Why I have six air conditioners
A year ago I retired my old, dirty and inefficient gas wall heater, when I had it confirmed that it was using a significant amount of energy heating up outside rather than just inside my house like I would have expected.
Australians are generally unaware about the renewable heat resources available to domestic households, as a clean, safe and efficient competitor to dirty fossil gas.
That's why I bought six air conditioners. Air conditioners have a bad name and a bad wrap and it's completely unearned and unfair. Air conditioners are wonderful technology, like a laptop computer, smartphone or radiology machine. Air conditioners should rightly be called heat pumps, because they pump heat from one location to another. In doing so they concentrate that heat. They can pump heat out of our room making it feel cooler. Or than can pump heat into your room making it warmer.
There is nothing to feel guilty about here. What you should be feeling guilty about is if you don't have a reverse cycle air conditioners, and you're heating with gas or electric resistive (bar radiators, oil filled heaters, electric fan heaters etc).
A funny game has been getting played confusing the public. Advocates for lower retail domestic energy bills have tried to make people feel guilty about air conditioning and comfort (who intentionally buys an uncomfortable bed to lie in?)
Heat pumps are reverse cycle air-conditioners and Japan and the United Kingdom have given huge financial incentives to move their households to heat pumps for heating as part of a national energy savings program, so why should Australia not do the same?
Our domestic energy needs can now be met fully with renewable electricity through installing renewable heat pumps for air and water heating and induction cooktops. In addition, the change would cut hundreds of dollars off everyone’s annual energy bills. No more monthly gas network service fees in addition to less actual energy bought off energy companies and more generated locally in your own "virtual power station" at home.
After I discovered I could stay comfortable with renewable energy and a clean conscious, I splurged on air conditioners, six to be exact; however I was really investing in reverse cycle systems mostly for heating because to put it into perspective, heating is so much more important when it comes to reducing carbon emissions than cooling.
In the winter, the energy used by Victorian households heating with gas is about 70 times that of cooling in summer, (80PJ vs 1.1PJ). However by using reverse cycle air conditioners we can cut down total gas and electricity energy use for heating and cooling by more than 80 per cent.
This was shown on my last bill which showed that I used 90 per cent less energy for heating thanks to refrigeration, which is an 1850s invention that inspired today's inverter reverse cycle air conditioners which I'm now taking advantage of and are so efficient at heating and cooling.
I also have a 5kW solar system, which will produce slightly less energy than my reverse cycle air conditioner and heat pump boosted solar hot water system will save annually. Basically put I am getting more renewable energy from my air conditioner than from my solar system. My three renewable systems go so nicely together giving me a 100 per cent renewable powered household, which is made up basically of Renewable direct solar electricity, renewable solar thermal, and renewable ambient heat. that relies on very small amounts of renewable inputs from the grid (large scale wind and solar).
As for my six air conditioners, many of my friends have questioned me on whether the system if running on a small amount of ‘brown coal’, is cleaner than gas? Yes it is.
Gas is so inefficient that by the time it gets to my house, 15 per cent is lost in processing energy, distribution fugitives and another 30 per cent up the chimney as lost heat.
If I was running on brown coal, with my heat pumps however, 600 per cent equivalent of the energy generated at the coal plant is put into heating the room on an annual average basis The payback time of this highly efficient energy efficiency technology is usually less than a year.
Unfortunately many reverse cycle units sold in Australia, are still performing poorly. The Australian test condition is 7degrees C and the best units run at 500 per cent efficiency at this temperature (and even higher efficiency at higher temperatures which are the norm in most cities most of the time).
Current Australian Government Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPs) allow poor performing units to be sold. Units that are just effectively 300 per cent efficient, but without policing in reality many units, mostly from China preform much more poorly, some barely achieve 200 per cent effective efficiency and are preventing the market from expanding. The lack of stringent regulation and policing of reverse cycle air conditioners is costing Australian’s, both young and old, on their monthly energy bills.
