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Comment by gsk22 | Hacker News Reader

Heat pumps are something like 5-6x as efficient as resistive electric heaters. So no surprise that your bill would be lower.

Of course, heating an entire house with (non-heat-pump) electric heat in a cold climate is kind of crazy. Natural gas is way way cheaper. But I've seen it in old houses here in the Upper Midwest, so it's not _too_ out of the ordinary.

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Heat pumps are so affordable now, that just feels like a poor decision-making rather than an economic hardship. You could finance a heat pump and the savings would pay itself off in a year.

Yeah it's called apartment living. I hit nearly $350 in Oakland a couple years (and many PG&E rate hikes) ago in a 600 sq ft apartment. Even if I wanted to pay for a heat pump installation it's doubtful the landlord would've been on board.

Last time I did the math, even with a 60% efficient furnace natural gas was cheaper than an electric heat pump. PG&E's electric rates are simply that much more expensive than their natural gas rates. Currently that's up to $0.49/kWh on the most popular rate plan vs $2.49/therm. Keep in mind that the fifth and sixth electric rate hikes of 2024 were just approved today by Newsom's regulatory body and don't factor into the price I quoted.

Lol what. I'm paying $.10/kWh. https://booneelectric.coop/my-account/rates/

https://www.pge.com/content/dam/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/...

Unreal

I pay about $60 a month to heat a well-insulated apartment in Copenhagen, similar size.

The average for an 80m² apartment is $1100/year.

After the 1970s fuel crises, Denmark invested in district heating and that seems to have paid off.

That completely depends on local electricity costs and climate. We get about 4 months of freezing temperatures and when I did some back of the napkin math, a heat pump installation would be cheaper than gas over its lifetime, but it was only by about 10-20%, at a much higher upfront cost.

I'm not an expert so I could've made a mistake somewhere, but my calculations said that the system would have to survive for 10-15 years before it would pull ahead of a new gas boiler.

I was also going to point that out. Resistive electric heating costs could easily reach that much, but it’s a horribly inefficient way to heat your house.

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