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I got a heat pump and my energy bill went up

98 points by ssuds 2y ago

mapt 2y ago
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.
- somerandomnames 2y ago
  You're not alone with this one, don't need another potential source of spam.
- 1123581321 2y ago
  You can enter any email and the article instantly unlocks. It doesn’t seem to be an account.
- SanjayMehta 2y ago
  Use a temp throwaway email service such as mailinator.com Works most of the time.
  - remram 2y ago
    I usually put in postmaster@<yourdomain> (e.g. postmaster@heatpumped.org). Eat your own spam, idiot.
    - blitzar 2y ago
      I usually put in <ceo name>@<major ad / search / social media platform>
    - SanjayMehta 2y ago
      Never thought of that, now it will be the first thing I'll try. Mailinator is great if the website wants you to click a link or enter an OTP to verify whatever it is that they verify.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- ssuds 2y ago
  Hey, author of the post here. I can understand your sentiment. Here's a PDF of the article if you don't want to put in your email: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17z3QUpPcWH0HH-QwI8agZIniesIi6ytv/view?usp=share_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/17z3QUpPcWH0HH-QwI8agZIniesI...
- nottorp 2y ago
  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? :)
  - ssuds 2y ago
    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.
dangus 2y ago
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).
- blitzar 2y ago
  > 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.
  - Kim_Bruning 2y ago
    Depends on time and place. I know there's spot price contracts you can get that will -at times of day and year- go negative. That is to say, they'll pay you to use electricity (or alternately, they'll actually charge you if you feed in solar power). At other times of day the price is positive again. It takes a bit of savvy -and panels, and batteries- to actually make optimal use of this, I figure. That said, prices sometimes going negative, however the circumstances, is definitely a bit of a change.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    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.
NotAnOtter 2y ago
Def not making an account on whatever random website heatpumped.org is. Owner of the site needs to stop pretending their the WSJ. Anyways the phrasing of the non-blocked article seems to imply the title is a red herring, and their bill actually went down. I'll never know though.
- marcus0x62 2y ago
  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.
  - grakker 2y ago
    He was out of town for 3 weeks the year before. He then compared to previous years and his use is way down.
  - true_religion 2y ago
    He said this himself in the article.
    - marcus0x62 2y ago
      (when I made the comment above, most of the article was behind a subscribe-to-view wall.)
- ssuds 2y ago
  Hi there. Author of this post. The content gate is on by default for all of my newsletter content, but I figured out a way to turn it off. You should be able to read the full article now without putting in an email.
  - MilnerRoute 2y ago
    Thank you for making your article's text available. This seems to be the key quote people were looking for: "Many homeowners with heat pumps are likely on the wrong rate plan and paying more than they should. The right plan can make the difference between saving money and spending more money with the exact same equipment."
jakedata 2y ago
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...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- KptMarchewa 2y ago
  In many places of the world winter means no or barely any sun. Panels won't help.
  - Kim_Bruning 2y ago
    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.
    - KptMarchewa 2y ago
      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.
      - Kim_Bruning 2y ago
        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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building
hsuduebc2 2y ago
Protip. Just insert any valid email into subscription dialog and it instantly unlocks. No need to register.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- barrettondricka 2y ago
  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.
  - hsuduebc2 2y ago
    You can safely insert something like dnkejdjd@vwvsjs.co Great idea with spamming sites hehe
  - TMWNN 2y ago
    >(No @example.com) The example.{com,org,net} domain was created for this purpose, of a valid but not real domain.
    - barrettondricka 2y ago
      > The example.{com,org,net} domain was created for this purpose, of a valid but not real domain. No it wasn't. IANA is hosting example.com and paying for the traffic. example.com is a writing convention to provide safe examples in documentation. The reason example.com exists, is to make sure documentation writers can use a domain, make it obvious it is an example, and make sure nothing bad comes up with a user happens to click it. The fact that example.com is a domain with a DNS record is irrelevant to its intended use. IANA is doing the internet a favor by preventing confusion, and it is rude to send them a bunch of traffic. See https://www.iana.org/help/example-domains https://www.iana.org/help/example-domains > While incidental traffic for incorrectly configured applications is expected, please do not design applications that require the example domains to have operating HTTP service. According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com > for documentation purposes
