I’m not going to pretend to know a lot about heat pumps…there sure is a lot of negativity going on about them and if they were actually as glorious as has been promoted by the Liberals…we’d all probably know more.
The essence seems to be that they are both an A/C unit and in reverse, operate as a heat pump…and from this, most of us will extrapolate that these are very costly to run on electricity, rightfully so.
Because the cost of combustion, especially will always be cheaper than manufacturing heat through an element of any sort…this is just simply a fact.
Burn a log or plug in an electric blanket…which is more efficient?
Have a home with a family and try to keep up with the costs of energy and laundry using an Electric Dryer vs Gas…you know what the outcome will be.
BUT THE WEATHER, they screech…we HAVE TO FIX THE WEATHER.
Oh…okay.
So, we want to move away from heating fuel in the Atlantic Provinces into using Heat…despite the fact that a single storm in Nova Scotia caused 424, 486 Unique Customers and an additional 300+k repeat customers to be without power for 30 Million Hours…
Into transferring them to full on electric.
Because this is a way to reduce Carbon emissions, right?
Despite the fact that Canada, on the global scale is less than 2% of GHG emissions, in some of the most inhospitable living conditions, commonly referred to as 8 Months of Winter, 4 Months of Bad Skating…
What we’d need to appreciate is where a province like Nova Scotia get’s their power.
From Nova Scotia Power, they say this:
That 60% of the energy comes from COAL, NATURAL GAS and OIL!
This is WITH them not using the Grid for Powering their home heating…
Now…Renewables aren’t a static, meaning that their current load (if is accurate, which I seriously doubt), provides 34% of their Energy.
What do you think happens when more energy is being consumed because of heating now hitting this same grid?
If you guessed that they’d need to rely on more COAL, OIL and GAS, you are 100% correct!
It’s either that, or they increase their imports of Energy from 6% and watch that skyrocket…except in times when there are powerlines down from their imports leaving them with NO CHOICE but to AMP UP their own Energy production through COAL, OIL and GAS!
Sure…there are plans to increase this to 80% Renewables by 2030…
But this will most certainly come as a cost…to YOU the taxpayer because despite what the Liberals and NDP tell you, the Government doesn’t pay for anything, YOU DO, through your taxes.
This is forgetting the hate that the Liberals and NDP have for gas power vehicles and the push for Electric Vehicles, which no community inside of Canada is able to provide for.
We can keep having these incredibly stupid conversations over mythical free energy, but the facts are certainly not in their favor.
Switching the Atlantic Provinces from Fuel Oil will see them burn higher emission COAL to generate energy…and this will simply never be as efficient and as effective as combustion.
Just thought I’d point this out…
here's my heat pump tale of woe: in 2015, we started restoring a 3 story 1915 house in run down condition as our permanent residence. the HVAC guy put in a heat pump for each floor so 3 units, each with their own thermostat. the first winter we lived in the house, i got a $780 bill for a single month and thought "my god, i can't afford to live in my house!!" then it died entirely. my BF was in NY at the time and coached me over the phone on how to check the fuse, etc. but to no avail. the first floor was freezing so my 95 year old father and i stayed upstairs.
i got a referral from a friend for a different HVAC company and they were coming on monday.
my BF arrived sunday night and discovered that the heat pump- only a year old- had crapped out trying to keep up with the cold and had switched to the auxiliary heat mode, which was effectively like trying to heat the entire first floor with a toaster, hence my almost $800 bill. then the auxiliary heat strips had caught fire and melted inside the HVAC closet IN THE HOUSE AND I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT!!!! we could have lost the house!!
$10,000 and a new GAS unit later, we had reliable heat that i could afford.
now the punch line of this story is that WE LIVE IN CHARLESTON, SC where winters would barely qualify as early spring in canada. anyone who thinks that heat pumps will work in canada is on drugs.
Encouraging (i.e. forcing) Atlantic Canada to switch to heat pumps serves a single purpose - It forces them to buy more electricity from Quebec. This is the underlying premise to the entire Liberal "Sky IS Falling, We're All Going To Die" scam. It's just handing more Canadian tax payer dollars to a tiny population that hates the rest of the country and wants a free ride at our expense. Heat pumps operate at typically 300-400% efficiency (think $1 of electricity gets you $4 of heat) but only as low as -5 to -10 degrees (depending on the particular model). After that their efficiency drops off a cliff. I've been installing them for years so I know a thing or two about heat pumps. Unless Atlantic Canada never gets below Zero degrees for more than a few hours at a time, a heat pump will never replace their primary heating system. Then, as soon as electricity rates skyrocket, like they did in BC with the Two Tiered Rate system, the old combustion based systems will come right back on.