Blue_Trackhawk

Blue_Trackhawk t1_j9d21z0 wrote

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Heat Pumps Sell Like Hotcakes on America's Oil-Rich Frontier by dolphins3

Yeah, there's a lot of moving parts determining whether this is immediately beneficial to the environmental impact of climate control or not.

Lower demand for fuel at each household, but increased demand for fuel at the power station; what net change in fuel cost does this create?

Heat pumps tout up to 300% efficiency, but that is only achieved in ideal weather conditions; how often is it operating well short of that?

There may be economies of scale using fuel for power generation at the power plant; how much more efficient is it? How do transmission losses factor into that?

There are plenty of talking points for or against. I don't think everyone should just go convert a perfectly functional system to electric, and for others, conversion may be financially irresponsible. If we're looking at this as a phase (get it?) in a larger plan to reduce dependence on fossil fuel for energy needs, then it seems like an eventually worthwhile change and not just passing the buck or kicking the can.

What we have been seeing are things happening in parallel. Efforts to reduce generation emissions while also increasing residential and commercial structure and systems efficiency.

In terms of that last mile efficiency, this is just the next evolution to previous efforts to increase efficiency in lighting. Remember when the vast majority of light bulbs used 60-100 watts? I even used to have a 300-watt halogen lamp! Now we are seeing 10-15 watts. That's huge! And looking at the efficiency of AC units for a 3ton unit, at 14 seer, it was like running 25 of those old light bulbs; a 25 seer unit would be like 14 of those old light bulbs, or maybe 100-150 modern led lights. We shifted energy demand away from lighting, and by moving away from combustion heat, shifting demand more to electric heat, but it is not an equal exchange. As generation becomes more efficient, we're actually looking at the end game of a major shift in energy sources and consumption. We are also doing our part adopting more EV and PHEV vehicles (a whole other can or worms). Let's not get pessimistic and take the wind out of the sails of people who want to switch from a furnace to a heat pump now! Things feel like they are moving in the right direction, slowly but surely.

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