4 ms·

Nah. It’s pretty easy to electrify heating, too. A ground source heat pump or even a good (not mediocre) air source heat pump can reduce the energy cost of heat

Nah. It’s pretty easy to electrify heating, too. A ground source heat pump or even a good (not mediocre) air source heat pump can reduce the energy cost of heating with electricity to the same as gas.

boulos 5y ago
Yeah, depending on your climate, a heat pump can have a Coefficient of Performance [1] of like 3.5. If you don’t take this into account and just take “natural gas in therms => kWh” it often seems like a heat pump would be a large increase. Divide by 3 and it’s suddenly much better :). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance
- sbradford26 5y ago
  Also ground source heat pumps can have COPs in the 4-4.5 range and also keep that performance through a wide temperature range unlike air source heat pumps. Sadly air source heat pumps COP really start to drop around 0F even with the new hyper heat models. Given that I would still probably prefer an air source heat pump over using heating oil or propane.
  - pitaj 5y ago
    Yeah the reason they stay in the higher range is because they're pumping from a source of higher temperature in the first place. They're also more effective at air conditioning because they're pumping into a cooler medium.
SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
As someone who lives in a climate that pretty reliably sees -40C and a week of the mid -30's ever year I think that the only option is a ground source heat pump - I can't see an air heat pump putting out 80,000 BTUs when it is at its least efficient. I wonder how that works for a city - is the idea that everyone drills their own 15 foot hole? Our frost can reach down to ~8 feet.
- sbradford26 5y ago
  The solutions I have seen for cities would be community/public ground loops. Piping would run similar to potable water but would return to a centralized location where they would have large wells. This would be impractical for suburban/rural environments but denser cities it would most likely work.
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Pretty standard in Nordic countries. The source of heat is real question, but there are some options like burning garbage, or waste heat from factories, data centres and so on.
    - sbradford26 5y ago
      The source could also simply be the ground. With a heat pump the water doesn't have to be hot to provide heat to a building. The difference with the system Nordic countries have is that they provide hot water to residences which is directly used for heating.

boulos 5y ago

Yeah, depending on your climate, a heat pump can have a Coefficient of Performance [1] of like 3.5. If you don’t take this into account and just take “natural gas in therms => kWh” it often seems like a heat pump would be a large increase. Divide by 3 and it’s suddenly much better :). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance

sbradford26 5y ago
Also ground source heat pumps can have COPs in the 4-4.5 range and also keep that performance through a wide temperature range unlike air source heat pumps. Sadly air source heat pumps COP really start to drop around 0F even with the new hyper heat models. Given that I would still probably prefer an air source heat pump over using heating oil or propane.
- pitaj 5y ago
  Yeah the reason they stay in the higher range is because they're pumping from a source of higher temperature in the first place. They're also more effective at air conditioning because they're pumping into a cooler medium.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago

As someone who lives in a climate that pretty reliably sees -40C and a week of the mid -30's ever year I think that the only option is a ground source heat pump - I can't see an air heat pump putting out 80,000 BTUs when it is at its least efficient. I wonder how that works for a city - is the idea that everyone drills their own 15 foot hole? Our frost can reach down to ~8 feet.

sbradford26 5y ago
The solutions I have seen for cities would be community/public ground loops. Piping would run similar to potable water but would return to a centralized location where they would have large wells. This would be impractical for suburban/rural environments but denser cities it would most likely work.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Pretty standard in Nordic countries. The source of heat is real question, but there are some options like burning garbage, or waste heat from factories, data centres and so on.
  - sbradford26 5y ago
    The source could also simply be the ground. With a heat pump the water doesn't have to be hot to provide heat to a building. The difference with the system Nordic countries have is that they provide hot water to residences which is directly used for heating.