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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

#301

Post by nostrademons »

burkaman wrote: post #144
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 This is very hard to believe, what are you paying for electricity? California gas prices are also way above the national average at the moment. Here's a per-state comparison from last year, I'm sure it's a bit out of date but I doubt things have completed flipped in a single year: https://energyinnovation.org/2023/07/27/ev-fill-up-savings/

PG&E is 62 cents/kwh for peak rate above-baseline, I believe 52 cents/kwh for off-peak (which most EV charging would be). Gas prices where I'm at are around $4.20/gal. I ran the numbers for my Mazda CX-90 PHEV SUV, which gets about 1.7 mi/kwh on electric and about 23 mpg gas. It's about 30 cents/mile on electric and about 18 cents/mile on gas.

For this tank only I have been charging at home (and at work, and anywhere I can), because I want to see how much mileage I can get out of a tank with full PHEV driving. In this regard it hasn't disappointed; I'm at 1200 miles and just passed half a tank of gas. But once I have a baseline for how much of my driving can be done on electric, I'll probably switch to just charging at work (where it's free) and using gas for most other driving, because it's so much cheaper.

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

#302

Post by aqfamnzc »

mauvehaus wrote: post #282
aqfamnzc wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel like the number of invisible footguns was manageable? That's always my concern with diy trades stuff, the things that seem fine at install but come back to bite you 6mo later.

In general with contractors, you aren't paying for them to do the simple stuff right. You're paying them to get the one or two weird bits of the job done quickly and efficiently because they've seen something like it before and have the tools and parts on their truck.

That's what I was asking about. How likely I am to succeed at a DIY job seems to depend on the number of the "weird bits" as you describe them.

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

#303

Post by xutopia »

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 in Canada and we have heat pumps with secondary heat sources for when it gets really cold. Mine is with gas.

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

#304

Post by aurizon »

theteapot wrote: post #268
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…

> Heat pumps do work into freezing New England temperatures, but they're a bit less efficient as it gets to zero fahrenheit. What's the temperature in the ground? Did you look at a ground source heat pump ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump )

The big cost for ground source HP, is the large area you have to dig with 4 foot deep trenches. I have seen one where the installer digs 2 trenches about 16 feet apart and 30 feet long down to 6 feet. They then use a soil drill to make about 50-60 holes between the trenches and insert 17 foot plastic pipes(1 inch diameter) They then connect the pipes on each side to a common pipe(3"), all well sealed ABS pipes below the frost line. This allow for a large volume of coupled and warm(55 degrees) that the heat pump extracts/deposits heat as needed for heating/cooling the home. This drilling is a lot cheaper than a dozen or more 3 foot trenchs for the water loops.

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

#305

Post by jefftk »

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…

That's right. In MA I'm paying a marginal $0.316/kWh for electric and $1.999/therm for natural gas, heating a two-family 10-person building. Switching to a heat pump would be an additional $1k/y in heating costs, and that's ignoring the cost of the system (which is substantial even after the $20k MA subsidy this article discusses).

More: https://www.jefftk.com/p/running-the-numbers-on-a-heat-pump

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

#306

Post by jefftk »

xutopia wrote: post #303
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 in Canada and we have heat pumps with secondary heat sources for when it gets really cold. Mine is with gas.

These sorts of programs generally require you to disable your existing heating system, and don't allow you to run it only in warmer weather.

Ex, Massachusetts: https://www.masssave.com/-/media/Files/PDFs/Save/Residential...

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

#307

Post by nostrademons »

callalex wrote: post #143
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…

> In a way this is the market doing what it's supposed to. There's a shortage of electricity because of everyone doing electrification upgrades, so the price of electricity rises PG&E electricity rates have absolutely nothing to do with free markets. The only thing setting PG&E rates is corruption and incompetence, but mostly corruption.

Customer choices in response to electric rates is absolutely free markets, though.

I think that there's a lot wrong with the utility system in California (and the corruption actually incentivizes incompetence - the only way for executives to increase profits, make the stock go up, and get higher bonuses is to increase their costs, so PG&E is very good at inflating costs by doing stuff like burning down cities). But given that PG&E is as incompetent as they are, the logical market response is to make yourself as independent from them as possible.

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

#308

Post by sokoloff »

what_ever wrote: post #275
gnicholas wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> stop the attacks on solar installation I've not heard of any attacks, just reductions in subsidies (tax credits, net metering). Can you share what you're referring to?

Is net metering a subsidy?

Absolutely.

If a customer is permitted to buy as much electricity as they want at a fixed price while also being able to sell as much as they can at a different time at a fixed price, it seems like there's an obvious subsidy happening anytime they sell electricity at other than when the wholesale price is the highest or buy other than when the wholesale price is lowest. (In areas with an excess of solar generation capacity, these distortions become quite large.)

(I'm still all for these subsidies on the balance of factors; we just shouldn't pretend that they're not subsidies.)

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

#309

Post by bluGill »

Detrytus wrote: post #264
BorgHunter wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heat pumps are much more common in warm areas than cold ones, because the difference between an A/C and a heat pump is really just the ability to reverse the refrigerant flow, and they're very efficient at heating in mildly cold weather. I grew up in Florida, and pretty much every house there had a heat pump even thirty years ago, with electric resistive heating that kicks in when ambient temperatures drop below 40F…

My sister just got a heat pump installed in her new house in Poland, where temperatures occasionally drop to 0 Fahrenheit. I wouldn't say they only work in "mildly cold weather" - as per new EU policy heat pumps will be one of the few legal heat sources, even in countries such as Sweden.

I consider a winter where the coldest it gets is 0F a mild winter. The important thing isn't average or normal it is the worst case. I've personally seen -25F here in the last 10 years - it was only one time and lasted about a week, but that means the HVAC system needs to work down to at least -25F just in case.

I don't know what the climate is like in Poland. Maybe 0F is as cold as you ever get and you are okay. Maybe your system will work to -20F even though you haven't tested it. But your might have a system like mine that while it can deliver heat at 0F, it is sized such that below 30F it can't deliver enough heat (I have the backup system for those colder days)

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

#310

Post by turquoisevar »

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

Can’t speak for PG&E, but I know from experience that it’s cousin SDG&E (the most expensive in the country I believe) will charge more than 60¢/kWh in the summer during certain times of the day and I’ve even had it be over 80¢ at certain times if memory serves me right.

They’ve recently retired and restructured a bunch of rate plans, but almost all historical and current rates can be found on their website[0]. Somehow they still managed to keep things nice and complex.

Keep in mind that none of these reflect so called CCA pricing, which is another story in of itself. Same for the “baseline allowance” after which rates go up, although they’ve now seemed to have structured is a discount to somewhat simplify rate comparisons.

0: https://www.sdge.com/total-electric-rates

Edit: Got curious so looked at some statistics. Top lists of most expensive electricity rates all mention Alaska and Hawaii, ok fair enough, but even in the contiguous states California isn’t even mentioned somehow.

At the same time there are articles like[1] these[2] that claim SDG&E was the most expensive (at the time).

So I guess what I’m saying is that I’m not sure.

1: https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/fox-5-asks-sdge-why...

2: https://www.cbs8.com/article/money/amped/san-diego-has-the-h...

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