Quote:
Originally Posted by Matata
In Alberta, our grid emissions have finally gotten low enough that a Heat Pump system is roughly as emissions intensive as a high-performance combustion system. Heat pumps have an average operating COP=~2.5 in Alberta (including time spent below -15°C, where the switch to back-up heat and have a COP=1) and currently the grid is roughly 2.5x more emissions intensive than natural gas per unit of energy delivered.
Is is still currently much more expensive to use heat pumps, as electricity is still ~5-6 times more expensive than natural gas. The long term plan seems to be to keep increasing carbon taxes and clean up the grid to push people towards electrification, but this doesn't seem viable as you'd have to crank carbon taxes to the moon to get electricity on par with gas, but that's where things seem to be going.
|
I don't know Alberta's rates for gas and electricity, but the costs are already at par in BC assuming a 2.5 COP. 1 GJ of gas in a 95% efficient furnace will output about 260 kWh of heat. To achieve the same output with a 2.5 COP heat pump, you'd use just over 100 kWh of electricity. So the math is pretty simple; $10/GJ is equivalent to ~$0.10/kWh with that COP.
BC's current all-in rate for gas (including gas, storage, delivery/transmission, etc.) is about $12.50/GJ, while electricity is about $0.12/kWh (though that can go up or down depending on how much from each rate step a household uses). I'm having trouble believing that Alberta's gas costs and electricity costs work out to being 5-6x off of what BC's are, though I could be wrong.