Looking to get some anecdotal experiences from someone living in a cold climate using a heat pump as their main source of heat.
Looking to get some anecdotal experiences from someone living in a cold climate using a heat pump as their main source of heat.
I like the idea of heat pumps for efficiency, but I fear I would be like you. I’m in a mild climate and my (gas heat) winter utility bills are so low already I have a feeling a more efficient heat pump would actually cost more to run.
A few years ago I created a spreadsheet where I can plug in electric and gas prices. It shows me which is the cheaper option to heat with. And year after year despite my heat pump being ~3x as efficient as my gas furnace the furnace has been hands-down cheaper to run. So I just leave the thermostat on Aux all winter. One day I suspect it will flip but that hasn’t happened yet.
My perfect world would be solar and batteries and a heat pump install. Free power and heating.
Unfortunately or fortunetly depending on how you look at it, both gas and electric is relatively cheap in my neck of the woods so it would take forever to pay for itself.
I went down the solar rabbit hole a year or two ago, unfortunately my house is oriented in a crappy direction and coupled with a bunch of old-growth trees there was no scenario where I would even break-even in the 20 year life expectancy of the panels. Maybe some day that will change.
Like you said though, I’m in the same boat where electric and gas are both quite cheap here.