Submitted by Suspicious_Bus_4058 t3_11c1anz in Maine
Was sold a heat pump system and told I would be more energy efficient and would lower my heating bill. Well, after installation my electric bill went up to $650 a month from $250-$350 using my boiler. Maybe more efficient but not even close to cheaper. Something to consider l
Same here - we haven’t had a bill above 200 all winter with ours running as only heat source
Keep in mind, this dude was doing $300 a month in electricity before the install and running a boiler with whatever fuel source that used per month.
I did the same cycle with oil as our primary heat for the first year here and switched over to a heat pump. We had a $200 a month electric bill in the winter with oil heat and a $400 a month bill using all electric heat pumps for the entire house the next year at the same time with similar weather. The cost of oil, assuming it hadn't gone up at all over that time, would have been double that electricity cost.
Wood stoves are cheapest, but require work. Pellets are easier, but still work.
A single pellet stove will burn a 40 lb bag of pellets in a day and use electricity to run the blower. That average's out and about $8 for one pellet stove to operate a day. You'd have to run fans or something throughout a large house to get the heat from a central location to your separate rooms. If you're using ducted fans then that's an extra electricity cost on top of the pellet heater. Assuming my heat pump runs constantly on a 0° day, it uses 48 KW a day. At CMP rates with their normal billing option, that is about 12 bucks a day. Thanks to CMP's new cost per kilowatt it is not the cheapest solution for house heat in Maine, but it will heat your entire 1600 square foot house.
This will be a fun comment section.... 🍿 Good Luck OP.
How many gallons of fuel did you use last year? You can’t compare prices to do this analysis you need to compare gallons and kWH (then convert to this years prices) to see if this makes sense or not.
You mean boilers don't solely run on electricity?
Excellent resource. I’m a mechanical engineer and actually made my own heat loss and fuel consumption calculator and can confirm that this will get you very close answers! I honestly wasted my time with the analysis thinking the Efficiency Maine calculator wasn’t good enough for my purposes and needing to be precise! 😂👍
Well, how much are you running the heat pump? Your energy bill is going to go up, especially if you are running it constantly and running it when it is quite cold.
In theory, if your heat pump is your only heat source, you're running it like you would air conditioning during the summer. All the damn time.
Not all heat pumps are equal... what brand and model did you buy?...
Yeah this is pretty sus. For one thing, electricity just went up last month for the 2023 standard offer, but that’s temporary for this year and gas is still more expensive. Also there’s just no way the $ for gas you’re quoting lines up with what you’re saying the heat pump added to your electric bill. Either you’re using more electricity for something else too (grow lights lol) or you’re trolling.
Last year 12/9-1/9 unitil bill $359 with gas range.
This year CMP basically same dates; bill with heat pump $659.
Not trolling and no extras since last year.
Electricity $650 (w/ heat pump) - 350 (w/o heat pump) = - $300
Gas $350 (w/o heat pump) - 100 (w/ heat pump) = + $250
So for one month you’re down $50? Better to look at the cost difference over the course of a year.
I switched my account info for autopay a few months ago which made it skip the autopay for the first month and saw similar numbers - it was due to a missed payment which I immediately payed. Take a look at your bill and see if that is the case.
Heat pumps have an efficiency curve that is directly tied to the outdoor air temperature. As the temp drops, so does the efficiency. At some point, the efficiency of the heat pump will drop far enough that the comparable cost to heat with gas or oil is actually lower.
I recommend anyone heating with multiple heat sources set up a quick and dirty spreadsheet to show you what your crossover temperature is. The efficiency curves for heat pump outdoor units are published by the manufacturer, as are all the other values you'll actually need to create the spreadsheet.
What is your “backup”? It’s a companion heater in very cold weather. My heat pump installer said heat pumps are only efficient within a certain range. They need to pull heat. I have this electric heater: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J1M61M8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 It’s efficient and puts heat into the room that the heat pump utilizes/maximizes. I also have a propane fireplace to heat my house when the power fails. What do you have?
