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I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

heatpumped.org

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Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#51

Post by glimshe »

tommiegannert wrote: post #28

Transparency is great, but let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables. We only have one nice planet to live on, and there are others who want to keep being able to live comfortably on it, I've heard. Oil/gas is a potent drug that is difficult to vane off of. (Arguably solar/battery has the same problem as oil: let's dig and refine stuff from the ground, and not care ab…

It's not only potent, but fantastically cost-effective. There is a reason it's popular, or so I've heard.

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#52

Post by Kim_Bruning »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #50
Kim_Bruning wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets interesting with batteries, panels, and spot prices. You can eg. offset (some of) your winter costs in summer. And it does depend on your latitude and local market. It's an interesting optimization problem.

Maybe - but then you end up in a situation like author where delivery costs trump generation, because the additional winter capacity does not come from nowhere. And the actual best case is what happens in California - mass deployment of batteries.

Ah, so ultimately the author did end up paying less. The problem was they were on the wrong plan.

And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof.

This varies per house/plot, per contract, and per latitude. But in some situations you can end up at net 0 or better.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#53

Post by KptMarchewa »

Kim_Bruning wrote: post #52
KptMarchewa wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe - but then you end up in a situation like author where delivery costs trump generation, because the additional winter capacity does not come from nowhere. And the actual best case is what happens in California - mass deployment of batteries.

Ah, so ultimately the author did end up paying less. The problem was they were on the wrong plan. And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the…

>And the optimization problem at this point in time is that -ideally- you want to have some amount of excess generation on your solar panels, then time shift that with batteries to a point in time when power is more expensive, and have some amount of excess capacity in batteries so you can also sell that power; versus the (amortized) cost of that extra capacity; and/or what will actually fit on your roof.

Yep, that's the ideal case - given you're in the region where you have reliable sunshine in the winter. It's not the case where I live, when we had total of 7 hours of sun in December 2023.

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#54

Post by hsuduebc2 »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #43
barrettondricka wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great tip indeed. However, please don't use anybody else's email. (No @example.com) Preferably use the domain of the website itself, or of a SEO spam website.

I use emails of politicians I don't like.

+1

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#55

Post by mapt »

BeefWellington wrote: post #32
rayiner wrote: post #10

I don’t know where this person is, but electricity is wildly expensive in many places. On a cold day, a good heat pump might give you say a COP of 2. So with 5 kW, you get out 10 kW of heat, or 35,000 BTU/hour. In say MA, at $0.25 per kWh retail, that’s $1.25/hour. In Boston, natural gas costs $1.5/therm, which is 100,000 BTUs. With a 96% efficient condensing boiler, you’re looking at $0.55/hour for the same 35,000 B…

PG&E is basically California, where it can hit north of $0.50/kWh pretty regularly. I think it's worth noting in this article too that the author mentions they can now heat and cool parts of their house they weren't previously, so I'm gonna guess their actual usage went up and this is basically surprise for no reason.

If you look at the thermal design of a house, this strategy doesn't make a lot of sense. There's no thermal barriers between rooms, and plenty of airflow if the HVAC circulation is functioning.

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#56

Post by datadeft »

tommiegannert wrote: post #28

Transparency is great, but let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables. We only have one nice planet to live on, and there are others who want to keep being able to live comfortably on it, I've heard. Oil/gas is a potent drug that is difficult to vane off of. (Arguably solar/battery has the same problem as oil: let's dig and refine stuff from the ground, and not care ab…

> that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables.

You mean using energy sources that have a much better / kwh performance (both in terms of reduction of ecological footprint and price)?

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#57

Post by datadeft »

nottorp wrote: post #33
tommiegannert wrote: post #28

Transparency is great, but let's not forget that the point of switching to electricity is to be able to use renewables. We only have one nice planet to live on, and there are others who want to keep being able to live comfortably on it, I've heard. Oil/gas is a potent drug that is difficult to vane off of. (Arguably solar/battery has the same problem as oil: let's dig and refine stuff from the ground, and not care ab…

That sounds good and altruistic... ... for the high income techies that make most of the HN audience. Ask a normal person how they feel about paying for the heat pumps and having an extra hundred or two on their ongoing heating bill and you may get a different answer. Up to and including them not being able to cut expenses anywhere else to compensate for this.

Exactly that. There was not a single global civilization on Earth that had low per capita energy use. High energy use per capita starts with the price.

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#58

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nottorp wrote: post #35
8fingerlouie wrote: post #31

Personally i save about 75% with my heatpump over my old gas furnace. We used around 1500m3 - 1800m3 worth of natural gas per year, and for the past couple of years we've used between 4000kWh and 5000kWh on the heat pump per year. Granted, natural gas is expensive in Denmark, and while electricity is also normally expensive, if you have electrical heating you're excempt from paying taxes on electricity usage above 40…

> while electricity is also normally expensive, if you have electrical heating you're excempt from paying taxes on electricity usage above 4000 kWh per year :) So it can be done with state subsidies, but worldwide even the one time bonuses for EVs are being canceled. States aren't likely to give up on even more revenue.

It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. It’s usually in these country’s national security interests, let alone environmental interest, to push away from gas and oil given that they are often imported from hostile nations. America doesn’t really have that same problem, but Denmark and China do.

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#59

Post by ssuds »

nottorp wrote: post #36
mapt wrote: post #2

I wanted to read this, but not enough to make an account. Whoever is publishing this blog should consider whether a $0 paywall is worthwhile.

Interesting; by the time i read this i didn't get asked for an email. 7 hours later than your post. The author has seen the light? :)

Hey! Yeah, I figured out how to turn off my content gate last night soon after their comment. Was never my intention to force people to put in their email who didn’t want to and I love seeing a healthy discussion around the content of the article and not just the headline. That gate is on by default on my newsletter platform so I didn’t think much of it when I originally submitted the link but totally understand why some folks were frustrated.

Re: I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

#60

Post by seanmcdirmid »

blitzar wrote: post #29
dangus wrote: post #4

This is both hard to explain to people and hard to get them onboard even once it's been explained and understood. I think more people should think about things this way: I'm building a house now, so am I betting that in 30 years the price of gas will decrease or increase? Will electricity decrease or increase in price? Anyone who has seen a graph of solar, battery, wind, and other renewable power grid solution costs…

> that electricity should decrease in cost over time On the back of decades of experience - year in, year out the only constant is that utility bills go up. This time it might be different, but I doubt it.

Inflation is a given, but one can increase faster than the other. Electricity can be generated in many different ways, so has flexibility, while natural gas must be piped in.
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