Electricity prices have gone up due to datacenters as well as neglected grid infrastructure needing investment. Natural gas prices are going up because of LNG export infrastructure causing US consumers to compete against global LNG consumers for fuel to heat, as well as domestic electrical generation demand. Pick your poison.
Electricity prices might come down over time (renewables push down generation costs), natural gas prices won’t due to global demand for it.
I've been using two heat pumps near Austin, Texas since 2011, rated at a total of 84,000 BTU/hr (4 ton + 3 ton capacity) (25KW of heat) on a total of 5KW electrical input (COP ~= 5.0).
They are standard outdoor air heat exchangers so below about 35F efficiency drops significantly. That's pretty rare around here so it is almost always enough - we can still gain about 45F vs the outdoor temperature even below 20F.
We don't have natural gas available where I live, only propane. When I purchased the heat pumps, propane was $5/gallon for 91,500 BTU. That translates to about $4.60/hr to run 84,000 BTU/hr of furnace. With electric energy (cheap in Texas!) at about $0.11/KWh, the equivalent costs of my heat pumps was and remains close to about $0.55/hr to run.
In the summer, they cool with equal capacity and similar power consumption for a 15 SEER rating (waste heat from the system components works against cooling in the summer!)
Factor in your acquisition costs (mine, just after the housing bust and with a little legwork, were about 20% of retail at the time, so a no-brainer) and you can get a lot more objective idea what you're really accomplishing.
It’s the install cost that’s in the way, not the electricity cost. A heat pump and a solar array would be great, I’d love to stick that on my house, if I wasn’t buried in debt.
This is why the heat pump should come along with local electric generation (mostly solar) and local storage (mostly battery banks).
In this configuration a typical suburban home can provide ALL of it's own energy needs, including 2 electric cars.
This also needs to come along with a massive reorganization of the US' electric utilities, which are primarily optimized to provide the most money possible to some rich assholes.
Instead we should be optimized for local generation, storage and distribution.
That is to say, we should be technologically optimized, not shareholder return optimized.
Obviously, this won't happen while the world's richest have the sway that they currently hold on policy.
But in the mean time, each homeowner can move ahead with local generation and storage that provides for all of their local energy consumption.
And YES, it does pay for itself over a shorter time span than a typical mortgage...
I had an install of a heat pump slightly oversized for the work trailer used. Every day it was below 30-40F 0C-4C, the pre-heater would kick on. A heat strip inside the heat pump.
It would take 30min to an hour to get heat out of the heat pump. We had to get portable heaters to supplement the heat generated and while the pre-heater was running.
Then in summer it could not handle cooling so we needed an additional loud window AC.
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 29.3 ms ] threadElectricity prices might come down over time (renewables push down generation costs), natural gas prices won’t due to global demand for it.
They are standard outdoor air heat exchangers so below about 35F efficiency drops significantly. That's pretty rare around here so it is almost always enough - we can still gain about 45F vs the outdoor temperature even below 20F.
We don't have natural gas available where I live, only propane. When I purchased the heat pumps, propane was $5/gallon for 91,500 BTU. That translates to about $4.60/hr to run 84,000 BTU/hr of furnace. With electric energy (cheap in Texas!) at about $0.11/KWh, the equivalent costs of my heat pumps was and remains close to about $0.55/hr to run.
In the summer, they cool with equal capacity and similar power consumption for a 15 SEER rating (waste heat from the system components works against cooling in the summer!)
Factor in your acquisition costs (mine, just after the housing bust and with a little legwork, were about 20% of retail at the time, so a no-brainer) and you can get a lot more objective idea what you're really accomplishing.
https://www.hotwater.com/info-center/doe-regulations/doe-res...
In this configuration a typical suburban home can provide ALL of it's own energy needs, including 2 electric cars.
This also needs to come along with a massive reorganization of the US' electric utilities, which are primarily optimized to provide the most money possible to some rich assholes.
Instead we should be optimized for local generation, storage and distribution.
That is to say, we should be technologically optimized, not shareholder return optimized.
Obviously, this won't happen while the world's richest have the sway that they currently hold on policy.
But in the mean time, each homeowner can move ahead with local generation and storage that provides for all of their local energy consumption.
And YES, it does pay for itself over a shorter time span than a typical mortgage...
It would take 30min to an hour to get heat out of the heat pump. We had to get portable heaters to supplement the heat generated and while the pre-heater was running.
Then in summer it could not handle cooling so we needed an additional loud window AC.