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Does anyone here have experience with heat pumps? I'm on oil heat and needless to say, shit's gotten ridiculously pricy lately. I feel like I should be able to switch over to something cheaper and break even within like a year or less, because of how much I expect to spend on oil this winter.
Most local people in my very progressive corner of the world keep talking up heat pumps like they're the best thing since the invention of the chimney. I find this suspect myself. I've never heard of this technology before really recently, and I'm only hearing about it from people who are really into green energy. And it sounds too good to be true. It heats and cools for less money than any alternatives, supposedly. But I really know close to nothing about them.
My culture war shenanigans sense is tingling, so I wanted to find out if anyone here, a place I trust has not drank the green progressive Kool aid, has experiences with or knowledge about heat pumps. I guess I just don't trust the people I'm hearing from, I think they're willing to stretch the truth for what they think is the greater good. Are they worth it financially? Do they work well without tons of annoying maintenance? What about if your state offers financial incentives for moving to heat pumps, are they worth it then?
A heat pump is just an aircon that can work in reverse. To be more precise, any aircon or fridge is a heat pump, but a "heat pump" in the marketing speak is a split-system aircon that can work in reverse.
Yes, it's a much more efficient heating system than one that is simply converting fuel or pixies into calories, but its efficiency trails off the bigger the temperature difference. You can still use one at -15C/5F, but it will be just as good as a direct energy-to-heat converter.
It's not. Heat pumps typically have something between 200% and 300% efficiency at converting electric energy to heat. However, power plants are typically around 30% and 40% efficient at converting fuel to electricity, and modern home furnaces are typically around 80% and 90% efficient at converting fuel to usable heat (some will escape in exhaust). Therefore, it actually all nicely evens out.
Now, heat pumps can still make sense, because they can double as whole-house air conditioners in summer (if you're using heat pumps coupled with forced air, instead of, say, water-based radiant heating). They'll also make more sense in unlikely future where power generation is majority nuclear, or in even less likely one where we build out wind turbines on an area equivalent in size to the entire Northeastern US. However, as of today, the difference in efficiency is really not big.
This doesn’t change your point, but just FYI a modern, combined-cycle power plant should be around 60% efficient, when looking at the power coming out of the generator vs. the heat value of the fuel burned. 30-40% are car engine numbers, with engine power instead of generator power, or a cheap generator you can buy at Home Depot.
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