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I think these will make sense eventually but if most of my electricity in winter comes from gas anyway, is changing where the gas is burned really better?
Yes, on two points. 1) heat pumps are more than 100% efficient in most conditions. Because they are moving heat, rather than generating it, they can add more heat energy to your home than they actually consume. 2) mix of sources. As you said, even if most of your electricity comes from gas plants, that means some can or does come from renewable sources or nuclear. This makes it much easier to transition to even more renewables, since the consumer side doesn't need to change anything as gas plants are phased out. It's future planning with immediate benefits from point 1.
Point 1 can be a bit complex, since in extreme conditions air source heat pumps may rely on resistive heating which is only 100% efficient. Alternatives like ground source HPs don't have that problem, but they are suited to fewer areas.
Thanks. My climate is relatively mild so I don’t think resistance heating will be necessary. Extreme lows could get to the low 20’s but only for brief periods, so I think heat pumps should still work in such conditions?
Our heat pump didn't really kick in the resistive auxiliary heat until temps were well below 0°F, but humidity also plays into that. It wasn't ever running the resistive heat exclusively.
If sized correctly, heat pumps also don't really like setbacks in the winter. Just set the thermostat to whatever and leave it -- don't have it cool down at night and warm back up in the morning.
I like to be warm at night anyway so I don’t have a problem with that.
An additional argument I've heard is that economies of scale come into play with power generation. The argument is mainly used around electric vs gas cars when electricity is generated from fossil fuels, but apparently larger plants are generally more efficient at generating energy. This may not hold up when heat is the desired form of energy compared to a gas car where it's a waste product.
Yeah heat is different because converting fossil fuels to motion is inherently inefficient, but converting them to heat is very efficient. But others correctly pointed out that heat pumps are actually more than 100% efficient because they move heat around rather than making it directly.
Gas boilers can by 95% efficient turning gas directly into heat energy.
Electricity generation is about 55% efficient at turning gas into electric energy.
So in a situation where you get 2 times or more heat out per kW you put in then you're lowering your carbon footprint even when electricity is created using gas.
2 to 4 times is not too difficult so
There's also the pretty big issue that the more methane is transported, the more leaks we have. As methane is 40× more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas every property we take off the gas network is a step towards reducing the need for that infrastructure.
Personally I can't fit an air source heat pump in my flat. It would be incredibly noisy and would probably require radiators to be refitted and taken up more space.
When my gas boiler goes I'll look at the cost of the standing price of a gas connection, annual servicing, and kW cost of gas. Then look at what a standard electric boiler costs.
It won't have the 2 to 4 times saving on kW cost a heat pump would have but it probably will come out similarly on cost. It will have a lower install cost. And it will reduce methane emissions.
If we haven't moved far enough to renewable energy by then my carbon footprint might actually go up. But the methane reduction will more than make up for that.
I looked into it very seriously, but where I am we regularly get to -40 and are often -20 or lower. All's good up to about that point, but you'll need a gas furnace to assist much past -20. In which case, you are into it for a gas bill anyway of which 2/3 is deliver costs, so you might as well just use a furnace.
And before anyone comes apart on me, I ran off a spreadsheet using very pessimistic gas prices, all the green grants I could come up with and probably overly optimistic heat pump efficiencies at cold weather, and I couldn't make the whole system come in at a price that broke even in less than 20 years. At which point you'd be starting all over again.
So if you're in most of Canada outside of the Lower Mainland and the Niagra Peninsula, and probably a good chunk of the US, no.
Are we talking Celsius or Fahrenheit? -20 F is pretty cold. I think the vast majority of people in North America never experience weather like that. For most areas, occasional supplemental heating by traditional electric heating should be sufficient and avoid the gas hookup issue. It’s not very efficient but only needing it a few times per winter that should be acceptable.
Celsius
It's not about being efficient. If it were just that, no problem, a few nights of expensive heat isn't going to change the equation much over a year. It's a matter of not freezing because there's no way it can keep up whether inefficient or not.
So if you're going to be spending 5k on a furnace anyway, and have to keep a gas bill active, it's just not going to save enough money to pay the heatpump back, especially since you're buying a particularly expensive model in order to have one that works at middle cold temperatures.
I think a powerful enough heater of any kind should keep your warm—so economics is the main question. Perhaps an electric heater that powerful would be too expensive or use too much power.
But regardless, it sounds like you live in an exceptionally cold climate so you may have challenges that the rest of us don’t. I haven’t really heard heat pumps recommended for arctic climates, mainly for temperate ones. My climate is borderline subtropical so I think it will be economical for me.