this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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For anyone wondering, you should absolutely get a heat pump -- the savings are still substantial, even if you need to use an alternate heat source for the coldest days of the year. My annual electric costs are down over 50% since switching about 4 years ago. For the couple days a year when the heat pump doesn't do the job, it supplements with electric heat.
Here's the thing though, 50% reduction in my electrical use is like $30 a month. It's going to take quite a few years of 50% to make a $10k cost difference justifiable.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for heat pumps in principle. I personally have a heat pump heating my pool. I put in central air conditioning a couple years ago, and took a serious look at it for the house, but it was going to be more than double the cost. My electrical bill isn't the problem either, it's all the damn fees and riders that drive it into the stratosphere, not usage.
So that + the fact I live in Southern Alberta and it might not be very useful 4 or 5 months of the year, I just can't make it make sense. The government is going to need to give out more grant $$ before I'll consider it.
My total bill dropped, because the number of kWh dropped, and most of the distribution fees are linked to consumption.
For me, I was replacing my furnace anyway (builder grade crap) and I wanted the most efficient unit I could get -- because summers are only getting hotter. I managed to upgrade from 2-ton AC to 2.5-ton heatpump, but the total cost (tax included) was approaching $12k). I may not get back every penny I spent in electricity savings, but the house is more comfortable, and it's nice to know I have extra heating/cooling capacity as the weather gets more extreme.
There's definitely a pretty good argument to be made there too, I won't deny that. You are right, the summers are getting longer drier and gnarlier, and the freezes are getting worse too. We often have to deal with a lot of smoke later in the summer too. I for sure took a real close look at it a couple years ago, just as those grants and stuff came online, as we were doing our AC at the time.
The reality for my household, is that in current state and location we just don't use enough hydro to justify the cost versus the benefits. Now does that change in the future, as my kids get older and the climate continues to change? Hey, maybe, never say never. Also I think if you are a household in SW Ontario, or anywhere near the lakes, absolutely I'd be taking a very very close and serious look at one. I just couldn't get the math to math at the moment, in my location.
You might be surprised. I pulled 10 years of data for Lucky Lake, SK from environment Canada and the average number of days below -15C is 62. Our personal heating season is about 220 days (first use to last use, no matter how minimal). That works out to about 72% coverage for one of the less capable heat pumps.
Others have suggested a minimum of -20 for long-term reliability. I didn't do that analysis, but I did for below -25 and the average number of days is more like 21. IIRC, below -30 was no more than a dozen, on average.
Obviously, every household's calculations are different. Yours sound like it's not worthwhile from a strictly personal finance perspective.
Precisely. You might pay more for heat on a couple days a year, but overall the advantage is huge.
I definitely should look at the details closer for our area. My big concern is with the big negatives, is mainly are these units going to last? Even though the ratings go to -15 or -20, the facts are that efficiency falls off a cliff even before you start getting into negative temps. At -15 you are using more energy than you would otherwise be with conventional heating sources. Now does that offset with more efficient days, I mean it probably does, it has to. But that doesn't factor wear and tear. I mean that might be concern that's all for naught too, but I just want to sit back a bit and see, personally.
Not in Alberta, but God I miss my heatpump in my last apartment. It saved me so much money vs. resistive heating and a portable AC. It even had a backup resistive heater, but it worked pretty well even into the deep negatives.
We had a heat pump in our condo. Thing was nightmare fuel, and always broken. I don't hold it against heat pumps though. It was a proprietary sized unit, and when it broke we had to wait for parts from like Baltimore or something like that. Only one company made parts, and then they shut down.
Ugh, I'm sorry about that. I hate proprietary stuff / stuff that isn't repairable. It's a nightmare to fix.
Hopefully, you have a better one someday!
Oh that was in our condo, a few years back. We live in a house now. It was def a brain dead design, and unnecessary. Usual developer bullshit. That building signed a new long term maintenance agreement with another company while we were there, and they sourced a commercially available unit that would work. So everyone got to spend $4k, but no more issues. Not my problem now anyways, thankfully.
One thing that makes me wary is that this electric supplementary heating is needed at exactly the same time the grid is under the most stress. Plus, as we all get heat pumps, we're all going to need that extra electricity at the same time.
If you already have a gas furnace, the case could be made to keep that as your backup. But that doesn't seem ideal. It's something to maintain, made worse by the fact it will be so infrequently used. Plus, you can never hope to get rid of your gas line/company.
It makes me think ground source heating is the obvious answer, but, the cost...
You should be talking to your electricity company about reliability and future-proofing if that's something that worries you about heat pumps.
As much as it sucks, if you're an area where reliability is a problem, getting a propane-powered generator is the way to go... Even better if you can get the advantage of using the waste heat from the genny into your home (a.k.a. 'co-gen').
My concern is the entire grid - in Alberta at least.
Whenever it's really cold or really hot out our grid pretty much maxes out and if that happens to coincide with a calm day, I think we're in trouble.
It's cold out - lets all watch the price of electricity hit $999/MWh this evening and think about whether we'd be comfortable if a couple thousand Albertans had to suddenly turn on their resistive heating: http://ets.aeso.ca/
That would mean needing to talk to the Alberta government, and you might as well talk to spilled paint, for all the good it'll do.