Immediate costs are not the only element in the equation. Electricity can be sourced from many sources, whereas fossil fuels don’t have an alternative (as in, if oil becomes hard to come by, too bad. Whereas there’s many ways to make electricity).
There’s an element of cost and an element of reducing our footprint here.
Be that as it may we are going for a 10 kW south-facing array and 24 kWh battery so I’m hoping we can do the heating on our own juice in all but a couple of months. At least if my calculations hold.
But I’m sending four kids into the world. I’d like to do my bit to avoid making it worse for them, so it’s ok if it all together ends up costing over the next 5-6 years.
Fully agree, and everyone who can afford a heatpump should get one to reduce their carbon footprint. But unlike solar, the return on investment doesn’t look good.
They make economic sense if you have to upgrade to a new gas boiler (from an old gas boiler) or even worse, a oil-based boiler, but only under BUS conditions.
In other countries, though, where they are widespread, they are cheaper to both install and run than gas boilers.
Well, oil prices will surely go down, soon, and the good news is the weather changes that cause all those heatwaves also increase the efficiency of solar.
The running cost is a problem though, you are unlikely to save much, if anything, with a heat pump on current electricity prices.
Immediate costs are not the only element in the equation. Electricity can be sourced from many sources, whereas fossil fuels don’t have an alternative (as in, if oil becomes hard to come by, too bad. Whereas there’s many ways to make electricity).
There’s an element of cost and an element of reducing our footprint here.
Be that as it may we are going for a 10 kW south-facing array and 24 kWh battery so I’m hoping we can do the heating on our own juice in all but a couple of months. At least if my calculations hold.
But I’m sending four kids into the world. I’d like to do my bit to avoid making it worse for them, so it’s ok if it all together ends up costing over the next 5-6 years.
Fully agree, and everyone who can afford a heatpump should get one to reduce their carbon footprint. But unlike solar, the return on investment doesn’t look good.
They make economic sense if you have to upgrade to a new gas boiler (from an old gas boiler) or even worse, a oil-based boiler, but only under BUS conditions.
In other countries, though, where they are widespread, they are cheaper to both install and run than gas boilers.
Well, oil prices will surely go down, soon, and the good news is the weather changes that cause all those heatwaves also increase the efficiency of solar.