USES his cars for REAL trips | -- like taking his Testarossa through the Sahara, etc. Harry | was basically an "eccentric super car owner" in the 80s/90s | _(and ghost wrote articles in UK car mags for a while as an | "anonymous /eccentric super car owner")_ that ultimately | founded EVO Magazine, helped influence a lot of the cinematic | direction for the Top Gear reboot in the early 2000s, and was | the inspiration for "Clarkson's Farm." | | He's a nerd's nerd, and an absolute treasure. | ackfoobar wrote: | The math of heating is different from turning a motor though. | | All energy use ultimately becomes heat. You can burn it | directly, then 1J of fuel becomes 1J of heat. Or you can turn | it to electricity and use that to locally decrease entropy. | | If you mine bitcoin with the electricity, then 1J of fuel | becomes 0.5J (approximately, of course) of waste heat in the | power plant and 0.5J of waste heat in your GPU. | | If you use the electricity in a heat pump, then then 1J of | fuel becomes 0.5J of waste heat in the power plant, 0.5J of | heating in your house. AND 1.5J of heat is moved from air | outside. | grey-area wrote: | He's also wrong, or at least wrong for anyone considering the | question now. | | The UK is phasing out coal completely in the next few years | and aggressively pursuing renewables. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_coal- | fired_po... | jonatron wrote: | Yep, the youtube video at 21:25 contains a screenshot of UK | electricity generation mix over a 4 week period in 2020, | which was 0.3% coal. | komadori wrote: | Coincidentally, one of the UK's remaining three coal | plants, West Burton A, apparently ceases operation today | (31st March 2023). | | https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england- | nottinghamshire-65127874... | electric_mayhem wrote: | Salespeople are often ignorant af. | | I have both a heat pump and a gas furnace. | | I program my thermostat with: | | - Electric cost per kWh | | - Gas cost per therm | | - Heat pump afue | | - Furnace efficiency | | It does the math and runs whichever is cheaper. | | This past winter, the heat pump was cheaper down to 5 degrees | Fahrenheit. | mrguyorama wrote: | >Salespeople are often ignorant af. | | Or so much worse; they learned something for one specific | situation/time and now apply it to everything because they | don't realize that's not how it works. | | Sounds like this one might at least be aware of the | complexities and nuance of the situation though. | koolba wrote: | > I program my thermostat with: ... | | What thermostat let's you input all these data points? | electric_mayhem wrote: | Trane xl1050. | | Requires getting into technician config mode, which I'm | pretty sure could result in rendering it inoperable if I | screwed with the wrong settings. | | But it's doable; I go through the process whenever my | utility company changes their rates. | dzhiurgis wrote: | I would just use heat pump for convenience alone. Not having | monoxide and NOx risks around the house is another one. | ars wrote: | He's kinda wrong unless you live in the northern part of the | country. | | A heat pump is a multiplyer - it takes that incoming energy and | can get a multiple of heat (the exact multiple is the rating of | the pump and varies). | | That's where the part of the country comes in - in the north | the multiplyer is lower, in the south it's higher. With a nice | high multiplyer it's a great deal. | | I wish though, that they had natural gas based heat pump - now | THOSE would be really efficient! | jeffbee wrote: | You can buy propane-fired refrigerators so I do not see why | you couldn't make such a thing. You can also buy heat pumps | where propane is the working fluid, which is vaguely ironic. | marssaxman wrote: | That can't be right. Heat pumps are commonly 2.5x-4x more | efficient than direct heating. | | "The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates | that annual electricity transmission and distribution (T&D) | losses averaged about 5% of the electricity transmitted and | distributed in the United States in 2017 through 2021." | | https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3 | nkurz wrote: | I downvoted you for your overconfidence. Your conclusion | might be right, but it's not as straightforward as you | suggest. You're right that the transmission losses aren't | large, but you seem to be missing the much bigger losses | involved in generating electricity from coal. | | Currently, the average coal fired plant produces electricity | at 33% efficiency: | https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems. | That's average, so there are probably plants out there | producing at 30%. If we assume another 5% loss for | transmission, this takes us down to 25% efficiency as | delivered to the consumer. | | If a heat pump is 3x the efficiency of resistance electric | heat, but you are burning 4x the coal to generate the | electricity, are you still