rayiner 2y ago
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.
- BeefWellington 2y ago
  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.
  - mapt 2y ago
    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.
  - dilyevsky 2y ago
    Cost of 1 therm from pg&e is $2.66 so variable speed heat pump can still be cheaper
- dns_snek 2y ago
  You really need to be calculating costs based on seasonal performance (SCOP) which is going to depend on your area. In my climate the worst case COP is around 2, but the seasonal performance of an air-to-water heat pump would be between 3.5 and 5, depending on various factors. Granted it doesn't make a difference in your example because your gas is cheap at $0.05/kWh, but for me (EU), the price for natural gas would be around $0.11/kWh while electricity is around $0.25/kWh.
1123581321 2y ago
Realize the main point was the differing electric and gas costs, but the briefly mentioned behavior change can be a significant cost factor. We went through this with solar, and to a lesser extent, our heat pump water heater. We just don’t have the same gut wrench when the thermostat is low. And, if we are controlling temperature mostly for comfort when it’s expensive, why not dial it in more accurately when the cost doesn’t change much and our state utility tells us our high production burdens them? Increasing kwh cost will eventually fix this. :)
tguvot 2y ago
Only if you have few years worth of data that shows indoor temperature, hvac runtime and how quickly house gains/looses heat, you can figure out if "amazingly efficient heatpump" will run cheaper than gas furnace. Unless electricity is seriously cheap or free
- bumby 2y ago
  You can energy model it if you have the time.
  - tguvot 2y ago
    if you do fresh manual J calculation, with updated design temperature (which in reference manual is still incorrect) and blower door test, than maybe. And it still very theoretical but realistically, very few people do it when they update hvac system. in fact, most (all?) of hvac installers simply refuse to do it.
    - tguvot 2y ago
      ps. manual j actually won't give you runtime i think. only needed capacity.
    - bumby 2y ago
      Like I think you are alluding to in your own response, manual J is just a design load calculation. It won't give you the annual energy usage so it probably isn't suitable for estimating annual energy costs. You want something that gives you (ideally) hourly load calculations. Like with all models, it depends on how accurate you need to get. Very few energy models (mainly TRNSYS or eQUEST) that I've been involved with go to the level of blower door testing. They generally take design information (materials, orientation, etc.)
      - tguvot 2y ago
        you can't get hvac installers to do even manual j. i had to retain third party to do it when I wanted to replace hvac. if there are more progressive models, they are most definitely out of question for home owners :)
tommiegannert 2y ago
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 about how to take care of the concentrated product once we're done with it. But to a much lesser extent.)
- nottorp 2y ago
  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.
  - amanaplanacanal 2y ago
    Yes but... the externalities are really expensive, and are going to be paid by somebody. It's a hidden cost
    - westmeal 2y ago
      What about in the case of a township offering "natural gas"/methane that would ordinarily be lost to the atmosphere anyway? Isn't it better to burn it rather than leave it as is? Methane is pretty awful stuff in terms of the greenhouse effect.
    - nottorp 2y ago
      Agreed, but you only tend to accept that when the other needs in that famous pyramid are taken care of. Regulation that increases cost of living is only going to cause resentment and we already see where that leads to. Can't do it with feel good statements, you need the authorities to support/push towards cheaper electricity. Like the Denmark poster said elsewhere on this thread. Is this going to happen globally? I somehow don't think so...
8fingerlouie 2y ago
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 4000 kWh per year. Currently, with heat pump and an EV, i'm paying less in electricity per year than i did in natural gas before.
- nottorp 2y ago
  > 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.
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    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.
    - tatersolid 2y ago
      > It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. These are exactly the same thing in the end unless a subsidies were to exceed tax revenue.
    - anthony_d 2y ago
      > It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. I like pedantry as much as the next person but that feels like a pointless distinction here.
      - 2y ago
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Good article though the combination of the clickbait headline and the (later removed) subscription wall makes many of the comments less useful as they are reacting mostly to the headline. It should in theory be possible to have "no regret" government support for this similar to the price collar used for renewables. People are not rational economic actors and some kind of insurance for the worst case scenario can help make markets work better. I think in California they have some kind of support for efficiency improvements which is funded based on evidence of lower bills afterwards so that might also help to incentivized good heat pump installs (including the physical install, the controls, being on the right tariff and promptly fixing any issues that comes up).
