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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

#471

Post by bagels »

gregwebs wrote: post #262
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.

There are second order effects from natural gas use in an actual furnace that aren't taken into account in price of energy comparisons. A furnace has to either 1) exhaust out air initially drawn from the house which must be replaced by cold outdoor air coming into the house (this requires more heating of the house) 2) take in fresh cold air for combustion and exhaust that (which requires extra energy to heat up the c…

That is a good point. City permits required us to add vents to our furnace enclosure, which would draw combustion air from the conditioned space, even though it was previously drawing from the attic. I just blocked the vents.

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

#472

Post by bagels »

GenerWork wrote: post #253
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.

>If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities Why would they reign in one of the best ways to ensure that Calpers remains solvent?

How are they related? Investments in PGE, which has had poor returns?

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

#473

Post by kccqzy »

Whatarethese wrote: post #399
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.…

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.

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

#474

Post by bagels »

nonethewiser wrote: post #470
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.

> If California is serious about this, they need to reign in the utilities to reduce prices and or stop the attacks on solar installation. Why do you think electricity prices are high?

A combination of: mismanagement and corruption. To pay for all the people that PGE murdered with their negligence?

Why do you think electricity prices are high?

Why should the rates be 4x the rest of the country?

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

#475

Post by lr4444lr »

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…

Thing is, HVAC people rob you blind when you need emergency repairs to gas or oil furnaces in the middle of the season. If you have a heat pump as a backup, that can tide you over until you can get off season repair pricing again. That's well worth it to me, even at the higher electricity rates.

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

#476

Post by bagels »

gnicholas wrote: post #351
bagels wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California specific: income based minimum pricing, and 'wholesale' pricing for power sent to the grid.

Income-based base billing is indeed terrible, but it is not an attack on solar. You'd pay it whether you have panels or not. Also, legislators have apparently come to their senses and are looking to repeal it. [1-2] As for the pricing for power sent to the grid, I did mention the changes to net metering, which offer grandfathering for existing installations. 1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-progressive-california-ep…

The high fixed monthly cost regardless of utilization means that compared to previous, my total costs for solar go up, even if my total costs for PGE supplied power don't. That will cause many fewer people to switch to solar or solar + battery.

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

#477

Post by bagels »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #462
jrockway wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any obligation for people's financial trickery to be sustainable. Like, a new power pole costs (say) $1000 regardless of how many watts are going through the wires attached to it. Someone has to pay the person that cut down the tree and hauled it to its final location money. That they loan you money on the infrastructure and you repay through using electricity isn't the actual cost model, it's j…

> Like, a new power pole costs (say) $1000 regardless of how many watts are going through the wires attached to it. Someone has to pay the person that cut down the tree and hauled it to its final location money. That pole is carrying the power for, say, 100 people. Half of them use a below-average amount of electricity. If you stick them with a $100/month fixed fee, they don't need a large solar/battery system to get…

There's a pole in my backyard. It generously connects 8 houses. There is another pole a few hundred feet down the road, also connecting 8 houses.

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

#479

Post by Aloha »

aero_code wrote: post #435
Aloha wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think your math adds up. Combined cycle is like at most 70% efficient, subtract 10% of distribution, you end up with 60%. At 50f my 5T heat pump takes 6.6 kWh to generate 50,000 BTU. 6 kWh of energy takes 71cf of gas to make - accounting for transmission and generation losses. 71cf of gas will make 71,000 BTU of heat, assuming an 80% efficiency furnace, that comes out to 56,000 BTU usable. Yes a heat pump wil…

I don't think the numbers are accurate in the quantity of gas. Since kWh and BTU are both units of energy, finding the cf of gas is unnecessary (assuming the efficiency numbers are correct). 1 kWh = 3.6 megajoules and 1 BTU = 1055 joules The 6.6 kWh of the heat pump is 23.76 MJ which is 22,521 BTU of energy. Assuming that the power plant and distribution are 60%, it would take 37,535 BTU of gas to produce (22,521/60%…

You kinda do need to figure that out - EIA says that it takes 7.42cf of gas to make 1kWh of energy.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=667&t=8

I dont know where EIA gets those numbers, but that was the basis of my calculation. Maybe I shouldn't have multiplied that by the efficiency of the plant, but rather just taken of distribution losses.

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

#480

Post by Aloha »

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.

It was cheap 10 years ago because the global price of gas was cheap, its not now.
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