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Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

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Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#51

Post by Slevin11 »

seiferteric wrote: post #18

Heat pumps look great and definitely planning on getting one (or many) when my hvac system needs replacing, as well as a heat pump water heater. In NorCal I think they are a no-brainer since it doesn't get that cold to begin with, though I am unsure of what options exist to replace a central AC/furnace system, or if it is better to get several smaller ones throughout your house. Though I have to laugh since it was on…

It is technically the correct climate; but unfortunately the incorrect place for them, given the electricity costs and propensity for large power outages during storms (read: times when you actually need heating).

If you are in one of the cities with public utilities where electricity is cheap, then go for it, great choice. But on PG&E, the monetary proposition is awful compared to a gas heater, modern wood stove, or masonry / rocket mass heater.

Given the extreme excess of wood in the region (that otherwise ends up in huge forest fires), it makes a lot of sense to be running an efficient wood stove / masonry / mass heater.

The big loss is of course automation, so it pays to have some automated backup source of heat for when you are out of town, but that could just be whatever heating method you are using already.

If you are already heating using electric baseboards though, yes, definitely move over to a heat pump. It will save you a lot of money. Not as much as natural gas or the others, but savings are savings.

Also, there are plenty of ducted air source heat pumps that work as drop in replacements for gas furnaces. Use one of them if you already have a ducted system that works well and do a heat pump replacement.

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#53

Post by masklinn »

seiferteric wrote: post #18

Heat pumps look great and definitely planning on getting one (or many) when my hvac system needs replacing, as well as a heat pump water heater. In NorCal I think they are a no-brainer since it doesn't get that cold to begin with, though I am unsure of what options exist to replace a central AC/furnace system, or if it is better to get several smaller ones throughout your house. Though I have to laugh since it was on…

> Though I have to laugh since it was only a few years ago there were news articles decrying air conditioning as a climate disaster are now claiming heat pumps are a climate savior...

Because they’re completely coherent but for some reason you’re not thinking any further than “they’re essentially the same device”?

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#54

Post by heironimus »

loeg wrote: post #7
vundercind wrote: post #2

> Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump. Uh, you still need a furnace (though it could be electric) if you live somewhere that ever really gets cold, right? [edit] I mean, seeing it presented as a furnace replacement is weird to me. I’ve always seen it sold as an air conditioner replacement that also happens to heat (with weird characteristics that often confuse people—…

Heatpumps have resistance heating backup for the exceptional periods when it is too cold to make use of the compression system. Most people live somewhere a heatpump would work well.

Problem is, if everyone has resistance backup and it gets really cold, I doubt if the grid could keep up.

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#55

Post by scythe »

scythe wrote: post #24

https://archive.ph/NkfeK

Hijacking my own comment:

I feel like I started talking about heat pumps a long time ago. I'm unable to find evidence for this before 2021. Anyway, it's certainly hit the cultural mainstream really fast over the last couple of years, and the story on the street is... manufacturers are running at capacity, installers have long waiting lists, some people are getting systems installed that aren't right for their space (too big or too small) and regretting it.

It's good that we're doing this, but it feels like a microcosm of our general cultural impatience. There's a limit to how much government subsidies can speed the adoption of a new technology. There are going to be issues with hiring a bunch of technicians to install heat pumps really fast if they suddenly don't have as much work in five years. The Spanish solar-energy debacle of the early 2010s rings in my head.

Maybe instead of setting big, distant, ambitious-sounding targets, we should set shorter, smaller, more gradual targets, and update every couple of years to accelerate in a sustainable way. It's pretty easy to say that the way to decarbonize the economy is "as fast as reasonably possible"; forecasting how fast that will be is hard, unnecessary, and potentially distracting.

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#56

Post by deeviant »

mrpopo wrote: post #27
chankstein38 wrote: post #25

Thank you, that's all I really cared about but I had "read my last free article" so I couldn't even find that out. I'm so tired of the internet.

I want a "Netflix of information". Let me pay 30€/month for unlimited information access, quality, no clickbait and no ads. Of course, seeing what happens with Netflix now, I guess it wouldn't last long until things turn back to the old way...

