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What Would Happen if Every American Got a Heat Pump (www.wired.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Archived copies of the article: archive.today ghostarchive.org web.archive.org

The paper the article is about is here and its press release

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Can you show me where you're getting those figures? I was basing my estimate on a quick google search of prices, and the estimate provided for air-source heat pumps here. (MassSave is an organization that promotes energy efficient and climate friendly appliance solutions in Massachusetts), which seems to suggest $22,000 is an average cost, which is in line with the other estimates I was finding. ($10-$20k to buy the unit and $15-$30k including installation.)

Edit: To be clear, I'm not trying to be contrary or argumentative; I've been looking into heat pumps as a possible option for us for years and if they've become justifiable from a cost perspective, I'd love to get those details.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

I looked up prices in Massachusetts, they are higher than the national average. Looks like 2 main factors:

1 A higher than usual percentage of mini splits vs central air. These will be more efficient and have a lot of comfort benefits, but are considerably pricier then retrofitting a central air system. So if you are retro fitting CA, you could come in under average.

2 MAs impressive $10k+ incentive system for whole home heat pump systems has resulted in HVAC companies raising prices, because of course it has. This is why we can't have nice things.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I just looked up the energy star list of high efficiency heat pumps, chose the largest model, and googled a few of the prices to get about 7 to 10k. Which is still absurdly high for what they are, but I was looking at the highest efficiency ones so I guess they have fancier compressors or something else that lets them raise the price. I also got an average cost to replace an AC unit of 500 to 2500 dollars.

At the end of the day a air source heat pump is just an air conditioner with a 10 dollar reverseing valve, though they typically use very efficient air conditioners and add an emergency space heater aswell. Well if your being predantic an air conditioner is a heat pump, but generally in climate threads heat pump is shorthand for one that works in reverse for heating as well as cooling.

I really can’t imagine the level of grift you would need to have to get from that to 22k, unless you were using ground source or retrofitting central heating into a building that previously lacked it, though in that case you would probably use several minisplits to replace individual radiators or baseboard heaters.