A new report just busted another myth about heat pumps. There is there plenty of room on the grid for these electrical wonders — and they'll save ratepayers tons of cash.

[u/The_Weekend_Baker]

https://grist.org/solutions/a-new-report-just-busted-another-myth-about-heat-pumps/

[u/CantaloupeComplex209]

You may have heard by now that heat pumps — which transfer warmth from outdoor air to an indoor space, instead of generating it like a furnace — don’t work when it gets really cold out. That’s incorrect, as models designed for frigid climes can keep you toasty even in the dead of winter. Don’t believe me? Look no further than the Nordic countries, which have fully committed to them despite the region’s not-exactly-balmy winters.

OK, so heat pumps are more efficient than ever, which is why Americans seem to be warming up to the appliances. But surely, since they’re electric, switching to them en masse will push the grid to collapse? That’s also false. A new report from the energy thinktank RMI finds that thanks to “headroom” in the grid during the winter months, three-quarters of U.S. homes — some 109 million — could adopt the technology, no problem. That would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slash electric bills by over 20 percent in some states.

“A substantial number of homes can upgrade to heat pumps within the headroom today,” said Ryan Shea, a manager in the organization’s buildings team. “We’d be better utilizing the grid capacity that’s already there, that essentially spreads those costs across more kilowatt-hours, and everyone benefits with a lower electricity rate.”

What is this headroom, exactly? It’s the difference between the grid’s generation capacity and demand in winter. Typically, the need for electricity is highest in the summer, when millions of air conditioners gobble tremendous amounts of power. In the winter, many folks instead heat their homes with gas furnaces, so they’re getting that energy elsewhere, relieving strain on the grid. This means that during colder months, there’s additional capacity to provide power.

“That’s where we see moving to heat pumps, adding that electrical load in the winter, where there is all that available grid capacity, is a way to add load to the grid without needing to build it out more,” Shea said. In other words, keeping 109 million heat pumps running through the winter wouldn’t require, say, heaps of new gas-fired power plants.

This buffer, though, isn’t the same state to state or region to region. For one, climates are different: In Phoenix, summers are way hotter than in Boston, requiring more AC, with much milder winters, requiring less heating. How local utilities generate electricity matters, too. Gas power plants can run year-round, but with more solar coming online, generation dips in the winter as the days grow shorter. To compensate for this, utilities are building sprawling battery farms to store energy, and experimenting with using electric vehicles as a vast network of backup power. (They’re even using Earth itself as a giant battery for longer-duration storage.) Either way, renewables and batteries are combining to make the grid more reliable than it is with fossil fuels, and much more flexible no matter the time of year, further reducing costs for ratepayers.

[u/CantaloupeComplex209 → u/CantaloupeComplex209]

I had to google this, but apparently heat pumps differ from traditional heating/cooling in that heat pumps move existing heat into an area while old gas powered heat would burn fuel to produce heat. Heat pumps work bidirectionally, so they can also be an A/C.

Am I understanding that correctly or no?

[u/SallyStranger → u/CantaloupeComplex209]

In a nutshell, yes. I've had one for the past five years. So far so good. 

[u/kyrsjo → u/CantaloupeComplex209]

Yes. This is why air-condition is pretty common in Scandinavia, is essentially an extra feature of heat pumps.

[u/Konradleijon]

Also solar is good

[u/Relevant-Doctor187]

There’s no room according to the AI overlords.

[u/lee216md]

Somebody is crazy.