certain that a 95% natural gas | furnace is never the better choice for efficiency? I'm not. I | think the heat pump is probably more efficient in many cases, | but I wouldn't eliminate the possibility that there are cases | where the natural gas wins. | marssaxman wrote: | Sorry to have been unclear - my comment was a response to | this specific claim, which only considers power generation | via natural gas, not the grid as a whole, nor coal: | | "Due to transmission losses, it is cheaper, efficient, and | greener to combust natural gas for warmth directly than to | burn it at a power plant, feed the power into the grid, and | use grid power to run a heat pump." | | This statement does leave itself some wiggle room with | "cheaper", but in terms of "efficient" it cannot really be | true, because the average efficiency of a natural gas power | plant is 45% - and if I'm reading this document correctly, | that figure already factors in transmission loss: | | https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=44436 | irrational wrote: | Power is like real estate. Location. Location. Location. | Where I live all/most electricity is generated from | hydroelectric. I feel like everyone commenting should post | where they live or how their electricity is generated. | dandandan wrote: | Why the focus on coal? California as a whole only sourced | 3% of its energy from coal in 2021, and some regions were | at 0%. It only made up 20% of the entire US' consumption in | 2022 | | https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3 | markus92 wrote: | This is definitely the the worst case, but in how many | places is coal the only thing on the grid? If I look a bit | randomly at electricity maps there's barely any place left | where it's just coal on the grid. | jandrese wrote: | The problem is in the future when you decarbonize how are | you going to do it with a gas furnace? Bio-gas is extremely | niche and shows no sign of picking up anytime soon. | Meanwhile your local power plant already switched from coal | to natural gas, but in the future the grid is going towards | wind, solar, and battery storage. | | You can even install solar panels locally to cut down on | transmission losses. | ncphil wrote: | As someone who has owned or rented homes heated with oil, | gas and heat pumps (the latter two in the SE US), my | experience has been that the gas and heat pump systems | cost about the same same to operate. But when the gas | system in our current house had to be replaced about 5 | years ago, I went the path of least resistence and got | the recommended gas unit. I really regret that decision | now, especially given the small difference in installed | price. Same with the tankless water heater (although | there, gas was all that was available on short notice). | The momentum in favor of gas is still enormous, and at | least around here strongly influences what installers | recommend. Maybe better educated consumers will change | that. Unfortunately, I'm going to be stuck with gas into | the next decade, with the only consolation being that at | least I'm done with oil (the last two oil burners I ran | were from the 50s, for steam heat, and cost a fortune to | run: one winter in the early 00s about $600 a month). | sokoloff wrote: | The combustion efficiency of the fossil fuel electric | generation must also be considered. If that's 40% efficient, | a heat pump with a CoP of 2.5 is very close to a 95% AFUE | gas-burning unit. | cjrp wrote: | > Due to transmission losses, it is cheaper, efficient, and | greener to combust natural gas for warmth directly than to burn | it at a power plant, feed the power into the grid, and use grid | power to run a heat pump. | | That would certainly be true for a classic electric (element) | heater, but I thought the point of heat pumps was that they're | not generating heat just... pumping it. | benj111 wrote: | I'm not convinced either a heat pump has a cop of ~4. A | thermal power plant is ~50% efficient and transmission isn't | losing 50% of the energy. This also ignores any greening of | the grid, present and future. And the fact that a | furnace/boiler isn't 100% efficient. | groestl wrote: | > A thermal power plant is ~50% efficient | | For electricity alone, I'd want to add. With heat coupling | and district heating, thermal power plants can reach ~90% | efficiency. | lizknope wrote: | My unit has both a heat pump and gas furnace. Of course the heat | pump is used for cooling in the summer. In the winter the | thermostat is set to use the heat pump for heating until it is | below 40F. Below that and it switches to natural gas. The company | that installed it and maintains it said that was the best | crossover point for efficiency and cost. I didn't look at any | specific cold weather heat pumps that are still efficient below | freezing. | cpncrunch wrote: | All heat pumps are generally still efficient at well below | freezing, and will have a COP (efficiency) above 1 even at | -15C. The problem is that they don't generate a huge amount of | heat at those ambient temperatures, so you need a backup source | of heat. A heat pump should be able to keep your house at room | temperature when the outside temp is around freezing, but it | will take a long time to heat up your house if you let the | temperature drop overnight. | | 40F seems unusually high for your aux heat set point, unless | you have expensive electricity and cheap gas. | kemiller wrote: | I tried to get a heat pump but asinine local regs require five | full feet of setback from property line to the edge of the | external condenser. I'm not willing to spend $15k upgrading my | connection just to get electric resistive heat, so I had to get a | new gas furnace instead. | | Also, why are heat pumps so hideously expensive? I was quoted | $35k, not including the electrical upgrades. A plain AC is half | that but it's virtually the same mechanical equipment. | dashundchen wrote: | Unless your house is ridiculously large I think you were given | a sky high quote because the contractor didn't want to the job. | I paid less that half of that for a full ground source geo heat | system a few years ago. | | Heat pumps are typically more complicated to install and size | properly. You can throw an oversized gas furnace in any house | for fat profits and no real HVAC design. | | Contractors that aren't wanting for business can give you | ludacris estimates for jobs they're not interested in. If you | take it, great, they make a lot of money, if not they can | schedule someone else or push you into an easier job for them. | | I ran into this with a concrete job I needed done recently. The | contractors were all booked a year or more out, and were | quoting $20k+ for a normal concrete driveway. I found a paver | installer who seemed much less busy, was able to do a full | paver job for way under the slab pourers! | toomuchtodo wrote: | That price is ridiculous. I just had a combo high efficiency 4 | ton heat pump with backup natural gas furnace in an Illinois | property for $17k. | avodonosov wrote: | How significant is Earth cooling speedup due to heat pumps? Is | this practice ecological? (I assume they pump the heat from under | ground?) | kibwen wrote: | Some heat pumps use underground pipes (and those units have a | great advantage in avoiding the efficiency loss due to extreme | temperatures), however they're much more expensive to install, | so the vast majority of heat pumps are air-based, same as any | traditional air conditioner you've ever used. | | As for whether ground-based heat pumps would cool the Earth's | crust, the answer is no (in any measurable sense). Consider | that heat pumps are used for both heating in winter _and_ | cooling in summer, so in a temperate climate you 're just as | likely to put as much heat into the ground (in summertime) as | you extract from the ground (in wintertime). | avodonosov wrote: | Thank you | ltbarcly3 wrote: | If we could get a mini split installed in every house in the | country it would save around 1 trillion dollars of energy costs | over the next 20 years. That's just the savings in kwh of | electricity, it also means less energy produced, less carbon, | less grid capacity needed, less production facilities, etc etc. | api wrote: | Our gas furnace has a few years left then we will be getting one. | It's kind of a no-brainer. | the-alchemist wrote: | There's an amazing video on heat pump from Technology | Connections: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J52mDjZzto | nfriedly wrote: | That's the right one to start on, but he's posted a few | followups with updates and more information: | https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLv0jwu7G_DFVIot1ubOZd... | MrFoof wrote: | In 2008 I moved into my first apartment with a proper air-to- | water heat pump. Granted, the place clearly also had a smart | architect, and was built to very high efficiency standards (was | rated LEED Platinum). It was installed in a small void between a | living room and the bedroom, adjoining an exterior wall. Had an | access panel. You'd only barely hear it initially start up. | Because of its location, the total length of the ventilation | ducting was maybe 1.5m, so air didn't really change temp before | it was delivered to its destination. | | Nowadays I rent a floor in an old Victorian home converted into a | duplex, still running a boiler (single loop for both floors) | going to radiators and convectors. Real noise from the basement | from the pump, banging of pipes, and the air quality monitors | clearly show VOCs rising -- sometimes to really crazy levels | (250+, sometimes 400-600!) if upstairs cranked the heat to hell | and back. | | Where I live now has mediocre insulation at best, and an | uninsulated three-seasons room on the 2nd floor that might as | well just be open to the outside air. In 2017 when I left, my | electric bill was only about $45/mo _(1BR, all electric | appliances, though elec was half the price back then)_ , and that | included in-line water heating _(with 3gal tanks for the bath and | kitchen)_. Meanwhile, my landlord currently pays about $7000 | /year in fuel oil to heat this duplex and its water. | | Granted, it's far from an apples-to-apples comparison as where I | lived for ~9 years was ultra-modern construction with no corners | cut, and I didn't share heat/hot water with neighbors that have a | far more demanding "standard of comfort". If only I lived here, | might only be $2000/year since my standard of comfort is a lot | lower than upstairs, but it really shows the difference that | construction, insulation, maintenance, HVAC system choices, and | just lowering your standards a bit makes. | | House across the street just sold. Had vents and forced air, but | still a boiler. New residents haven't moved in yet, but they | IMMEDIATELY removed a fairly new boiler, plus the 375 gallon fuel | tank. Putting in a heat pumps and a hybrid water heater. Don't | blame them for both the long-term savings, plus reclaiming floor | space in the basement. | kibwen wrote: | Yes, the question of furnace vs. heat pump should always be | deferred until after your insulation is up to snuff. | Overtonwindow wrote: | Something that readers may not know is that they are now heat | pumps on hot water heaters. An added benefit is that the fan on | the heat pump will exhaust cold air. That might be a benefit for | some folks! | nimajneb wrote: | Can you clarify what you mean? There's only ~2 fans in my | system, the one on the heat pump outside (looks like an AC | unit) and the one in the air handler in the basement. To me | sitting in my dining room this system is no different than any | other forced air system. | ars wrote: | The air for a hot water heat pump could be entirely indoor | air, the entire unit is located inside. | | Unlike an A/C which is split, with the compressor located | outside. | mikeyouse wrote: | He's saying that instead of a gas or electric hot water | heater - you can now buy a heatpump version. It works the | same as a normal heat pump, but it takes ambient air in your | basement or garage or wherever, and then moves that heat into | the water which provides a slight cooling and dehumidifying | effect for your indoor climate. They make a lot of sense in | the US South. | | https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-water-heaters | bombcar wrote: | To be precise the heat pump water heaters are electric - | they just use latent heat in the air around them as much as | they can, but they'll fall back to electric when that isn't | enough. | | They also cease working when the power is off, of course. | ars wrote: | They exist, but are really only good in the southern part of | the US. | | In the north the incoming water is cold which really slows down | the hot water creation (recovery) rate, and that cold exhaust | then needs to be warmed up by the heat. | | If you have low usage (i.e. less than 40 gallon/day of hot | water) you could get away with it, but that's two showers - so | if your usage is more than 2 showers per day I would avoid | them. | | But in the south they are a much better choice, since the | recovery rate is much better and the cold air helps with A/C. | fghorow wrote: | I have (air source) heat pump water heaters in two different | basements. (Don't ask.) | | A big win for me is that I no longer need to run a dehumidifier | in those basements. The cold air output from a water heater | alone is good enough to keep the humidity down. Again, YMMV. | randito wrote: | Lot of discussion here => Heat pumps of the 1800s are becoming | the technology of the future. | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34397715 | cmrdporcupine wrote: | I tried to get a quote on a heat pump here (Ontario, Canada) last | week because the gov't has incentives up to $5000 on them right | now. My gas furnace doesn't need replacing (9 years old) but the | AC does. So I figured I'd ask them to quote on a hybrid | configuration in a way where the furnace could maybe be swapped | out later when it hit EOL, and in the meantime just be used for | very cold temps. | | Problems: | | Gov't incentive only applies to a full replacement, existing gas | furnace would have to be ripped out. Seemed wasteful. | | High pressure sales guy wouldn't give me a straight answer on | pricing, or even proper spec sheets, but sounded easily like | $25,000 CAD would be about the price for a system. And that was | on a "medium range" system. That's gotta be at least 2 times more | than a new gas furnace + AC. Maybe 3x. | | I'm on a rural property, and have the space to do excavation for | ground source heatpump, which I suspect would get me an even more | efficient system. Sales guy was clueless about them, but it also | seems like nobody around here really does them.. still? (My | parents have such a system in Alberta, for over 10 years) | | Also kind of suspect that gov't