It is also disappointing to consider that under the Renewable Energy Certificate Scheme, I would have been given upfront a $10,000 incentive if reverse cycle air conditioners were properly recognised the same way that Solar Hot Water is recognised; almost completely offsetting my $12,000 installation cost. Why the Office of Renewable Energy Regulator/federal government has failed to recognise air source heat pumps for heating while correspondingly recognising Hot Water air source heat pumps is a perplexing question. Why is there a bias against reverse cycle air conditioners as a renewable generator?
If we were to shift now to renewable ambient heat from bar radiators, oil filled electric heaters, resistive blower heaters and gas; Australians would save between 70-80 per cent of annual domestic, commercial and industrial space heating requirements. This should include a mandatory or certificate base scheme to update and replace old outdated box style and other pre-inverter or old inverter air conditioners. The key to this efficiency drive is the inverter units that perform with extremely good efficiency as they are able to vary their compressor speed to efficiently suit the cooling / heating requirements of any moment in time.
Renewable technology will only become available in the domestic sector, if there is overwhelming public support, and in a country of increasing hot and cold extremities, comfort is of fundamental importance and needs to be delivered efficiently and reliably. Heat pumps live up to the task and can do the bulk of the heavy lifting in keeping Australian's warm in winter and cool in summer.
A buildings efficiency program can be thought of as a "virtual power station", with Solar Photovoltaic, Heat pump boosted Solar Hot Water, Reverse Cycle Air conditioning, bulk and silver Insulation, air sealing, induction cooktops, and efficient LED lighting making up components of the power station. We must also include audits and upgrading of existing poor performing air conditioning units at no or little cost to consumers as part of a comprehensive plan to build the one big community wide "virtual power station."
We need to take a cool headed approach and evaluate all the options and Renewable Heat using heat pumps is the biggest onsite renewable source available to all Australians especially those in high rise units who may miss out on the opportunity to install solar hot water or rooftop solar photovoltaic panels.
The Zero Carbon Australia Buildings plan will be released in February 2012 and explains how Australian's buildings can use less energy as one big virtual power station, saving consumers, saving carbon emissions and committing Australia to the global shift to a 21st century efficient renewable powered clean tech economy.
Matthew Wright is executive director of Beyond Zero Emissions
Comments on this article
I would have been given
I would have been given upfront a $10,000 incentive if reverse cycle air conditioners were properly recognized the same way that Solar Hot Water is recognized; almost completely offsetting my $12,000 installation cost. Why the Office of Renewable Energy Regulator/federal government has failed to recognize air source heat pumps for heating while correspondingly recognizing Hot Water air source heat pumps is a perplexing question.
visualize hard drive space
No solution!
An air-con in every room? Echh!
How do the neighbours feel about six condensers whirring away?
RE Gas vs Elec boost difference Reply: Jay Arr
Hi Jay,
No, if you have a new build house you have used a huge amount of resources where retrofitting an existing house is much more efficient even measured over very long time frames. My 130 square metre house has high utilisation with 4-5 occupants and therefore would be more efficient than most abodes in the country.
The fact that you are using gas means that you are emitting carbon and propping up the fossil fuel industry and prolonging the time taken to shift to renewables. Although I see this is as an issue for society and public policy if you want to take an individual look at it then you are not winning cause you are still using gas.
Easy to solve. Dump the gas and replace the system with small modular reverse cycle air conditioners and replace your hot water system or upgrade it to include a heat pump storage for boosting. Zero Emissions and high efficiency house - Job done!
Gas vs Elec boost difference?
So theoretically if I'm boosting loads with what my 4KW solar system doesnt/cant provide, with natural gas AND I dont need 6 airconditioners for my passive designed house, I win, right?
RE: Khazzoom Brookes Heat Pumps first - Reply Ben Courtice
Ben,
The point is that if householders just do one thing. (I'd like them to do more than one of course) Then the best one thing to do is to replace their gas or resistive heater with a reverse cycle air conditioner.
It has nothing to do with Khazzoom Brookes here, which is an excuse to do nothing ie no insulation, no air sealing, no heatpumps nada. This is simple economics. Reverse cycle air conditioner gives biggest bang for buck bar none.
Zero Carbon Australia Buildings plan research to be released in the new year, shows this clearly.
Matt
Re Khazzoom Brookes postulate etc
"...used by status quoists to try and convince us to do nothing."