ccamrobertson 2y ago
I want the nuclear future with practically emission free power that's 'too cheap to meter'. I want to stop caring about SEER ratings and be able to leave windows cracked all seasons to bring in fresh air. I want power companies that keep brush and trees away from their lines. Until that happens, I'll hang onto my gas furnace and water heaters.
- audunw 2y ago
  That future will never come. Nuclear power has several fundamental barriers to scaling, and given that the world population is still growing and the demand for energy per person in the developing is growing, those barriers will become an issue. The biggest barrier in the end is that if we scale up nuclear by an order of magnitude or two, the heat output will cause global warming effects that approach that of CO2 emissions. There are panels that can radiate the heat directly to space. But then you have the same area usage problems as solar power. While some nuclear can be good I think the path to abundant energy is solar, geothermal and energy storage. There is more than enough solar and geothermal energy all around us to cover all our needs, and more. Solar will eventually mostly be in forms that also provide useful shading or act as roofs. Agrovoltaics is a field that’s growing very rapidly. Going back to nuclear, one path to potential extremely abundant and cheap nuclear power is Helions fusion reactor. It should require a lot less cooling for a given output of useful electric power.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  One of the most depressing opinions on the Internet is "pro-nuclear" folks who are actually pro-fossil fuels.
- archi42 2y ago
  The future is now: Modern houses around here often feature a "Ventilation system with heat recovery": You get fresh air that's heated using the air it replaces. And just let the system run 24/7. You can also recover/regulate humidity. These systems can sometimes be retrofit into older buildings (we're doing that for our 1950s SFH), but the necessary piping is often labor intensive to install and hence prices can be insane (we were able to combine it with other measures and significantly reduced costs - I installed pipes while the roof was removed). It's much easier for new buildings of course.
fred_is_fred 2y ago
Heat pumps use electricity. If your electricity costs more than Nat Gas you may not save money. Seems obvious, do we need a whole website to explain it?
Chrisbo33 2y ago
Just had a heat pump installed, cost £7430 with £7500 kindly donated by the government. House was built in the 1930's. No Cavity walls, used most of the old 1980's radiators, replaced 4 out of 18. Kept the hot water tank. Disconnected the mains gas..... Guess what? Just had our first energy bill - £192 CHEAPER than the previous equivalent quarter last year when we were using our gas boiler. AND, the house is so much more warm. So warm, we now have the system thermostat on its lowest setting. Hot water supply is regular and heats in 30 mins after a couple of (very hot) baths. So much nonsense and misinformation being spread these days about heat pumps. Gas is dead, don't listen to the politicians and vested interests. Get a reputable firm to install and enjoy a nice warm house.
iteratethis 2y ago
Commenting from the Netherlands. My take is this: If you want the masses of households to convert to electricity, then electricity should be dirt cheap (and stay cheap) and any solution should be idiot-proof. Electricity being cheap gives people the confidence to make the large investments in home optimization (i.e. isolation), a heat pump, EV, etc. The upper middle class will convert regardless but the big masses need this carrot, else it will all move to a grinding halt. I don't care how we make electricity consistently cheap, I'm just saying its a precondition. As for simplicity. I mostly live around the working class, not the educated glass. They are unable to grasp an energy contract. There's just too many variables at play. They would struggle to understand the article too. And that's just the conceptual part. The actual custom implementation part can be complicated as well. People are overwhelmed by it and feel they're running an energy central, watching it like a penny stock trader. The goal is worthy, but when it's expensive, complicated to understand and hard to use, people will resist it.
StillBored 2y ago
Usually heat pumps are installed with a second stage heating. In places with inexpensive gas, or low temperatures that will frequently be a gas furnace rather than resistive coils. Then the calculation is usually to take the electric price and convert it to price/BTU and divide by the heatpump COP at a given outside temperature to get a final system price/BTU and then set the compressor lockout second stage enable point where the gas price/BTU intersects the heatpump price/btu as it falls. Usually one should get this number before installing a new system for both gas and an electric second stage, and depending on system price/etc a decision can then be made about what to actually install. EX: in places with high electric prices and low NG prices or really cold temps, skipping the heatpump might be the right choice. OTOH, reddit/etc are full of people asking and finding out that their AC installer didn't do this calculation and just set the lockout temp at 40F or some other back of the hand value they have been using for a few decades. And yes, its possible to get heatpumps that work well below 35F, but they also have defrost cycles which absolutly destroy their efficiency because the defrost cycle is usually just running the heatpump in AC mode, while using the second stage to keep the air temp from falling in the house.
