this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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The article doesn't say just how much more expensive heat pumps are when comparing to gas furnaces. I live in one of the states at the top of that picture and just replaced my 20+ year old furnace and AC compressor. I specifically asked about heat pumps and they were reluctant to even price it out for me. It was over twice the cost. In addition they said the area I live in would almost certainly require an aux heat source, which they recommended gas for because direct electric heat is so horribly inefficient. I ended up going with the 98.5% efficient gas furnace, which also came with incentives and rebates from the power company.
Direct electric heat is very efficient. Practically 100%.
My understanding is that you would only need the aux source during extreme cold. So very rarely.
Right - in fact, from my knowledge, heat pumps only see use over direct electrical heating because they are effectively more than 100% efficient. They move more heat energy from outside to inside than they use in the transmission.
The breakdown between gas and electric heating isn’t necessarily a matter of how efficiently the energy is used once it gets to the home, it’s how expensive it is to get it there in the first place. In a lot, if not a majority, of places, it’s much cheaper to get gas piped in than it would be to pay for the same amount of heating via direct electric resistance. Heat pumps change the equation because they can make electric heating in places that don’t get outrageously cold economically competitive with gas.
Yep PGE makes it so that gas is tremendously less expensive than electrical in California. So a lot of people who would normally be upgrading right now will not be doing so.