That's not an argument, though, is it? Climate skeptics may invoke the second law of thermodynamics whilst arguing complete BS, it doesn't mean we ignore the implications of that law, just as a random analogy.
Where people are replacing gas or resistive heating with aircon, that's a big energy saving and being able to use a bit more of one's house is also great.
One of the unintended consequences of cheap efficient heat pumps could be a disincentive to getting insulation, double glazing, awnings, internal doors etc as people really ought to, for longer term energy efficiency. Why do that if it's so cheap to just turn up the aircon/heater?
In no way am I dissing your enthusiasm for a good technology and renewable ambient heat. You've provided a lot of valuable information here so thanks.
heatpumps the lowest hanging fruit in buildings RE Ben Courtice
Ben,
"You said "But in the market, selling aircon is more profitable than a one-off insulation retrofit, or designing a building intelligently the first time. So one is marketed more than the other and we get situations like the household Paul W mentions"
The situation is that Air Conditioners are the lowest hanging fruit. They are the cheapest way to get the most energy / emissions reductions in a house hold that doesn't rely purely on doonas and wooly jumpers.
Noting for Melbourne's climate all households have ever been too have some form of heating plant.
So before you do insulation upgrades, air infiltration, double glaze etc, air conditioning is the cheapest option.
Currently the installers are gouging the market. My units are available from a retail outlet for $650 each. The installations are $1000-$2000 in the market. The units should be completely installed for $1000. A decent incentive scheme would cap the total retail price of an installation that qualifies for the incentive at $1200 for a back to back (upto 3metre fluid run) connection.
The installation itself involves a vacuum pump. electrical connection, holesaw to drill and poke the refrigerant line through. And the mounting of the indoor and outdoor wall unit.
Obviously some installations vary from this but more than 50% should be able to be achieved back to back in this configuration for retrofits. New build can integrate units into the facade so as to make the building look more attractive. I viewed this configuration in the South of Spain.
RE Jevons paradox REPLY Ben Courtice
Ben,
Jevon's Paradox and other such names for the rebound effect, Khazzoom Brookes postulate etc. Are all used by status quoists to try and convince us to do nothing.
Yes I have had a Jevon's Paradox effect in my house. We've gone from being able to only use the kitchen /dining living area to being able to work in our rooms and in the lounge. WE are putting more heat in the space now than we used to. It's fantastically efficent.
Before we had 100 metres sq of unusable house for 5 months of the year. That's efficiency because we now have 100% usable house or 130sq M
Melbourne is a cool climate over winter and is the main part of Victoria's massive heating requirement of 80PJ equivalent to 22TWh or half of Victoria's annual electriicty production. That 22TWh which is 2x Hazelwood power stations of output can be delivered as 4.4TWh with heat pumps or less than half of a Hazelwood power station. Or even better it can be delivered with equivalent of just 170 Wind Turbines.
Well Done All!
I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the comments everyone has (maturely and respectfully) posted - long live the internet! Well done to Mathew who has given us a great topic to consider and almost real time feed back. On the jumper front - well surely the solution is to wear at least last a light one with teh efficient heater a tad lower and save bucks AND the planet?
Start of winter this year we spent a weekend relocating all our winter activities into the living room in the sunny part of the house. Eg vacated the study down the cold end of the house (will use in summer when its comfortably cool there) and set up my home based office, my partner's sewing machine and other winter activities in the living room at the sunny end of the house. We have an efficient woodfire and reverse cycle inverter Daikin heat pump. The (occasiona)l winter sun par heats the room during the day and at night we run the woodfire and the heatpump (as is is themostatically controlled) fills in the gaps. Thermal mass (mud-brick) serves to both store and stablise the temperature and this, combined with draft-proofing, good insulation and a light woolen jumper or fleece we are as warm as toast. Speaking of which, as the kitchen forms part of the living room all the "lost" cooking heat stays in and heats the room. And if it's too hot, we don't take our jumper off - we turn down the heat!
Usage
Not owning an air-conditioner or a heater and using fans and jumpers as required (and I put a 3KW PV system on my Grandmother's house), this post initially angered me. But then I've not lived in a cold climate.
