3 ms·
This is a good point. And I'd imagine most people when talking anecdotally on their own experience are comparing based on cost. And of course costs will vary.
by jghn 4y ago
This is a good point. And I'd imagine most people when talking anecdotally on their own experience are comparing based on cost. And of course costs will vary.
For instance we have a heat pump that we mostly use for AC. Our primary heat is a gas boiler feeding steam radiators. We'll use the heat pump in the shoulder seasons when you just want to take the chill out of a specific room, but usually nothing else heat wise.
Last winter our boiler died and we spent about a month without it. That provided me a good opportunity to do something closer to apples/apples. Despite having the cold weather rated heat pump (Mitsubishi HyperHeat2) the extra electricity consumed that month was about the same as our typical gas cost. A slight bit more actually.
But I have no idea about energy usage in an objective sense. And if I really wanted to go down this rabbit hole, we're subscribed to an energy plan that's mostly based on renewables whereas obviously 0% of our gas is the same.
- space_fountain 4y agoI think almost matching gas energy costs implies dramatically lower total energy used and the benefits of being able to use renewables. Natural gas can only really win in terms of heating because producing heat is easier than producing electricity with the same gas
- jghn 4y agoQuite possible. In our case it is academic as due to quirks of our house configuration (the joys of a house pushing 200 years old) we can only get units in a couple of rooms. It's good enough to keep the house cool in the summer, and heat the house in a real emergency like last winter but not something we can rely on for primary heat.