High efficiency has boiler
Gas
Got it. I’m just playing it by ear and trying to find the sweet spot for my personal preference for comfort and how I supplement my heat pump. I’m also closing curtains and covering a very leaky door. My expectations were clearly lower than yours. Best wishes.
Ok but how much did you spend in fuel?
Gas bill was around $100
For the whole winter? Where you getting your gas? I gotta get in on that.
I think per month
What fuel company and when did you guy it, how many gallons, how much per gallon? That doesn't even sound real.
Something's fishy, $100 in natural gas or propane would not heat a two bedroom house at 60° temperatures for a week. If it did, then you need to look and see if somebody left a window open upstairs in your attic or something this year.
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It is
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It might be due to where you are, propane is one of the most expensive options in my area. Cost per million BTUs as a point of reference, propane is like three times more expensive than my electricity usage even if I were using coil heaters, which I'm not. I use propane out in the barn and just the heat a 20wx20lx10h insulated loft for the weekend costs about as much as heating the entire house for the month.
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...you must have an AMAZING boiler if you are only burning 60 to 80 gallons a month.
I burn about 1200 gallons a year. I'm on a budget plan with the oil company. Last year we paid about $300 a month. This year it's almost $600 a month.
That’s insane
In more ways than one...
Yes, and that's just an old house using an oil burner and not having more than 4-in thick exterior walls with inconsistent insulation and plaster.
For sure. It’s all about the insulation. Someone said something about $600 a month for oil. That’s absurd.
I have a similar issue. I have four heat pumps and I keep all four at 68 degrees but my electric bill from Versant has a averaged about $350 the past two months. That's on top of oil for my furnace.
68 degrees! It must be nice to be so rich. Just joking btw. I’m keeping my house around 64. High efficiency forced hot air on propane. Seriously though what’s your kwh usage?
I tried to log into Versant to look at the usage but their site is going through maintenance
I just checked and in Feb I used 1,285
I keep mine at about 70, it’s my only heat source. This winter I’ve averaged $300/mo. My house is about 1400sq/fr. How big is your house?
My house is a little bigger than yours at 1640 sq ft
I have a 1600 square foot house built in 1910 on pier and skirt foundation with block and brick at points, insulation is key here. We keep the house at 64° in the winter time and things get a little chilly due to insulation inconsistencies in the old walls. If OP is throwing real numbers here, then insulation or potentially an open air gap is causing his loss of heat and increase in bill. The electric company also doubled the cost of electricity between 2019 and today.
I made a mistake removing my propane heater and replacing it with a heat pump. Fantastic at ac not such much for heat if the temps get below 10 degrees. I bought a pioneer unit that’s rated for ultra low temp. For this winter I’m using an unvented propane heater when it gets cold. Wife hates the smell. Next year I’m going to have to add a better secondary heat source. My calculations show for this winter that I’ve saved about 50 gallons per month in oil $200. And because of the new rates the heat pump has cost me about $180 extra per month. Though I expect that to improve now that I’m turning off the heat pump below 20 degrees. But oh well the ac is incredible
If you can, look at a small pellet stove for extra heat. Propane's double the cost or more per day of use and the wife will probably like the fire heat smell better.
So much of this depends on specifics.
What was the size and model of your boiler and of your heat pump system? Not all heat pumps are created equal and they need to be sized correctly and installed correctly for your individual space.
Personally I’ve got a split level with 3 zones for the boiler and a 5-head mitsubishi low temp heat pump system. The heat pump does use a lot of energy when it gets cold as my system is slightly undersized for the heating use-case. A lot of installers still only think of these as air conditioners and seasonal heaters so they don’t size them properly for the full winter months.
Is this with the seasonal heat pump rate from your utility?
How do you go about getting a heat pump rate from CMP?
Try calling them. I posted a link to some of the info below. Apparently they also give a better rate for people with EV cars.