anarticle 2y ago
So many crazy issues! Why would you put a fence around the heat pump compressor?! On the east coast, they are great, lowering cost of heating and cooling especially in the shoulder months when you're thinking it's time to turn on your system. Personally, I prefer them because they keep the air in the room and don't need ducting systems which is something radiator houses might not have. They seem to work well even in our drafty old houses. In PA gas is extremely cheap so it's hard to beat with an electric system. Author is in CA, so maybe a bit different. Title is clickbait.
johnea 2y ago
Next step: photovoltaic It's not too difficult to generate your own electricity, I don't know anyone who has a natural gas production facility on site at their home.
Amorbellum 2y ago
I'm in Kitchener Ontario Canada, I'm a licensed gas and refrigeration tech I've pulled my gas meter off my house and I'm exclusively heat pump now. I'm saving money, absolutely. Canada has cold ambient temps and cheap natural gas, and I'm still saving money, so I don't know how you aren't I'm paying 10 cent pretty kwh electricity, gas here is 15 cents per cubic meter
- beepboopboop 2y ago
  How does your heat pump do on cold days like today? Do you still use an AC in the summer?
  - sagarm 2y ago
    You realize that heat pumps also cool, right? They're just ACs that can also work in reverse.
    - dizhn 2y ago
      It's really interesting. Around these parts you practically cannot buy an AC that is cooling only. All of them also heat.
- ac29 2y ago
  >and I'm still saving money, so I don't know how you aren't > I'm paying 10 cent pretty kwh electricity Electric rates are ~4x that where the author lives.
- sct202 2y ago
  The author didn't pull all gas usage. We did the math on our home, and it really only makes sense right now if we eliminate all gas usage, since 65%+ of our gas spend is fixed connection fee related.
boulos 2y ago
The real point of this article is how busted the PG&E rate plans are. The author says: > Do we really need 106 different rate plans in California? Why don’t utilities automatically put people on the cheapest rate plan for them, and reevaluate monthly based on usage? And I think it makes sense to simplify, but I would bet that the old plans are required to persist for existing customers. That's how the NEM 2 folks are sticking with their previous contracts. It would be more efficient for everyone if PG&E could rationalize these various plans, but to do so, they'd also need to forcibly migrate people to other plans.
metalman 2y ago
Something ignored in the article is that the old gas furnace was of an early and eceptionaly inefficient type, proven by its rotten flue pipe, newer gas furnaces are of the condensing type, and exract so much energy from the exhaust, that it condenses water, and the flue pipes are made of plastic, as the exhaust is barely warm.Older furnaces have hot caustic flue gasses, that will rot and corode the pipes. Total efficiency is what counts from an environmental standpoint, and grid electricity can often come with CO² outputs that are high, per delivered heating energy at the load compared to delivered fuels. Heat pumps realy start to look good, when there is grid tied solar PV, and energy bills can drop to 5% or less of anything else.This works as far north as 45°latitude, at least. But the truth is that even @45°n, a house that is built to the best insulation standards, has no heating system whatsoever, as domestic activities and heat air exhangers alone, will produce excess heat, and party gatherings of organic heat machines, will require opening windows to stay comfortable, in the depths of winter.
- sagarm 2y ago
  Even at a COP of 2, a heat pump powered by a 60% efficient gas power plant will use less gas at the power plant than gas heat.
  - metalman 2y ago
    60%? is a very optimistic number, and even if granted, does nit address the horrible reliabilty problems with heat pumps, which change the economics considerably. Heat pumps are noisy, and physicaly intrusive uggly wall lumps inside, and create a clutter outside. Well built passive solar creates a living environment that needs no heat source, is orders of magnitude more reliable in all conditions, while bieng invisible to all but the most observant.An added benifit is that a passive solar house is also acousticaly insulated, and therefor much nicer in a noisy, urban environment, near roads, etc. Financialy, the costs of building a passive house are not excessive, and once established, represent transferable value, while .... :)....insulating you from energy market fluctuations.
    - sagarm 2y ago
vfclists 2y ago
Should it require that much numeracy and time researching price options to benefit from a heat pump? Can't it be much simpler? Not all people have the brains AND assuming that they do, the time to go through these hoops to make their heat pump investment pay off.
- ssuds 2y ago
  You hit the nail on the head. I’ve spent the last couple years working full time on heat pumps, and even I forgot to switch to the right rate plan. Most people will shut down and just stick with their gas furnace because it’s the path of least resistance. We need a blend of technology, policy and education to make this dead simple.

