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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

#601

Post by torpid »

kccqzy wrote: post #473
Whatarethese wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like some pretty poor planning. Modern heat pumps including the ones that I'm familiar with work down to around -5F. They aren't very efficient obviously at that low temp but mine also has a resistive backup that fires up if needed.

OP said "for 11 years" in their post. So I assume they have a unit that's at least 11 years old. Not really comparable with a modern unit.

This building opened 11 years ago and I've been a tenant since then. The HVAC is 2013. Each floor has ~20 apartments and each floor connects to a rooftop unit. The hallways are forced air and stay toasty, it's just the apartments that are on mini splits.

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

#602

Post by rmm »

jbarham wrote: post #590
paranoidrobot wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> will do nothing for emissions How can that be? Direct consumption emissions are eliminated. Those with solar (a growing percentage) reduce their indirect emissions from grid non-renewable generators. And there is a growing percentage of green generation on the grid.

>> will do nothing for emissions > How can that be? Because a reduction of domestic gas usage will just be diverted to less efficient LNG exports. Given that by far the largest source of Victoria's electricity generation capacity is from dirty brown coal [1] if anything banning domestic gas usage might even make emissions worse since it will force people to use only electricity for cooking and heating. > Direct consu…

This. Have friends in this industry.

The biggest pushers of no domestic gas are the producers and finance guys. They make a lot more money on exports.

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

#603

Post by pama »

defrost wrote: post #583
nroets wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says nothing about the cost of shipping gas across the globe. It only says 44% of exports are by pipeline. If shipping makes it an order of magnitude more expensive, then there is no global price.

Order of magnitude? Large (not ultra large) oil tankers might carry 200,000 tonnes and consume 25 ton of heavy bunker fuel per day. LNG gas carriers equally have their own stats. This is something you can (or at the very least should be able to) back of envelope estimate ... https://www.planete-energies.com/en/media/article/transporti... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA9... Now you just nee…

Once the pipe is built, the maintenance cost is very low, much lower than maintaining and using a tanker.

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

#604

Post by torpid »

jrockway wrote: post #381
torpid wrote: post #367

I live in an old furniture factory converted into lofts. LEED certified of course, with mini splits instead of forced air in each unit. This is in the midwest. For the past 11 years, every season it's failed to maintain minimum temperature of 68 degrees when it hits below 5 degrees outside, or maintain cooling in the summer. Another adjacent building built 2 years after this one with the exact same setup, same story.…

Emergency heat was under-installed. In the midwest, you have to have it, and it will suck down a ton of electricity for the handful of days a year you need it. Being entirely reliant on mini-splits without resistive emergency heating is a very strange choice, and it's not what heat pump advocates are recommending. The idea behind heat pumps is to eliminate the need for the natural gas distribution infrastructure. As…

We have natural gas running into the building but not for the residents. All the first floor commercial tenants, and the hallways have the luxury of forced air. Just the apartment units that are cold.

There's several apartments with broken mini split head units, and last I heard the other adjacent building, they've been working to connect the apartments to the forced air ducts in the hallways they think will take the load off.

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

#605

Post by letitbeirie »

smcleod wrote: post #384
bagels wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the heat pump will reduce energy use to maybe 1/3 of a gas furnace, but natural gas is something like 6x cheaper for the same amount of energy, so it is an expensive folly. If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities to reduce prices and or stop the attacks on solar installation.

Natural gas won’t stay cheap. It was cheap here in Australia 10 years ago and now it’s so expensive no one can afford to run gas heating and it’s only going up. Now (thankfully) the government has banned the installation of new gas heating and a lot of people are getting rid of gas cooking, hot water heating etc… it’s for the best.

Depends where you are.

In the US natural gas is a byproduct of shale oil extraction and we have a limited capacity to move or export it so it's almost priced as a waste product.

It's unlikely that electricity will be any cheaper than gas soon either, since that's where 40% (and growing, as our coal and nuclear fleet are retired) of our electricity comes from.

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

#606

Post by Schnitz »

bagels wrote: post #214
mdasen wrote: post #174

One of the big problems with heat pumps in New England is that our electricity costs 1.7x the US average ( https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... ). If you're in the South, a heat pump makes perfect sense. You're going to want AC anyway and it'll be way more efficient and save a ton of money when you want heat. In most of the country, even if it gets cold your electricity prices are still a t…

Right, the heat pump will reduce energy use to maybe 1/3 of a gas furnace, but natural gas is something like 6x cheaper for the same amount of energy, so it is an expensive folly. If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities to reduce prices and or stop the attacks on solar installation.

Natural gas prices have gone through the roof in CA, people with old gas furnaces are the hardest hit in winter. We saved quite a bit when we upgraded to a heat pump.

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

#607

Post by newZWhoDis »

beerandt wrote: post #489
mdasen wrote: post #174

One of the big problems with heat pumps in New England is that our electricity costs 1.7x the US average ( https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph... ). If you're in the South, a heat pump makes perfect sense. You're going to want AC anyway and it'll be way more efficient and save a ton of money when you want heat. In most of the country, even if it gets cold your electricity prices are still a t…

We tried one in the south and it was a pretty horrible experience, because of our high humidity in the cold. The outside unit constantly froze up, which even ideally requires a defrost cycle (wasting energy pumping heat back outside), or worse, uses heating element outside just to make operable. While those cycles run, heat couldn't. Except that even emergency heat (heating element inside) would disable the outside d…

You likely had an old, low SEER heat pump. The fact that it had emergency heat at all says so.

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

#608

Post by newZWhoDis »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #436
newZWhoDis wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Higher efficiency panels + vertical panels would help. Most houses have decent south-facing walls. Ground mount is also an option in many places.

6.7kW ground mount here in NM, still can't heat my home in winter in this climate (would need 21kW with my Mitsubishi hyper-heat units). We have relatively OK passive solar contributions too.

6.7kw is tiny. The smallest install I’ve personally seen is 15kw.

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

#609

Post by gnicholas »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #588
gnicholas wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP was complaining about CA, and this appears to be an proposed law in AZ. It could affect CA utility prices because it relates to export, but it's not up to CA to decide what laws are passed in another state, governing the usage of land in that state.

In California the switch to NEM 3.0 more or less means that folks with solar will get socked with high monthly fees and much lower export rates (roughly wholesale instead of retail). NEM 3.0 came into effect in April of last year.

> folks with solar will get socked

That's not quite right. Existing installs are grandfathered for 20 years, right? [1]

1: https://www.ecowatch.com/solar/net-metering/net-metering-3-0

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

#610

Post by gnicholas »

bagels wrote: post #512
gnicholas wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't change the calculus for switching. It's the same fixed cost either way. The price is simply going up for customers who are not poor. I don't see how this makes someone more or less likely to switch to solar, since the dollar amount they can save stays the same. An analogy: your kid's preschool has an option where you can volunteer once a month and save $50/month. One day, they announce that they are going…

Previously: Spend $60k to save $200/month Now: Spend $60k to save $100/month Break even would then be much further in to the future. Solar is a large capital expenditure, and this change reduces the return on that investment.

Can you explain how the income-based fee results in lower savings? It is a fixed fee that applies whether or not you have solar.

To be clear, I think the income-based fee is a bad idea, but I just don't think it changes the calculus on installing solar. I have also had conversations about this specific question with a friend who has a PhD in urban planning, lives in CA, and is in the process of installing solar panels. It's possible she's wrong, but everything she says lines up with what I have read.

It sounds like you're referring to the net metering changes, which are separate from the income-based fee. That does change the calculus, obviously (which is why they grandfathered existing installs for 20 years).

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