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Harnessing America's heat pump moment

heatpumped.org

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Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#91

Post by corbet »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #42
mithr wrote: post #26

Electricity costs are a big factor in this, imo. Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. It's a hard sell to spend a large amount of up-front money (even after rebates, which decreased this year) to convert to a system that will cost you more than you pay today, and may not work as well in cold weather (every heat pump company I talked to suggested keeping my…

A heat pump just makes no sense whatsoever for me in my northeast town. The electric bill alone would outpace the old propane bill, not to mention installation. And it won't even work during some of the coldest winter weeks when you _really_ need it to work. Maybe I would consider it if I was in, like, Nevada or somewhere.

My heat pump, in Colorado, kept the house warm at -18°F last winter. Without firing up the backup resistance heating strip. I think it works.

(It is more expensive to operate than the natural-gas furnace was, though).

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#92

Post by switchbak »

bluGill wrote: post #50

When I replaced my furnace a couple years back I asked for a heat pump - a previous house had it and it worked great. Turns out my contractor didn't ask the right questions and so mine only works to 25F - it still outputs heat below that, but not enough to keep my house warm and so I use the backup furnace a lot more than I want to. A previous house the heat pump was sized to work to 14F. They make them that will wor…

It's really amazing how often I hear that same story: poor choices by the installer left the home owner in a bind with a poorly functioning system. The industry (certainly the residential side) really does need better educated installers/planners.

Even as a homeowner who's a bit of an energy geek, it's entirely too challenging to understand the entire space and what options fit one's needs. LLM's help a lot here (if you can trust them!), but it's a funny situation where there's silos of knowledge that are hard to connect.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#93

Post by switchbak »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #71

Nearly 2 years ago, we had a small tornado come through, taking out our electricity for a week. During that time, it was snowy and the outdoor temperature was well below freezing (it reached about -10°C (12°F) at night). Keeping my family warm was a real struggle that week. The next spring, I went to Costco and bought a big tri-power generator and wired up a generator interlock on the electric panel. Now if we lose p…

Don't you still need a generator to run the blower and the logic on the furnace? I mean, obviously a much lower power load, but wouldn't a generator still be necessary?

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#94

Post by tonyarkles »

quickthrowman wrote: post #41
atrus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A possible challenge, yes, but there exist 1500w, standard outlet hpwh, and it's a lot less common to not have any power near a water heater.

A 1500W electric water heater would be painful to use in a home. A typical 30-60 gallon EWH is 6kW. And for the record, every single natural gas water heater is connected to 120V power for the ignition circuit.

Keep in mind that there's going to be a CoP associated with a heat-pump water heater. Depending on (a bunch of factors) that 1500W HPWH could approach the performance of a 6kW standard EWH.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#96

Post by ssuds »

darth_avocado wrote: post #57
galoisscobi wrote: post #3

> we’re waiting on people Right on. I have a heat pump water heater and a heat pump heating system in my HVAC. Getting those installed felt like swimming upstream. Most contractors would try to dissuade me from them. Luckily, I found a contractor who was skilled and knowledgeable about heat pumps and rebates (back when govt thought climate change was real). Very happy with my heat pump tech.

I’m in California, I have two heat pumps installed. I can sum up the problems as follows: 1. They are EXPENSIVE. The equipment itself isn’t that expensive tbh but installation is pretty expensive. The government subsidies have made sure that the contractors jack up their own prices by as much. 2. I end up paying more in utilities because electricity is very expensive and heat pumps aren’t nearly as good at heating in…

I wrote an op-ed in the SF Chronicle a few months ago about electricity costs in California holding back electrification, it's a real challenge: https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/heat-p...

That said, I've found that in most cases (assuming you're on the right electric rate plan, that's a whole other conversation, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42763695), most homeowners in california actually see operating cost parity or a slight decrease, even with super expensive electricity. Silicon Valley Clean Energy recently did a study substantiating this: https://svcleanenergy.org/wp-content/uploads/Bill-Impacts-of...

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#97

Post by mulmen »

blahedo wrote: post #33

People are reluctant to install them because they don't work as well as the good old boilers we'd be replacing. I'm not saying they can't, and I'm not saying that there are zero models out there that work. But in practice, a lot of us that have interacted with heat pumps have the specific experience that they get anemic as the temperature goes down and eventually become unable to do much of anything. I live in the mi…

Where in the system did they install the resistive wires? Is that a defroster on the evaporator (outside) or is it inline with the condenser?

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#98

Post by doctorhandshake »

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #42
mithr wrote: post #26

Electricity costs are a big factor in this, imo. Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. It's a hard sell to spend a large amount of up-front money (even after rebates, which decreased this year) to convert to a system that will cost you more than you pay today, and may not work as well in cold weather (every heat pump company I talked to suggested keeping my…

A heat pump just makes no sense whatsoever for me in my northeast town. The electric bill alone would outpace the old propane bill, not to mention installation. And it won't even work during some of the coldest winter weeks when you _really_ need it to work. Maybe I would consider it if I was in, like, Nevada or somewhere.

The notion that heat pumps don’t work at low temperatures hasn’t been true for years. I think you may be surprised to find that just about any heat pump you look at has good efficiency down to very low temperatures.

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#99

Post by starkparker »

amarant wrote: post #75
blahedo wrote: post #33

People are reluctant to install them because they don't work as well as the good old boilers we'd be replacing. I'm not saying they can't, and I'm not saying that there are zero models out there that work. But in practice, a lot of us that have interacted with heat pumps have the specific experience that they get anemic as the temperature goes down and eventually become unable to do much of anything. I live in the mi…

This is such a weird tale to hear. I heat my 2 story 147m2 house in Sweden with a single heat pump and it's downright cosy down to -10C. I have noticed that my office, which is located at the furthest possible place from the heatpump, tends to get a bit chilly when outdoors temperatures fall below -10°c. usually a blanket is enough to keep me toasty, but on the rare occasion that it gets real cold (below about -15°c)…

It's the insulation. While it depends on the location and geography, I'd wager that American homes are probably less well insulated than Swedish homes because they didn't have to be.

That contrasts quite a bit with Swedish home standards, which have long been built more air-tight and with considerably better insulated even if they're of comparable age. This has been true for decades, became even more stark in the 1980s, and likely remains very different on the balance: https://www.aceee.org/files/proceedings/1984/data/papers/SS8...

Re: Harnessing America's heat pump moment

#100

Post by Loughla »

mithr wrote: post #26

Electricity costs are a big factor in this, imo. Rates for my northeast town increased by ~25% in 2024 and are going up by another ~10% this year. It's a hard sell to spend a large amount of up-front money (even after rebates, which decreased this year) to convert to a system that will cost you more than you pay today, and may not work as well in cold weather (every heat pump company I talked to suggested keeping my…

Our heat pump for HVAC is awesome.

Until it gets under 30. Then you can watch the power meter crank when auxiliary heat kicks on. And we only keep it 65 in the house in the winter.

Luckily I live in the upper Midwest, so it's only that cold for like 4 months. . . Pretty cool. P.r.e.t.t.y. cool

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