this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
49 points (98.0% liked)
Canada
7224 readers
378 users here now
What's going on Canada?
Communities
π Meta
πΊοΈ Provinces / Territories
- Alberta
- British Columbia
- Manitoba
- New Brunswick
- Newfoundland and Labrador
- Northwest Territories
- Nova Scotia
- Nunavut
- Ontario
- Prince Edward Island
- Quebec
- Saskatchewan
- Yukon
ποΈ Cities / Local Communities
- Calgary (AB)
- Edmonton (AB)
- Greater Sudbury (ON)
- Halifax (NS)
- Hamilton (ON)
- Kootenays (BC)
- London (ON)
- Mississauga (ON)
- Montreal (QC)
- Nanaimo (BC)
- Oceanside (BC)
- Ottawa (ON)
- Port Alberni (BC)
- Regina (SK)
- Saskatoon (SK)
- Thunder Bay (ON)
- Toronto (ON)
- Vancouver (BC)
- Vancouver Island (BC)
- Victoria (BC)
- Waterloo (ON)
- Winnipeg (MB)
π Sports
Hockey
- List of All Teams: Post on /c/hockey
- General Community: /c/Hockey
- Calgary Flames
- Edmonton Oilers
- MontrΓ©al Canadiens
- Ottawa Senators
- Toronto Maple Leafs
- Vancouver Canucks
- Winnipeg Jets
Football (NFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Football (CFL)
- List of All Teams:
unknown
Baseball
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- Toronto Blue Jays
Basketball
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- Toronto Raptors
Soccer
- List of All Teams:
unknown
- General Community: /c/CanadaSoccer
- Toronto FC
π» Universities
π΅ Finance / Shopping
- Personal Finance Canada
- BAPCSalesCanada
- Canadian Investor
- Buy Canadian
- Quebec Finance
- Churning Canada
π£οΈ Politics
- Canada Politics
- General:
- By Province:
π Social and Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage:
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Your thinking on the dirty grid might be false. If you use a heat pump you typically get more heat energy than the energy you input. A heat pump can multiply the energy you put in by a factor of 2-5. Say you burn 1 unit of gas to heat your apartment. You could let your utility burn that liter and give you 50% of its energy in electricity (assuming half is lost). Then you power a hear pump which operates at COP of 2x. You get the same amount of heat as before. Now if the heat pump operates at a higher COP, you end up saving on burned gas. It's only worse if it operates at lower than COP or 2 under these conditions. Depending on the efficiency of the power generator and transmission, those numbers would balance differently. I don't think they'd be worse though. 50% is a really low number.
The reason this doesn't break the preservation of energy principle is that heat pumps move heat instead of converting electricity into heat energy. There's always heat in the air if the temperature is above absolute 0.
COP goes straight to shit at -15, which happens quite often on the prairies. Which might not be a problem on the annual expense, but if you can't keep your house from freezing up, it doesn't matter how much or little it costs. You'll spend way more $ and carbon fixing it afterwards.
Anyone installing a heat pump in cold climates will often have a backup heat source. If you don't have access to natural gas, heat pumps can save considerable amounts of energy compared to only resistive heat.