With the cold weather I was hoping to hear of some experiences people have had with their heat pumps.
What kind of backup heat do you have? Are you using it? Is there some temperature where you just stop using the heat pump, or are you even consciously thinking about it?
Thanks!
One thing that makes me wary is that this electric supplementary heating is needed at exactly the same time the grid is under the most stress. Plus, as we all get heat pumps, we’re all going to need that extra electricity at the same time.
If you already have a gas furnace, the case could be made to keep that as your backup. But that doesn’t seem ideal. It’s something to maintain, made worse by the fact it will be so infrequently used. Plus, you can never hope to get rid of your gas line/company.
It makes me think ground source heating is the obvious answer, but, the cost…
You should be talking to your electricity company about reliability and future-proofing if that’s something that worries you about heat pumps.
As much as it sucks, if you’re an area where reliability is a problem, getting a propane-powered generator is the way to go… Even better if you can get the advantage of using the waste heat from the genny into your home (a.k.a. ‘co-gen’).
My concern is the entire grid - in Alberta at least.
Whenever it’s really cold or really hot out our grid pretty much maxes out and if that happens to coincide with a calm day, I think we’re in trouble.
It’s cold out - lets all watch the price of electricity hit $999/MWh this evening and think about whether we’d be comfortable if a couple thousand Albertans had to suddenly turn on their resistive heating: http://ets.aeso.ca/
That would mean needing to talk to the Alberta government, and you might as well talk to spilled paint, for all the good it’ll do.