The issue really is usage: frequency and behaviour. Like Paul's post, do we sit around in t-shirts and shorts with the heater going full blast? Do we heat and cool all year round rather than open the windows? Do we heat and cool all night rather than use timers? Do we have sufficiently warm blankets? Do we heat and cool all rooms rather than shut door on unneeded rooms? Do we set a stupidly low or high temperature? Do we live in a poorly-designed house that requires a minimum of 3 months of cooling/heating? Does it have insulation?
Putting it into perspective however: "Industry accounts for about 82 per cent of Australia’s total emissions, with the remainder attributable to the residential sector." - Garnaut Review.
Re Jevons paradox
Thanks, Matt.
I agree heat pumps are a great tech and your setup sounds brilliant. From my gas-heated rental I can only be jealous! I'll start to use the "renewable heat" and 500% efficiency meme myself.
But in the market, selling aircon is more profitable than a one-off insulation retrofit, or designing a building intelligently the first time. So one is marketed more than the other and we get situations like the household Paul W mentions.
I know we're all in favour of retrofitting buildings with insulation, eaves, and all the intelligent things that builders often neglect. But I can just imagine the sales effort for aircon outstripping all of that, as things stand, and - hey presto! - energy use (and waste) keeps going up (or peak use, which has its own specific problems).
Jevon's paradox (that more efficient use of energy can lead to a greater overall use, in a nutshell) doesn't mean that more efficient energy use is a bad thing or should be rejected; it's just a caution about the potential use of these "efficiencies" in perverse ways...
I do believe in jumpers
It was a dark and stormy night, cold and wet with a chill wind to my back when I called in on a home to assess their $1,650 quarterley elec bill and discuss PV.
OK so they had a ducted A/C and sure enough it was balmy inside. None of the parents or 3 kids wore warm clothing nor footwear, all floors were tiled, and rooms had large glass aspects with minimal curtains. Fine for Santorini perhaps, but less so metro Adelaide in winter.
Does their (bill) problem lay with where they source their electricity from and the COP of the A/C?
Truth is they're typical of many homes where it starts with a lack of situational awareness, and guidance or meaningful comparative baselines, as well as communities and networks of information and support.
Too deep green?
Matthew, we're probably getting into territory that is more deep and philosophical about what the best strategies are to combat cimate change and environmental destruction, for this article. I do appreciate this article because it has opened my eyes to the efficiency of heat pumps for space warming and it makes a very good case for a simple and effective way to reduce emissions while keeping the consuming public happy and comfortable.
I worry, though, that real meaningful change is needed to the way we do things, in order to leave a planet that is fair to our future generations. That is less "stuff", less power usage, less food, less "comfort", less "growth", etc etc.
Replacing gas heaters with reverse cycle air conditioners looks like an easy sell.
Changing our lifestyles and the way the economy works: very hard sell.
RE: You're still heating a space justo keep the inhabitants warm
Joel,
This is a good idea, all over the world billions of people heat their space to keep it warm. In order to function at home while being productive still you basically need the space to be heated. The alternative option is to stay under 3 or 4 thick blankets in your bed and inefficiently sleep the winter away.
Comfort is a great thing, and Australian's love comfort, in fact all people love comfort. We can deliver comfort with a low total lifecycle energy and carbon cost, and we can do it now predominately with reverse cycle air conditioners. Much of the building stock already has idle reverse cycle air conditioners that can be used straight away with a small amount of energy from the grid to deliver a lot of heating.
We're not going to behave our way to climate solutions when 70% of the emissions come from industry and we depend on those goods. Spades for your garden come from steelworks. The wooly jumper you want to put on comes from land that is worked with industrial harvesters that are the product of industrial civilisation. The wool is spun in industrial spinning mills and the list goes on.
I do not have a problem whatsoever with heating a space and it gets the job requiremetn done, whereas people don't want to wear wooly jumpers and be uncomfortable. People by spades, houses, water tanks, chairs, tables, beds, doonas, they are of equal value to heating, they are all items of comfort.