Special rates for electric cars would be nice for people with electric cars. Right now it is just as expensive to drive the average electric car as it is to drive a vehicle that gets 35 miles to the gallon.
Heat pump rate hasn’t kicked in yet. CMP keeps charging the standard
Did you get a Mr. Cool brand heat pump? Because those are garbage. Had a friend that bought one online from Mr. Cool, and it just ran like crazy, power bill went way up and then it died.
We have two Daikin pumps and they work great. 3100 sq ft house is heated well, we have a oil boiler we really use for hot water now. Its only been a few weeks, but they have handled the cold well.
We've got solar so we banked tons of credit last summer, so our CMP bill is steady at $13.73/month every month.
A solar farm or?
Daikin air-air or air-water?
How do you do your solar? Is it on your property, or some buy+in program like the junk mail ads keep recommending?
I think you have bigger issues than your heat pump. What are you doing that your electric bill is that high to start with?
Could be running a desktop computer 24/7 and adding $50-$100 a month just for that.
(Edit) keep in mind CMP rates with delivery are now around $.25 a kWh.
Have you compared it to your oil use. I always assumed the point of electric heat pump was to cut down on oil.
Lol did you really think your electricity wouldn't go up installing a giant electrical unit
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Also the way electricity is metered, you may have one phase that sees most of your usage and the other is running very light. Cmp is reading the higher phase and billing you according to that, assuming both are the same. (Electrical metering is a joke and a scam in my opinion)
You have 2 phases of electricity fed into your home.
It may be as simple as some simple breaker/circuit labeling and some monitoring of usage of circuits and rearranging on the circuits in your panel.
Ah, now that is interesting. Do you have suggestions for further learning?
Best thing you can do is some in depth circuit metering. If you comfortable with electricity, it’s pretty straight forward. If your uncomfortable with it, an electrician will be able to set it up for you. It’s not an overnight project, I would recommend doing it for a month and calculating your loads.
It won’t be a 2 pole breaker, it will be your single pole breakers that are doing it.
I just talked to someone who had heat pump installed and their bill also went way up
Heat pumps are designed to operate with a 40° change in temperature as their primary operation for those efficiency and price per month costs listed on the packaging. If it's negative 20° outside and you have to triple their primary operation power to pull heat from outside then, yeah, it uses pricey electricity. Even with the CMP rate hikes, it's still a less expensive source of heat in a well insulated location than any other automatic option.
Burning wood is cheaper.
Interesting makes sense thank you
Let’s gooooooo!
Also CMP can die
Op out here, replying to themselves.
This was my January 2022 CMP bill (Heat Pump only for heat). This year I added a pellet stove. January bill was $284. (We burn 5 bags a week @ $6 per bag) and we had the rate hike this January.... Just sayin' ... I feel your pain.
Ouch!
Heat pumps are a fucking joke my guy
That’s not true, as ac they are incredible. And they provide good heat on the shoulder seasons.
My living room heat pump will make our large open concept living room, dining room, kitchen area with a cathedral ceiling go from 68 to 75 in under an hour according to the wall thermostat. It is fantastic to have. Can't wait to see how it cools in the summer.
Yeah it is pretty true. Summer yeah, the AC is fine. I only had to run it a handful of times. In the winter I have to leave it on and at full blast all day for it not to be frozen in here. Even then it’s still pretty cold.
They should be called if conditioning pumps. Great for AC in the warm months. Not great for heating.
Not sure why I’m down voted but whatever. I agree, after living in AZ for a few years; I don’t think I ran the AC all but maybe a couple of times during the summer here. I’m more worried about the HEAT part of it which unless I’m running them constant full blast they are lacking in efficiency. Then I get hit with a sweet electric bill.
david_lo-pan t1_ja12p31 wrote
Woah, $250-$350/month? Time to switch to LED grow lights. But seriously, you got had. My electric bill got last month was ~$250 with heat pumps providing pretty much all my heat.