incentives just get turned into | price increases by the suppliers. | | Unfortunately just very frustrating. I'd love to do the right | thing here, but it seems at this point that pricing still favours | natural gas heating. At least for renovations/replacements? Guess | I'll wait for the furnace to die. | supernova87a wrote: | I don't know if anyone else is following this as an issue, and | maybe in the grand scheme of our housing "demographics" it's a | small thing. | | But if you live in a medium or large sized condo or apartment | building, it is _extremely_ hard to get legacy systems like gas | furnaces or hot water boilers replaced by a new technology like | this. | | Not because of lack of desire, but because it involves incredible | amounts of: | | -- legal questions on whether you're allowed to do such things as | an entity (will the owners agree to do it) | | -- who will pay for the new costs of the thing itself, as well as | the ongoing maintenance, any changes to insurance costs, etc. | (how will current people who have to pay shoulder the costs of | future benefits) | | -- (sometimes) how to divide up or give up space from existing | ownership stakes to fit the new hardware into what was never | expected to be modified in the building ever again | | -- electrical, plumbing, power, heat, requirements that may | change the performance or costs of your building (how will you | swap a 300 pound furnace with 1200 pounds of condenser units and | not have the roof collapse?) Technical feasibility not matching | the policy goals. | | And then on top of this all, the local city wants their say to | block or make it very expensive for you to do all this. (yet at | the same time their city councils are charging forward in | requiring the phase out of natural gas while not fully | understanding the inability or cost to real people of not having | the ability to affordably implement those mandates) | | For some kinds of buildings, this is a very big problem stopping | people from being able to change things. There needs to be some | enabling legislation to cut out these roadblocks, or somehow make | things easier. | | Contractors know this so well they apply probably a 10x discount | factor in the number of calls they receive to the number of | projects that actually proceed to being started. | | Single family / single owner homes have a much easier time just | getting it done. And new build. | | It can be really very difficult to displace existing technology, | for very real and legitimate reasons. | tootie wrote: | Contrast this to cities like NYC that are explicitly phasing | out gas infrastructure. New buildings will be banned from | installing gas hookups in units and will require electric | stoves (induction or otherwise). They haven't banned gas for | central heating but the incentives may start to nudge that | direction. | ars wrote: | NYC has not thought this through. | | You still need gas for heat and for hot water. NYC is cold, | heat pump versions of those work, but not very well | (especially not well for hot water). | | And for apartment centralized heat and hot water? That would | be _really_ hard - these units are much later than the | centralized ones they replace. | | The amount of electricity it would take to do this though.... | I hope they plan for this to take decades, because that's | what it would take for them to upgrade their wires. | kibwen wrote: | 80% of buildings in NYC are heated by steam, not gas, | generated by a boiler in the basement. I assume most of | those boilers are themselves gas-burning, but I also assume | that any refit to these buildings would just replace the | gas-powered boiler with an electric one. When it comes to | boiling water, induction stoves are already more efficient | than gas stoves, so it doesn't seem infeasible. | ars wrote: | > would just replace the gas-powered boiler with an | electric one | | With resistive heat? That would be a horrible idea. | | And creating steam with a heat pump would be less | efficient than gas. | | So like I said, they have not thought it through. | jakevoytko wrote: | My NYC co-op is going through this now. All of your | guesses are basically right. We're having separate | systems installed for replacing in-unit hot water and in- | unit heating and cooling. I believe the new electric hot | water system is being installed in the basement and the | condensers for the in-unit control panels are being | installed on the roof and routed through the pipes used | by our old radiator system. | | Pros: units can control their own heat and will no longer | need in-window A/C units. Cons: it's really expensive, | even for a building with good finances and access to | reasonable financing options. | | We're only doing this because our boiler is probably a | few years away from failing already (it's well over 50 | years old), and we're super close to the building size | threshold where we would be fined for not complying with | the law (so any