I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

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.

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 should probably be betting that gas will increase in price over time and that electricity should decrease in cost over time, at the very least relative to one another.

I also think that more homeowners and especially builders need to stop choosing the cheapest installation options every single time as a default. I know that building a home is expensive and housing is already at a very high cost, but the US housing market is positively riddled with short term thinking when it comes to homebuilding.

At some point the comfort and safety benefits of a heat pump should be worth it. For example, a fully electrified home essentially eliminates carbon monoxide risk. You also lose the need to pay for two transmission fees (the part of your bill that involves the base service cost and not the metered usage).

Protip - it's often cheaper to heat with burning buffalo chips than electricity even if your heat pump is super efficient. Do a spreadsheet and maybe get some solar panels to feed the new beast. Otherwise you may just need to bask in the glow of self satisfaction and enjoy not poisoning yourself with VOCs and CO.

I'm not subscribing to your newsletter...

If you look at the PGE bill that is visible before article gets cut off, his electricity use went way up year over year and his natural gas use went down. I'm guessing he got an electric heat pump to replace his gas furnace, and just pays a lot more per kWh for electricity than he was paying per therm or cuft or whatever of natural gas.

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 BTU/hour output, or less than half the price.

To be comparable to natural gas, you need electricity to be about $0.10 per kWh retail. That’s basically the PNW, the mountain west, and parts of the Deep South.