It's the most obvious thing ever, and it, of course, will never happen.

The new media companies seem completely oblivious to how people consume information. I touch 10+ news sources a day, at a minimum. There is no way in hell I'm going to subscribe to 10+ new services.

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#57

Post by semiquaver »

mikeyouse wrote: post #23
vundercind wrote: post #2

> Death is coming for the old-school gas furnace—and its killer is the humble heat pump. Uh, you still need a furnace (though it could be electric) if you live somewhere that ever really gets cold, right? [edit] I mean, seeing it presented as a furnace replacement is weird to me. I’ve always seen it sold as an air conditioner replacement that also happens to heat (with weird characteristics that often confuse people—…

> Uh, you still need a furnace (though it could be electric) if you live somewhere that ever really gets cold, right? For now - and only in part of the country. Most of the newest models can output 100% of their rating down to something like -5ºF -- they're easy enough to oversize as well, so if your 99% heating load is e.g. 48,000BTU, a 60,000BTU heat pump that's only outputting 80% of rated BTUs due to the extreme…

We have a set of those hyper heat mini splits to supplement a hydronic system which wasn’t expanded to several additions. They’re generally great but during the Midwest’s recent extremely cold snap down to a week or two of negative temperatures they were pretty disappointing and could not keep up. We ended up having to close off a few parts of the house to keep the temperature reasonable in the rest. I think that trusting heat to a heat pump system is not yet feasible in much of the Midwest and northeast.

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#58

Post by zbrozek »

rconti wrote: post #39

Bay Area, just beginning a remodel+expansion of our home. We've never had air conditioning, and our gas furnace is well over 20 years old. We'd likely need to upsize the furnace anyway, and for resale reasons if nothing else, adding A/C (and the attendant larger ducts or whatever else) is a no-brainer while we have the house apart. A heat pump is absolutely a no-brainer in our case. I like being able to get away from…

PG&E electric rates are so high that it's operationally more expensive to use a heat pump than a condensing gas system. The heat pump is the better deal practically everywhere else in the contiguous US.

I'm installing a heat pump system in PG&E territory as part of a remodel, but pairing it with a large solar system.

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#59

Post by VBprogrammer »

vundercind wrote: post #36
lotsofpulp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the redundancy of natural gas. So far, in less than 40 years, I have been kept warm for multiple days on 3 separate occasions by having access to gas while the electricity did not work. Also, I was able to keep cooking. One of the states in the article is Oregon too, where I have family that just a few weeks ago lost electricity for 4 days, but were able to use an electric generator to keep the air handler goi…

Yeah if my heat were 100% electric I’d have to install a wood heating-stove to feel like I wasn’t being irresponsible. Or maybe get a couple portable kerosene heaters.

I think a sensible option, if you live in a place where electrical grids goes out for a couple of days fairly routinely, would be a transfer switch and a generator. If sized well enough you could use it to run a resistance heater (the cheap portable type) to keep one or two rooms warm in an extreme scenario.

Re: Nine US states are teaming up to accelerate the adoption of heat pumps

#60

Post by david422 »

I recently got heat pumps in the hopes that I could phase out my oil furnace. What I can say so far is:

The temperature is wildly inconsistent. I don't know if this is a software issue, a hardware issue, or just the way heatpumps work. I've had the installer come back and look at it, I've had the heat pump rep come and look at it too. They basically checked everything and tried to convince me this is normal.

With oil, I can set the temperature to, say, 70, and the temperature will stay at 70.

With heatpumps, I can set a temperature and it can vary by ... let's say 8 degrees. That's a lot. I have my bedroom temperature at 66, and the wall thermostat often gets up to 73+. I look at the software and it tells me the room is 68. Is the hardware not reporting the right temp? Does the software just suck? The heatpumps also vary in efficiency, so when it's warm outside it tends to overheat, and when it's cold outside it tends to struggle.

Wondering whether I got lemons or if other people have similar experiences.

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