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Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

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Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#31

Post by acidburnNSA »

mkozlows wrote: post #19
acidburnNSA wrote: post #14

Perhaps ironically, oil fired generators have to fire up to supply enough electricity for these cold snaps. Low-carbon nuclear, high-carbon fracked gas, and high-carbon oil are the three largest sources of electricity in Maine during deep freezes. https://www.themainewire.com/2023/02/amid-cold-snap-maines-e...

It's not that ironic. Electrification isn't a "welp, we're done now, yay" thing, it's one of two parallel paths that works together for decarbonization. 1. Electrify all the things 2. Clean up the electrical supply Obviously if you only look at one of the paths in isolation, it doesn't solve problems ("it's great that everything's electric, but electricity is still high carbon"/"it's great that electricity is clean,…

Why electrify all the things instead of decarbonize all the things? Lots of places use zero carbon nuclear district heating to take advantage of the hot water for building heat. It can be pumped 100 km from the plant as it is at Beznau.

This makes nuclear more cost effective as well since you're using a valuable product (heat) that is otherwise wasted.

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#32

Post by hirundo »

aidenn0 wrote: post #10
londons_explore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 'enthusiasts', a dual heat source system is a good plan. But regular folk want to just pay the energy bill and have a warm home, whatever the weather outside. They don't care to worry about lighting the wood stove on super cold days. They don't want to have to have a wood delivery separate from their energy bill, and be carting it around in boxes. They don't want to huddle into the room with the wood stove becaus…

There is no modern system that "just works" whatever the weather. We had an ice storm when I was growing up and lost power for 3 days. Wood stove worked great as a backup, not much else would have.

The woodstove is my primary heat source, it isn't modern, and it works regardless of the weather. But it isn't difficult to image circumstances where it fails, since it almost happened to me. I had a gout attack that made it very painful to bring in firewood. If I had central heat it would have been a matter of flipping a switch on the thermostat. Instead it got so cold that I just suffered the pain, like walking on a broken foot. After that I got my central heat fixed. It's nice to have both options.

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#33

Post by whazor »

hedora wrote: post #15
aidenn0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no modern system that "just works" whatever the weather. We had an ice storm when I was growing up and lost power for 3 days. Wood stove worked great as a backup, not much else would have.

Dual source heatpump + Solar + battery + propane generator might be OK. The batteries would need to somehow be kept warm though. (The solar and battery are there to stretch out the propane supply until the delivery truck gets past whatever road blockages exist, and then addresses the inevitable shortage cause by the electricity going out.) Of course, an 80% efficient wood stove costs a small fraction as much as the a…

Heatpump also needs to be kept warm, but those pumps do that themselves.

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#34

Post by throwaway894345 »

rsynnott wrote: post #21

I find all this fear mongering about heatpumps in the US currently to be a little odd, because they've been popular in some cold countries in Europe for some time. If there was going to be a problem, there would already have been a problem.

Does Europe have cold countries? According to some quick Googling, the average winter temperature in Norway is still warmer than in Iowa (a not-particularly-cold state).

(FWIW I think heat pumps are interesting, I drive an electric car, etc--I'm not speaking from some reflexively anti-electrification ideological position)

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#35

Post by stanleydrew »

rsynnott wrote: post #21

I find all this fear mongering about heatpumps in the US currently to be a little odd, because they've been popular in some cold countries in Europe for some time. If there was going to be a problem, there would already have been a problem.

The companies making money from older heating methods are doing the fear mongering. That's not particularly odd.

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#36

Post by mkozlows »

londons_explore wrote: post #18

I worry about the 'futureproofness' of heat pumps. Specifically, heat pumps use more energy on cold days. They use a massive amount more energy on the coldest days. Today, if you use double the electricity, it costs double the money. Thats affordable as long as it happens rarely. But, with lots of people getting EV's and heat pumps, and the generation mix getting more wind and solar, I forsee energy companies forcing…

Whether electric companies have that kind of pricing isn't a pure economics question, it's a question of what regulators will alow, and I'm pretty skeptical that regulators would allow that.

But "how does the grid handle spikes in demand" is the really interesting question there, and why more transmission lines (to smooth out supply/demand geographically) and reliable sources of "firm" power are important. Energy storage at scale is potentially really important here, too (and one of the reasons why home batteries are more important to the grid in some ways than home solar).

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#38

Post by rsynnott »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #34
rsynnott wrote: post #21

I find all this fear mongering about heatpumps in the US currently to be a little odd, because they've been popular in some cold countries in Europe for some time. If there was going to be a problem, there would already have been a problem.

Does Europe have cold countries? According to some quick Googling, the average winter temperature in Norway is still warmer than in Iowa (a not-particularly-cold state). (FWIW I think heat pumps are interesting, I drive an electric car, etc--I'm not speaking from some reflexively anti-electrification ideological position)

Northern Scandinavia gets pretty cold. Various parts of Europe also have exceptional extremely cold weather; the average isn't _really_ what you want to think about when it comes to heating systems (well, it matters, in that it's relevant to the cost structure, but you really want your system to be able to deal with the reasonable edge-case weather).

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#39

Post by falcolas »

hedora wrote: post #15
aidenn0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no modern system that "just works" whatever the weather. We had an ice storm when I was growing up and lost power for 3 days. Wood stove worked great as a backup, not much else would have.

Dual source heatpump + Solar + battery + propane generator might be OK. The batteries would need to somehow be kept warm though. (The solar and battery are there to stretch out the propane supply until the delivery truck gets past whatever road blockages exist, and then addresses the inevitable shortage cause by the electricity going out.) Of course, an 80% efficient wood stove costs a small fraction as much as the a…

Given the need to maintain a ~100°F temperature differential on at least 6 days so far this year (at least here in Montana), a solar-augmented generator is probably not enough.

Our heat pump has a natural gas backup, and even it was running at about a 60-70% duty cycle on those days.

All that to say: +1 on a wood stove backup.

Re: Heat pumps are defying Maine’s winters and oil industry pushback

#40

Post by luckylion »

hallidave wrote: post #12
londons_explore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For 'enthusiasts', a dual heat source system is a good plan. But regular folk want to just pay the energy bill and have a warm home, whatever the weather outside. They don't care to worry about lighting the wood stove on super cold days. They don't want to have to have a wood delivery separate from their energy bill, and be carting it around in boxes. They don't want to huddle into the room with the wood stove becaus…

In cold climates, heat pumps are usually supplemented with electrical resistance heating (or even gas in some cases). The switch over is automatically controlled by the thermostat. No need for a wood stove or other hassles.

And when the electricity fails, all the systems fail. Pretty sure you'd be happy to have a wood stove in that case.
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