98 points by ssuds 2y ago

mapt 2y ago

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.

somerandomnames 2y ago
You're not alone with this one, don't need another potential source of spam.
1123581321 2y ago
You can enter any email and the article instantly unlocks. It doesn’t seem to be an account.
SanjayMehta 2y ago
Use a temp throwaway email service such as mailinator.com Works most of the time.
- remram 2y ago
  I usually put in postmaster@<yourdomain> (e.g. postmaster@heatpumped.org). Eat your own spam, idiot.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    I usually put in <ceo name>@<major ad / search / social media platform>
  - SanjayMehta 2y ago
    Never thought of that, now it will be the first thing I'll try. Mailinator is great if the website wants you to click a link or enter an OTP to verify whatever it is that they verify.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
ssuds 2y ago
Hey, author of the post here. I can understand your sentiment. Here's a PDF of the article if you don't want to put in your email: https://drive.google.com/file/d/17z3QUpPcWH0HH-QwI8agZIniesIi6ytv/view?usp=share_link https://drive.google.com/file/d/17z3QUpPcWH0HH-QwI8agZIniesI...
nottorp 2y ago
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? :)
- ssuds 2y ago
  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.

dangus 2y ago

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).

blitzar 2y ago
> 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.
- Kim_Bruning 2y ago
  Depends on time and place. I know there's spot price contracts you can get that will -at times of day and year- go negative. That is to say, they'll pay you to use electricity (or alternately, they'll actually charge you if you feed in solar power). At other times of day the price is positive again. It takes a bit of savvy -and panels, and batteries- to actually make optimal use of this, I figure. That said, prices sometimes going negative, however the circumstances, is definitely a bit of a change.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  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.

NotAnOtter 2y ago

Def not making an account on whatever random website heatpumped.org is. Owner of the site needs to stop pretending their the WSJ. Anyways the phrasing of the non-blocked article seems to imply the title is a red herring, and their bill actually went down. I'll never know though.

marcus0x62 2y ago
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.
- grakker 2y ago
  He was out of town for 3 weeks the year before. He then compared to previous years and his use is way down.
- true_religion 2y ago
  He said this himself in the article.
  - marcus0x62 2y ago
    (when I made the comment above, most of the article was behind a subscribe-to-view wall.)
ssuds 2y ago
Hi there. Author of this post. The content gate is on by default for all of my newsletter content, but I figured out a way to turn it off. You should be able to read the full article now without putting in an email.
- MilnerRoute 2y ago
  Thank you for making your article's text available. This seems to be the key quote people were looking for: "Many homeowners with heat pumps are likely on the wrong rate plan and paying more than they should. The right plan can make the difference between saving money and spending more money with the exact same equipment."

jakedata 2y ago

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...

deleted 2y ago
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KptMarchewa 2y ago
In many places of the world winter means no or barely any sun. Panels won't help.
- Kim_Bruning 2y ago
  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.
  - KptMarchewa 2y ago
    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.
    - Kim_Bruning 2y ago
      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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-energy_building

hsuduebc2 2y ago

Protip. Just insert any valid email into subscription dialog and it instantly unlocks. No need to register.

deleted 2y ago
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barrettondricka 2y ago
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.
- hsuduebc2 2y ago
  You can safely insert something like dnkejdjd@vwvsjs.co Great idea with spamming sites hehe
- TMWNN 2y ago
  >(No @example.com) The example.{com,org,net} domain was created for this purpose, of a valid but not real domain.
  - barrettondricka 2y ago
    > The example.{com,org,net} domain was created for this purpose, of a valid but not real domain. No it wasn't. IANA is hosting example.com and paying for the traffic. example.com is a writing convention to provide safe examples in documentation. The reason example.com exists, is to make sure documentation writers can use a domain, make it obvious it is an example, and make sure nothing bad comes up with a user happens to click it. The fact that example.com is a domain with a DNS record is irrelevant to its intended use. IANA is doing the internet a favor by preventing confusion, and it is rude to send them a bunch of traffic. See https://www.iana.org/help/example-domains https://www.iana.org/help/example-domains > While incidental traffic for incorrectly configured applications is expected, please do not design applications that require the example domains to have operating HTTP service. According to wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example.com > for documentation purposes

rayiner 2y ago

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.

