this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2024
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What are the gas and electricity rates in your area? In Sask, we’re paying about $0.16/kWh for electricity and about $6.40/GJ. There’s about 278 kWh in a GJ, so the electricity cost works out to about $44/GJ, or about 7 times the cost of gas. A good coefficient of performance for a heat pump seems to be about 3, and modern gas furnaces are easily above 90% efficiency so the actual cost difference for gas to electric heat is about 1:3.
Now, newer houses are better insulated, so your heating load on a 2012 build is going to be a lot lower than a 1977 build. You also didn’t mention your heat source. Ground source pumps are pretty good efficiency year round, but cost a lot for the initial install, while air-source pumps have a large seasonal variation in their efficiency, which is particularly troublesome in central/northern Canadian climates.
I live in southern BC and heat with a newer Carrier heat pump. The outdoor unit is a 28 seer model paired with an indoor ducted unit. It works fairly well until a week or two when we have -25c and below which I switch to our baseboard. I'm a home builder and built the house and it's definitely better than a 1990 or older home but nowhere near the efficiency we are building today.
Our electric rates are $0.142/kWh. I don't know what gas is as I don't have the option.
I do agree that heat pumps struggle with colder temps and northern homes, especially older ones, aren't going to be able to heat consistently through the winter. Storms and outages also are an issue but gas won't heat a house if there's no power either.