this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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Been a little while since I looked up the utility rates, but last I remember gas is about 1/7 the cost of electricity in Saskatchewan. Makes it hard to justify heat pumps for heating in most places. Hope the technology continues to improve and it’ll be a more sustainable option when we have a more sustainable grid.
Gas furnaces achieve about 96-98% efficiency. Heat pumps achieve 300-400%. So you have to factor that in.
There's still a cost difference but the hope is for governments to start supporting serious nuclear energy to drive down electric costs. It'll take time but natural gas will become less economical as decades go on especially with investments.
How does something achieve 300-400% efficiency?
Refrigeration cycle can get crazy efficiencies like that because it is transferring energy from one side of the system (indoor unit) to the other (outdoor unit). The amount of energy that is transfered is greater than the amount of energy required to push the refrigerant through the system.
Its partly due to how you are measuring efficiency. It mainly moves heat rather than creates it.
Another fun way to get more heat is condensing, a dehumidifier gets over 100% efficiency if you were to use it as a heater. Heard of evaporative cooling right? Well condensing is the opposite, you get extra heat from that.
If you take 100 joules of electrical or chemical energy, and then direct them to a heater in a house, it'll create about 100 joules of heat. That's 100% efficiency.
But if you use the 100 joules of energy to run a heat pump, it might bring in 300 joules of heat into the house. That's 300% efficiency, when measured locally at the place you actually care about (inside the house). Zoom out and laws of thermodynamics still make it impossible to create more energy than was put in, but if you look at just the part you care about, it's possible locally.
Ok yeah, so you would consider it as two systems, one being the heat pump and the other being the rest of the world.
And instead of creating heat you’re moving it, so your heat pump is operating at above 100% efficiency while the rest of the world is not.
Thanks for the explanation!
Newly built nuclear would do many things, but it wouldn't drive prices down.
Wind and solar would do that though.
Eh, I can see a resilience based argument for why we need nuclear, but building new nuclear is never going to be cheaper than solar or wind.
Yeah, depends where you live. Saskatchewan is the worst place, Quebec is the best.
Yep, doesn't make economical sense here yet. Better to put money towards air sealing and (the right kind of) insulation.
I'm in Manitoba and am kind of in the same situation. Even though our electricity is really cheap, it's still more economically efficient to use natural gas. Coupled with just buying a new furnace and air conditioner, I don't see myself getting one anytime soon. I'd still be happier if we subsidized electric heating/heat pumps (or stopped subsidizing fossil fuels so much) but recognize I'm in a place where I can afford that and many others simply can't.
If you have AC you already have a heat pump
If you have AC you have 98% of a bidirectional heat pump and likely no way to easily convert it to bidirectional.
Air Conditioning only heat pumps should be taxed extra to entice people to get a real heat pump.
Absolutely agree.
I thought the vast majority installed in the past few decades could do both?
That really depends on where you live. The option wasn't even mentioned when my furnace was replaced a few years ago, and when I checked my AC model, it was not listed as a heat pump.