BeefWellington 2y ago
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.
- mapt 2y ago
  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.
- dilyevsky 2y ago
  Cost of 1 therm from pg&e is $2.66 so variable speed heat pump can still be cheaper
dns_snek 2y ago
You really need to be calculating costs based on seasonal performance (SCOP) which is going to depend on your area. In my climate the worst case COP is around 2, but the seasonal performance of an air-to-water heat pump would be between 3.5 and 5, depending on various factors. Granted it doesn't make a difference in your example because your gas is cheap at $0.05/kWh, but for me (EU), the price for natural gas would be around $0.11/kWh while electricity is around $0.25/kWh.

1123581321 2y ago

Realize the main point was the differing electric and gas costs, but the briefly mentioned behavior change can be a significant cost factor. We went through this with solar, and to a lesser extent, our heat pump water heater. We just don’t have the same gut wrench when the thermostat is low. And, if we are controlling temperature mostly for comfort when it’s expensive, why not dial it in more accurately when the cost doesn’t change much and our state utility tells us our high production burdens them? Increasing kwh cost will eventually fix this. :)

tguvot 2y ago

Only if you have few years worth of data that shows indoor temperature, hvac runtime and how quickly house gains/looses heat, you can figure out if "amazingly efficient heatpump" will run cheaper than gas furnace. Unless electricity is seriously cheap or free

bumby 2y ago
You can energy model it if you have the time.
- tguvot 2y ago
  if you do fresh manual J calculation, with updated design temperature (which in reference manual is still incorrect) and blower door test, than maybe. And it still very theoretical but realistically, very few people do it when they update hvac system. in fact, most (all?) of hvac installers simply refuse to do it.
  - tguvot 2y ago
    ps. manual j actually won't give you runtime i think. only needed capacity.
  - bumby 2y ago
    Like I think you are alluding to in your own response, manual J is just a design load calculation. It won't give you the annual energy usage so it probably isn't suitable for estimating annual energy costs. You want something that gives you (ideally) hourly load calculations. Like with all models, it depends on how accurate you need to get. Very few energy models (mainly TRNSYS or eQUEST) that I've been involved with go to the level of blower door testing. They generally take design information (materials, orientation, etc.)
    - tguvot 2y ago
      you can't get hvac installers to do even manual j. i had to retain third party to do it when I wanted to replace hvac. if there are more progressive models, they are most definitely out of question for home owners :)

tommiegannert 2y ago

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 about how to take care of the concentrated product once we're done with it. But to a much lesser extent.)

nottorp 2y ago
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.
- amanaplanacanal 2y ago
  Yes but... the externalities are really expensive, and are going to be paid by somebody. It's a hidden cost
  - westmeal 2y ago
    What about in the case of a township offering "natural gas"/methane that would ordinarily be lost to the atmosphere anyway? Isn't it better to burn it rather than leave it as is? Methane is pretty awful stuff in terms of the greenhouse effect.
  - nottorp 2y ago
    Agreed, but you only tend to accept that when the other needs in that famous pyramid are taken care of. Regulation that increases cost of living is only going to cause resentment and we already see where that leads to. Can't do it with feel good statements, you need the authorities to support/push towards cheaper electricity. Like the Denmark poster said elsewhere on this thread. Is this going to happen globally? I somehow don't think so...

8fingerlouie 2y ago

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 4000 kWh per year. Currently, with heat pump and an EV, i'm paying less in electricity per year than i did in natural gas before.

nottorp 2y ago
> 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.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  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.
  - tatersolid 2y ago
    > It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. These are exactly the same thing in the end unless a subsidies were to exceed tax revenue.
  - anthony_d 2y ago
    > It’s not a subsidy, but a hold back from taxation. I like pedantry as much as the next person but that feels like a pointless distinction here.
    - 2y ago

ZeroGravitas 2y ago

Good article though the combination of the clickbait headline and the (later removed) subscription wall makes many of the comments less useful as they are reacting mostly to the headline. It should in theory be possible to have "no regret" government support for this similar to the price collar used for renewables. People are not rational economic actors and some kind of insurance for the worst case scenario can help make markets work better. I think in California they have some kind of support for efficiency improvements which is funded based on evidence of lower bills afterwards so that might also help to incentivized good heat pump installs (including the physical install, the controls, being on the right tariff and promptly fixing any issues that comes up).

ccamrobertson 2y ago

I want the nuclear future with practically emission free power that's 'too cheap to meter'. I want to stop caring about SEER ratings and be able to leave windows cracked all seasons to bring in fresh air. I want power companies that keep brush and trees away from their lines. Until that happens, I'll hang onto my gas furnace and water heaters.

