
The magic of heat pumps - mpoon
https://medium.com/@henrikberggren/the-magic-of-heat-pumps-fd2721a00586
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taxicabjesus
I used to live in a poorly insulates rented house with an air-source heat pump
in Phoenix. The winter electric bills were fine; I got suffocated by the
summer electric bill. It's too bad somebody didn't put a ground loop in that
house when it was built, maybe 40 or 50 years earlier.

> The low price of natural gas is currently the biggest challenge for the
> success of geothermal heat pumps. If a home is equipped with a natural gas
> furnace for heating (and the need for cooling is limited) there is no
> financial reason switching to a heat pump, in fact, you’d be worse off.

Air conditioning is optional where I currently live. Cogeneration (with
natural gas) and battery storage is a good intermediary step to the free-
energy nirvana (fusion or whatever) that's hopefully in our future.

