Oxford study proves heat pumps triumph over fossil fuels in the cold::Published Monday in the scientific journal Joule, the research found that heat pumps are two to three times more efficient than their oil and gas counterparts, specifically in temperatures ranging from 10 C to -20 C.
A/C guy who’s the son of an A/C guy here. Heat pumps lose efficiency the colder it gets. I wouldn’t bother with one if you’re in a northern climate. Lower midwest, you might be able to save money with a heat pump over natural gas, but it will depend heavily on the cost of the respective energy. For me, in the central US, we have great prices on gas and somewhat crappy prices on electricity (vs most surrounding regions) and it’s definitely cheaper for me to stick with gas heat.
So this is exactly what the article is about and up to -4 f heat pumps are more efficient.
If your the son of an hvac guy maybe your information is based on older installed units. I had a heat pump installed in my fathers home in the northeast ( non coastal) and I was shocked it ran well all year. I had heard the some rumor that you had.
Technology advanced and facts change.
Your information is outdated. It is even clearly mentioned in the one-sentence summary in the OP:
That doesn’t say anything about gas prices.
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And the naysayers don’t actually run calculations to see what their true costs might be, they already decided gas is king. A couple of good ol boy type HVAC folks that all say “just get a furnace” is all they need to know, reality be damned.
its hard to get a person who living is based on a lie to see the truth.
Well my gas is only 3 times cheaper currently before the Ukraine war it was 6-7 times cheaper so…
This is the correct take for a conventional heat pump. However, there are relatively new geothermal heat pumps that can heat down to -30°C (-22°F) and are much more efficient.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/heat-pump-faq-1.6824634
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Thankfully heat pumps have gotten better since your father’s day. And natural gas is only going to keep getting more expensive. For a price of equipment that will last you 15-25 years it’s becoming harder to justify gas heating.
For new builds ground source heat pumps should become more standard, they cost more, but they’ll save a lot in the long run.
But its all irrelevant because the most effective way to keep warm is to continue with global warming. Soon we wont have a cold season to worry about. 😜
I know you’re joking but the reality is we’ll probably get worse cold weather alongside the warmer weather - the weather will be more extreme at either end.
Scary, isn’t it?
Yet there are still people out there denying it.
Continue? You can’t stop it even if you wanted to, unless you pervert the natural climate cycles somehow. We are exiting a cold period and it has nothing whatsoever to do with using gas or come farts.
You mean this natural climate cycle?
Oh fuck! Are you a climate change denier?! Are you joking, too? or do you still believe this is a natural change?
The climate changes. There’s no denying it. No it isn’t caused by cow farts so everyone needs to? eat bugs instead, and no it isn’t caused by driving your car so you must become a serf and be bound to your lords 15 minute plantation.
Dont know what happened, but i can’t see this comment thread anymore. Maybe it’s been deleted.
Whatever happened, you are absolutely full of shit.
Maybe you should try listening to scientists instead of talking about cow farts. There is an insurmoutable amount of information and proof that the climate has warmed drastically in the last 20-100 years and it doesn’t follow any recorded pattern of warming and cooling since the dawn of humanity ~200000 years ago.
https://xkcd.com/1732/
Heres a nice image showing the data in simple terms.
You xan continue to dwny it all you want, but any rational person will ignore you.
Incidentally, dont pay attention to mass media, i hear a claim i look at the facts and draw my own conclusions. You should do the same.
If you’re on propane, it’s more likely to be cheaper. Particularly over the course of an entire heating season, because they’re more efficient in fall and spring than the coldest part of winter.
But yeah, this study wasn’t looking at cost per therm but just raw COP, which is a pointless metric. It doesn’t even compare the number of watts of heat from burning natural gas in a furnace vs in a modern power plant that supplies a heat pump. Although since we don’t have a carbon tax, that’s only a theoretically interesting comparison.
Heat pumps work fine for most people in the north. Mitsubishi’s cold climate heat pumps supply 85% of their rated heat at -13F. Buffalo is a city known for its winters, and the last time Buffalo’s lowest temperature was below that was 1982. They’re just going to be a more expensive option for most people right now.
Well, some people don’t put money higher than the ability of humanity to survive.
So the cost is less relevant than the pollution.
Cost is an abstraction of a lot of factors, and some of that cost is in the pollution of manufacture. For example, we probably can’t afford the CO2 output of all the concrete that would be needed to convert to majority hydro power, even if we had the rivers to put them on. It’d pay back eventually, but the medium-term impact on the climate would be too much.
That said, we’re sticking AC units on basically every house in America, and making it reversible is not difficult or expensive. Heat pumps should have been standard for decades.
My father in law went to a heat pump instead of propane this year. No natural gas where he lives.
But he also dropped 20k on a solar system to power it.
How long would the return on cost savings take for it to pay itself off?
Ditto. At least with gas I’m not paying Alabama Power’s rates.
Even without recent efficiency advancements, most houses in the continental US are going to have A/C units. It costs a trivial amount to make a reversible A/C unit that could provide as much heat as needed for autumn or spring. It’s stupid that this hasn’t been the standard for decades.
With recent efficiency advancements, they’re good enough for most of winter, too. I live in southern Wisconsin, and just installed a heat pump this past year. We’re going to have to play with the setting to find the sweet spot, but since we also have solar, we could potentially be running it down to 10F and still be saving money. Going to have to see on that one, but 15 or 20F might end up being more reasonable. Even 20F would cover most winter days without turning on the furnace at all.
If you posted that earlier today you would have gotten a spanking for saying anything critical about heat pumps. Or people just don’t like me in particular. Hard to tell.
Maybe your information was just not factual?