audunw 2y ago
That future will never come. Nuclear power has several fundamental barriers to scaling, and given that the world population is still growing and the demand for energy per person in the developing is growing, those barriers will become an issue. The biggest barrier in the end is that if we scale up nuclear by an order of magnitude or two, the heat output will cause global warming effects that approach that of CO2 emissions. There are panels that can radiate the heat directly to space. But then you have the same area usage problems as solar power. While some nuclear can be good I think the path to abundant energy is solar, geothermal and energy storage. There is more than enough solar and geothermal energy all around us to cover all our needs, and more. Solar will eventually mostly be in forms that also provide useful shading or act as roofs. Agrovoltaics is a field that’s growing very rapidly. Going back to nuclear, one path to potential extremely abundant and cheap nuclear power is Helions fusion reactor. It should require a lot less cooling for a given output of useful electric power.
matthewdgreen 2y ago
One of the most depressing opinions on the Internet is "pro-nuclear" folks who are actually pro-fossil fuels.
archi42 2y ago
The future is now: Modern houses around here often feature a "Ventilation system with heat recovery": You get fresh air that's heated using the air it replaces. And just let the system run 24/7. You can also recover/regulate humidity. These systems can sometimes be retrofit into older buildings (we're doing that for our 1950s SFH), but the necessary piping is often labor intensive to install and hence prices can be insane (we were able to combine it with other measures and significantly reduced costs - I installed pipes while the roof was removed). It's much easier for new buildings of course.

fred_is_fred 2y ago

Heat pumps use electricity. If your electricity costs more than Nat Gas you may not save money. Seems obvious, do we need a whole website to explain it?

Chrisbo33 2y ago

Just had a heat pump installed, cost £7430 with £7500 kindly donated by the government. House was built in the 1930's. No Cavity walls, used most of the old 1980's radiators, replaced 4 out of 18. Kept the hot water tank. Disconnected the mains gas..... Guess what? Just had our first energy bill - £192 CHEAPER than the previous equivalent quarter last year when we were using our gas boiler. AND, the house is so much more warm. So warm, we now have the system thermostat on its lowest setting. Hot water supply is regular and heats in 30 mins after a couple of (very hot) baths. So much nonsense and misinformation being spread these days about heat pumps. Gas is dead, don't listen to the politicians and vested interests. Get a reputable firm to install and enjoy a nice warm house.

iteratethis 2y ago

Commenting from the Netherlands. My take is this: If you want the masses of households to convert to electricity, then electricity should be dirt cheap (and stay cheap) and any solution should be idiot-proof. Electricity being cheap gives people the confidence to make the large investments in home optimization (i.e. isolation), a heat pump, EV, etc. The upper middle class will convert regardless but the big masses need this carrot, else it will all move to a grinding halt. I don't care how we make electricity consistently cheap, I'm just saying its a precondition. As for simplicity. I mostly live around the working class, not the educated glass. They are unable to grasp an energy contract. There's just too many variables at play. They would struggle to understand the article too. And that's just the conceptual part. The actual custom implementation part can be complicated as well. People are overwhelmed by it and feel they're running an energy central, watching it like a penny stock trader. The goal is worthy, but when it's expensive, complicated to understand and hard to use, people will resist it.

StillBored 2y ago

Usually heat pumps are installed with a second stage heating. In places with inexpensive gas, or low temperatures that will frequently be a gas furnace rather than resistive coils. Then the calculation is usually to take the electric price and convert it to price/BTU and divide by the heatpump COP at a given outside temperature to get a final system price/BTU and then set the compressor lockout second stage enable point where the gas price/BTU intersects the heatpump price/btu as it falls. Usually one should get this number before installing a new system for both gas and an electric second stage, and depending on system price/etc a decision can then be made about what to actually install. EX: in places with high electric prices and low NG prices or really cold temps, skipping the heatpump might be the right choice. OTOH, reddit/etc are full of people asking and finding out that their AC installer didn't do this calculation and just set the lockout temp at 40F or some other back of the hand value they have been using for a few decades. And yes, its possible to get heatpumps that work well below 35F, but they also have defrost cycles which absolutly destroy their efficiency because the defrost cycle is usually just running the heatpump in AC mode, while using the second stage to keep the air temp from falling in the house.

anarticle 2y ago

So many crazy issues! Why would you put a fence around the heat pump compressor?! On the east coast, they are great, lowering cost of heating and cooling especially in the shoulder months when you're thinking it's time to turn on your system. Personally, I prefer them because they keep the air in the room and don't need ducting systems which is something radiator houses might not have. They seem to work well even in our drafty old houses. In PA gas is extremely cheap so it's hard to beat with an electric system. Author is in CA, so maybe a bit different. Title is clickbait.

johnea 2y ago

Next step: photovoltaic It's not too difficult to generate your own electricity, I don't know anyone who has a natural gas production facility on site at their home.

