Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

wired.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 766 posts

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

#201

Post by qqqwerty »

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…

The PG&E rate increases have a lot more to do with wildfires than it does with supply and demand. Look at SMUD rates, super affordable. I will agree though that it has been super frustrating for these rate increases to be hitting right around when electrification is picking up steam.

With that said, unless you are comparing the most efficient ICE against the least efficient EV's you should still see savings with an EV. If I charged our EV at the peak electricity rate (which I rarely do) it still costs about half as much as a fairly average ICE vehicle on a per mile basis. Compared against some of the most efficient ICE vehicles (hybrids like the Prius) I would still come out ahead, maybe by only 20% though. But again, that is comparing the worst case scenario where I only charge at peak rates. In practice we probably average around half of the peak rate from a mix of at home, at work and around town charging.

I will admit though that it is not a particularly good look for CA regulators to be pushing electrification so hard while also allowing huge rate increases. It ends up looking like a huge handout to the investor owned utilities. And the proposed rate changes that implement an income based fix charge are absolutely idiotic. With batteries coming down in price we could soon see the economics of going off grid become much more attractive, which would further exacerbate the situation (CA IOUs will need battery adopters to stay connected to the grid to help with intermittency)

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

#202

Post by nostromo »

jmtulloss wrote: post #195
nostromo wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Potentially, yes. But when we asked about this we were told that not all heat pumps and head units are compatible -- so we seem to be locked in based on brand, model, and refrigerant type.

FWIW there are different sizes but they are standardized and you can adapt most sizes to each other (although on the compressor side you only would want to size down). If you ever need to replace it you'll need to be careful with the line sizes but you should be able to find a compatible unit to your existing install. Controllers, otoh, are a different story. You will probably need to replace your head units if you a…

Thank you. You're more helpful than the last service tech we talked to. :)

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

#203

Post by jwells89 »

I have an aging gas furnace that’s about due for replacement and a heat pump may be in the cards.

Something I’ll need to research is how a heat pump would compare to electric heated flooring, though because the way my house’s HVAC system is set up the upper floor is heated before the lower floor, which exacerbates the natural temperature difference that results from heat rising and means the lower floor can be chilly while the upper floor is warm. My AC is fairly new still too which makes me think that installing heated floor in the base floor, letting heat rise to heat the upper floor with the old furnace remaining as a backup might be smarter.

Electricity costs aren’t too bad here ($0.10-$0.14/kWh) so switching from consuming gas to consuming electricity won’t impact bills too much.

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

#204

Post by oramit »

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…

This is one of my big annoyances as well. Whatever happened to the idea of electricity that was too cheap to measure?

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

#206

Post by sumtechguy »

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?

Things like the ducts plug right in.

Other things like the blower and condenser may need to be swapped out. It also depends on how old your system is. The controller will probably most certainly need to be swapped out. Do the normal thing with contractors like that. Call 3 different dudes have them come out and give you an estimate. Tell them you want quotes for partial swap out, full swap out, and 3 different price points. Within a couple of weeks you will have most of the knowledge you need if you want to do it.

My parents when they switched out they replaced both the indoor unit and outdoor too because they were 30+ years old at that point.

Now you probably have NG? If so you can also leave that fairly in place as is. I did that with my prev house. Then have the heat pump for when it is warm outside. Then switch over to NG when it gets to a particular temp. I set it to switch over at about 30F. I could have gone as low as 15 with that unit. It worked decently for most of the time. Where I live it maybe gets in the 20s for about a week a year at most. So the heat pump worked decently.

One thing though I would say is if you have a older home especially 1990 or older start with the insulation. It is wildly cheaper to get and gets you part of the way there. Many power companies even run deals where they will help you buy it.

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

#207

Post by sgc »

jwells89 wrote: post #203

I have an aging gas furnace that’s about due for replacement and a heat pump may be in the cards. Something I’ll need to research is how a heat pump would compare to electric heated flooring, though because the way my house’s HVAC system is set up the upper floor is heated before the lower floor, which exacerbates the natural temperature difference that results from heat rising and means the lower floor can be chilly…

You can do both. For example: https://www.arcticheatpumps.com/radiant-floor-heating-with-h...

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

#208

Post by samatman »

TheBlight wrote: post #98
zbrozek wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Aren't PG&E gas rates substantially higher than their electric rates?

There are a couple ways to interpret what you're saying: that PG&E charges a higher rate relative to the national average for gas vs. electricity, which is what I think you mean, and that PG&E charges more for a joule of gas than a joule of electricity.

Presuming you meant it the first way, it's still possible that heating with gas is cheaper, since the national average for a joule's worth of natural gas is quite a bit cheaper than the same for electricity.

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

#209

Post by sokoloff »

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

At 20c/kWh, that's ~5c/mi. For there to be a 4x cost difference, a gas car getting 30 mpg would have to be paying $6/gal for gas.

In MA, I bought gas yesterday in our ICE car for $3.10/gal. Our electricity is $0.27/kWh. An ICE car getting 31 mpg is $0.10/mi for energy. Our EV getting just under 4mi/kWh is $0.07/mi for energy.

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

#210

Post by gniv »

david422 wrote: post #60

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…

Did you check the hysteresis value? I've had similar issues with some radiators, and the hysteresis was set to 0 (don't know why it's even allowed), which caused it to run a lot more than normal.
Post reply on HN