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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

#181

Post by callalex »

Detrytus wrote: post #121
herpdyderp wrote: post #5

The states listed are: - California - Colorado - Maine - Maryland - Massachusetts - New Jersey - New York - Oregon - Rhode Island

Why would anyone need a heat pump in California, given the climate there? I can understand north-eastern states, but not this. Is it a case of mindlessly jumping on "progressive" bandwagon? EDIT: I actually spent one winter in San Diego, and apartments there don't even have any heating installed (except occasional fireplace in the living room). I know that more to the north it might get worse, but by how much?

Everything was built in the 40’s-60’s and the average amount of insulation is 0. I live in the mildest part of CA, the San Francisco Bay Area. Today the overnight lows were in the mid 30’s and the high will be about 50. Without heating my indoor temperature would be around 50 which I find unacceptable.

I’m not sure what your bogeyman “progressive” bandwagon has to do with not wanting to live in 50° living spaces?

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

#182

Post by ajross »

Detrytus wrote: post #121
herpdyderp wrote: post #5

The states listed are: - California - Colorado - Maine - Maryland - Massachusetts - New Jersey - New York - Oregon - Rhode Island

Why would anyone need a heat pump in California, given the climate there? I can understand north-eastern states, but not this. Is it a case of mindlessly jumping on "progressive" bandwagon? EDIT: I actually spent one winter in San Diego, and apartments there don't even have any heating installed (except occasional fireplace in the living room). I know that more to the north it might get worse, but by how much?

For the same reason people in California install heat and air conditioning? Heat pumps aren't a new product market, they're a more efficient variant of products the market already buys.

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

#183

Post by sokoloff »

czbond wrote: post #133
wtallis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AC is just a heat pump that doesn't give you the option of running it backwards. There can be good and bad implementations of either.

New to heat pumps. Can I replace sub-components of an existing AC system with a heat pump for benefits of both?

Not really. You replace your existing AC with a split heat pump. It's not a mix-and-match situation, but the heat pump will both heat and cool and, if you already have existing ductwork that's correctly sized, you should be fine to just drop in a heat pump. (In an extreme heating dominated climate, you could have ducts that are too small for a heat pump, but adequately sized for AC and a furnace. That's pretty uncommon though.)

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

#184

Post by dhosek »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #28
mikeyouse wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

My ex-wife had a two-day power outage last month (it was only a few hours at my apartment) during a cold snap. She has gas heat, but the problem is that the heat gets circulated by fans¹ which are powered by—electricity.

She had to get a hotel room for the night because she wasn’t comfortable sleeping with the gas fireplace on.

⸻

1. I would guess that thermostats also powered by electricity not working would add to the complication.

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

#185

Post by UncleOxidant »

readingnews wrote: post #86

I just replaced a furnace... everyone I called for a quote would not touch a heat pump with a 20foot pole, or they wanted prices that were 2X what a separate furnace and AC would cost to install. It was very strange. This is the second home where I had this experience.. basically, they really did not want to install it. I ended up going with gas as no local person would install/warranty a heat pump, or, it was priced…

Had exactly the same experience recently. It seems like there are plenty of good mini-split heatpump systems that will work down to 0F (or even lower) without any kind of backup heat source. But if you're replacing a forced air furnace that feeds an existing ducts the only options are heatpumps that need to have backup heat under 30F. So essentially you're buying 2 furnaces in one which increases the cost. I'm in the PNW where it rarely goes below 10F so the minisplit systems would work fine without backup.

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

#186

Post by ajross »

sokoloff wrote: post #178
ajross wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's not an innovative sector, though a lot of the blame belongs with the hardware manufacturers and not the installers. FWIW, the quotes I got for installation weren't that awful. But getting it hooked up to the Nest thermostat turned out to be a 2-day process and require a subcontractor to show up.

I've installed two Nest thermostats and there's industry standardized color-coding and functionality and Nest conforms to that. (I don't doubt that you had that problem, but I think that speaks more to the incompetence of the original installer than to the complexity of installing a thermostat with a screen.)

I think it was more that the heat pump itself really wanted to be integrated with the Carrier Official Thermostat (which I think might have been an ecobee but can't remember), and the documentation on how to run it in legacy/standard/on-off mode was missing or confusing.

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

#187

Post by [deleted] »

shadowpho wrote: post #123
nostrademons wrote: post #92

These states really need to get their electric rates down if they want to accelerate adoption of electrification technologies. We were planning to fully electrify our house + transportation in the next few years. PG&E rate hikes and net metering policies put the damper on that. It's now more expensive to fuel a vehicle with electricity than gas, so I'm charging my PHEV at work and using gas for the rest. We have sola…

> It's now more expensive to fuel a vehicle with electricity than gas How is that possible? Even at 20c/kWh it's still a good 4x cost difference I though

[deleted]

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

#188

Post by yterdy »

readingnews wrote: post #86

I just replaced a furnace... everyone I called for a quote would not touch a heat pump with a 20foot pole, or they wanted prices that were 2X what a separate furnace and AC would cost to install. It was very strange. This is the second home where I had this experience.. basically, they really did not want to install it. I ended up going with gas as no local person would install/warranty a heat pump, or, it was priced…

Reminds me of the hissy fit plumbers made over no-flush urinals.

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

#189

Post by IndrekR »

readingnews wrote: post #86

I just replaced a furnace... everyone I called for a quote would not touch a heat pump with a 20foot pole, or they wanted prices that were 2X what a separate furnace and AC would cost to install. It was very strange. This is the second home where I had this experience.. basically, they really did not want to install it. I ended up going with gas as no local person would install/warranty a heat pump, or, it was priced…

That sounds like a fantastic opportunity for a fresh company to take over the market. Heat as a service.

It costs about 2kUSD to get air to air exchange heatpump installed here (minisplit, includes the cost of the pump, EU). Takes approx 3 hours.

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

#190

Post by bruce511 »

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…

I'm not in NE, so forgive me if this is obvious, but high electricity prices might make solar attractive to you. (Unrelated to the heat-pump question.)

I'm in a similar high-priced environment, but we get a fair amount of sun. I'm getting around a 16% return on capital based on electricity usage reduction.

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