Amorbellum 2y ago

I'm in Kitchener Ontario Canada, I'm a licensed gas and refrigeration tech I've pulled my gas meter off my house and I'm exclusively heat pump now. I'm saving money, absolutely. Canada has cold ambient temps and cheap natural gas, and I'm still saving money, so I don't know how you aren't I'm paying 10 cent pretty kwh electricity, gas here is 15 cents per cubic meter

beepboopboop 2y ago
How does your heat pump do on cold days like today? Do you still use an AC in the summer?
- sagarm 2y ago
  You realize that heat pumps also cool, right? They're just ACs that can also work in reverse.
  - dizhn 2y ago
    It's really interesting. Around these parts you practically cannot buy an AC that is cooling only. All of them also heat.
ac29 2y ago
>and I'm still saving money, so I don't know how you aren't > I'm paying 10 cent pretty kwh electricity Electric rates are ~4x that where the author lives.
sct202 2y ago
The author didn't pull all gas usage. We did the math on our home, and it really only makes sense right now if we eliminate all gas usage, since 65%+ of our gas spend is fixed connection fee related.

boulos 2y ago

The real point of this article is how busted the PG&E rate plans are. The author says: > Do we really need 106 different rate plans in California? Why don’t utilities automatically put people on the cheapest rate plan for them, and reevaluate monthly based on usage? And I think it makes sense to simplify, but I would bet that the old plans are required to persist for existing customers. That's how the NEM 2 folks are sticking with their previous contracts. It would be more efficient for everyone if PG&E could rationalize these various plans, but to do so, they'd also need to forcibly migrate people to other plans.

metalman 2y ago

Something ignored in the article is that the old gas furnace was of an early and eceptionaly inefficient type, proven by its rotten flue pipe, newer gas furnaces are of the condensing type, and exract so much energy from the exhaust, that it condenses water, and the flue pipes are made of plastic, as the exhaust is barely warm.Older furnaces have hot caustic flue gasses, that will rot and corode the pipes. Total efficiency is what counts from an environmental standpoint, and grid electricity can often come with CO² outputs that are high, per delivered heating energy at the load compared to delivered fuels. Heat pumps realy start to look good, when there is grid tied solar PV, and energy bills can drop to 5% or less of anything else.This works as far north as 45°latitude, at least. But the truth is that even @45°n, a house that is built to the best insulation standards, has no heating system whatsoever, as domestic activities and heat air exhangers alone, will produce excess heat, and party gatherings of organic heat machines, will require opening windows to stay comfortable, in the depths of winter.

sagarm 2y ago
Even at a COP of 2, a heat pump powered by a 60% efficient gas power plant will use less gas at the power plant than gas heat.
- metalman 2y ago
  60%? is a very optimistic number, and even if granted, does nit address the horrible reliabilty problems with heat pumps, which change the economics considerably. Heat pumps are noisy, and physicaly intrusive uggly wall lumps inside, and create a clutter outside. Well built passive solar creates a living environment that needs no heat source, is orders of magnitude more reliable in all conditions, while bieng invisible to all but the most observant.An added benifit is that a passive solar house is also acousticaly insulated, and therefor much nicer in a noisy, urban environment, near roads, etc. Financialy, the costs of building a passive house are not excessive, and once established, represent transferable value, while .... :)....insulating you from energy market fluctuations.
  - sagarm 2y ago

vfclists 2y ago

Should it require that much numeracy and time researching price options to benefit from a heat pump? Can't it be much simpler? Not all people have the brains AND assuming that they do, the time to go through these hoops to make their heat pump investment pay off.

ssuds 2y ago
You hit the nail on the head. I’ve spent the last couple years working full time on heat pumps, and even I forgot to switch to the right rate plan. Most people will shut down and just stick with their gas furnace because it’s the path of least resistance. We need a blend of technology, policy and education to make this dead simple.