adjustments to how they calculate | building size or dropping the law's fine floor would | certainly push us over). | rcme wrote: | Heat pumps have the same footprint as, and can replace, AC | condensers. So if you already have central air, you should be | able to retrofit a heat pump. You might need a new air handler, | however. | supernova87a wrote: | Yes, that's true. I was just focused on another case of for | example, trying to turn a large building's hot water boiler | into an electrical / heat pump one. That is where the set of | huge new condensers comes in, replacing like 1 previously | dishwasher sized boiler. | ttul wrote: | Never mind being a renter. There isn't much incentive for | landlords to previous feeding cost for their tenants. | mrguyorama wrote: | My previous apartment was built in the 80s and used only | electric resistive hot water heating in an apartment with | quite literally gaps in the windows and outside door sealing, | in a climate that is below freezing for at least a month of | every year. | | That shit should be considered criminal. But noooooo | landlords provide so much value! Think of the poor struggling | landlords! The landlord is a company in boston running | hundreds of the units in this city, across multiple | companies. | jeffbee wrote: | It is the well-known "split incentive". The only solution | is regulatory. A governmental agency needs to step in to | either mandate the efficiency investments or require that | the landlord pays the energy costs. | | http://cbei.psu.edu/split-incentives-and-green-leases/ | ttul wrote: | Agreed. Where I live, the government has a very | progressive approach on climate change. There is a large | carbon tax. Home owners can get a large credit to | retrofit their home with a heat pump. Yet in this market, | there is a shortage of rental housing, so landlords have | little incentive to renovate in any way, let alone to | reduce heating costs for tenants. | | Like Boston, renters suffer with leaky windows and | exorbitant heating bills while home owners tap climate | change refit incentives and reap the considerable | rewards. Need I also remind everyone that, during the | pandemic, almost no home owner had to pay their mortgage, | whereas there was no such abatement for renters. | lnsru wrote: | Sorry for the source in German: | https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2023-03/bundesregier... | | Meanwhile Germany banned gas furnaces and oil heaters. Green | fascism has won. Unbelievable. Old real estate just lost | EUR50k-100k in one night. Let me tell, that 0,4EUR/kWh is more or | less normal electricity price here. | throwway120385 wrote: | I wouldn't go so far as to call it green fascism, but where I | live right now we have to fire up our generators regularly and | sometimes the power will go out for several days during winter | storms. So forcing us to switch to electricity is risking the | lives of some of my neighbors because it's not a reliable | source of heat for us. | | If we're going to be required to do this, they should require | the public utility to maintain the lines to the degree that | they can survive the frequent windstorms and snowstorms that | happen here. | lnsru wrote: | It would be ok having sane timeline for heat pumps conversion | for coming decade. But now it's fascism just telling, that no | gas furnaces anymore starting next year. There is no plan, | there is no strategy. Just pure ideological nonsense. Close | nuclear power plants, ban gas furnaces. Bun coal and run heat | pumps on coal power. Great plan! | | Edit: and yeah, I just lost EUR100k tonight. That's rough sum | for house insulation, ventilation system and heat pump | installation. | mikeyouse wrote: | There are plenty of supplemental heat heat-pumps that have a | gas burner for very cold days or extended power outages. | mrguyorama wrote: | What systems don't need electricity? Growing up, my oil fired | furnace still needed electricity to spark it and pump it. | Blowers don't run on oil. If you live in a place that gets | cold, you should probably have enough insulation that | occasional power loss isn't life threatening. | | In fact, we once lost power all of christmas morning, before | we had even turned up the heat for the day. We snuggled in a | bed for a while. Just keep blankets and jackets around. The | human body produces about 100w of heat at rest. Usually food | and water become bigger problems first. | favsq wrote: | >Green fascism has won. Unbelievable. | | Unbelievable that in Europe the government tells you what to | do? If anything it would be unbelievable if you could whatever | you desired. | TheGigaChad wrote: | [dead] | jansan wrote: | I would not call is fascism, but totalitarianism is not far off | the mark. Luckily the liberal democrats (a party in Germany) | finally grew some balls and stopped at least the most extreme | demands of the greens. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-03-31 23:01 UTC)