The standby power is consistently 4 watts - Reply J Cooper
J Cooper,
It seems you are not up-to-date on the latest split system air conditioners. My units like all of the units on the market that I've seen have just one connection to the wiring. I have 1x 20amp circuit (trips at 35Amps I think) servicing all 6 of my air conditioners. I have put them all on override "powerful" mode and the 20amp breaker doesn't trip
To be clear Each of the 6 units only have 1 electrical connection to my power mains.
You're still heating a space just to keep the inhabitants warm
You're still heating an entire household just to keep the people warm when the most efficient way to keep them warm is to trap their own body heat. Trendy inner suburbs? Where'd you get that one? What you are proposing is more consumption. More efficient consumption, but consumption nonetheless. I can understand your argument when heating your home becomes a matter of survival, but for most Australian homes, it is possible to survive without any heating and without prohibitive warm clothing.
The standby power is consistently 4 watts
I think you will find you are only measuring the standby power of the INSIDE part (the head unit). The actual outside Aircon is usually fixed wired so you would need a current clamp to measure its standby consumption. A sparky has told me they all use up to 250W on standby so I am very skeptical that your OUTSIDE unit would only consume 4W unless it somehow does away with the crankcase heater?
RE Where does night time baseload come from - Reply Joel Dodd
Baseload Solar Thermal with storage plants provide 24 hour night time dispatch solar energy. Refer Gemasolar with i15 hours of molten salt thermal storage and 76% annual capacity factor. It operates more hours than the average of NSW fleet of coal power plants.
Putting a jumper on is something that is done in trendy inner city suburbs. There is nothing wrong with comfort, properly engineered houses that are comfortable, use little energy and the model easily scales in Australia. You can put a jumper on, have a drafty house, an inefficient gas heater and use a lot more energy than me with a t-shirt on and my reverse cycle air conditioners.
In terms of use as with our gas heaters in our experience we use the heat pumps in the morning to mid morning as the sun is coming up and in the evening. They are not left on overnight as our house has enough thermal intertia to stay at a reasonable temperature for sleeping comoftably overnight in the winter.
In the short term, using annual average COP 10 heat pumps (90% energy saving over gas) creates less emissions even when run on brown coal than heating with fossil gas.
So those of you that have an inverter air conditioner and are idling it in winter and heating with gas or electric resistive you should immediately switch to your heat pump.
In the medium to long term Wind Power off the grid available most the time, photovoltaic and Baseload SOlar THermal with storage plants.
Where does the night time baseload come from?
Heating is usually required at night, right? In a low or zero carbon future, using heat pumps for home heating, where does the night time power come from? In the short term coal power station gentailers would be able to make more money from generating at night ( I've read that they currently often have to bid at a loss at off peak periods) as they would if we all switched to electric cars and recharged at night. But how does switching to heat pumps ween us off coal, even if it does ween us off gas?
I still think the jumper is the more effective temperature regulator. Why not self-thermoregulate and sell more of your PV power to the grid?
Also what was the dollar cost of your set up compared with business as usual? How quickly does it pay back?
What are induction stove tops? I find it hard to believe that it can compete with gas for directly heating and cooking food. I shudder to think what my total energy bill would be if my stove, oven and water heater were on electricity instead of gas.
Also what solutions do you have for the huge proportion of Australians that don't own the home they live in? The incentives need to go to the home owner, not only the energy user.
Summer elec demand peaks higher than winter - Reply Mark Duffet
NSW heating electric resistive is 4.4PJ / 21.2PJ, Tas heating electric resistive 1.2PJ / 7.5PJ.
COP 5 average for 0C would suit NSW as an assumption so 4.4PJ becomes 0.88PJ for NSW. and if we convert the lot 21.2PJ becomes 5PJ.
5PJ is basically what we have provisioned for at the moment (4.4PJ) and we can halve the 5PJ to 2.5PJ easily with some decent insulation / air infiltration measures. We could deliver this all with the current sizing of the grid. Or we can use the money we spend on the gas grid to pay for upsizing the grid - AER has already given the go ahead for massive grid upgrades that are going ahead anyway at present, providing a lot more capacity to have reverse cycle AC units on the domestic distribution grid.
Summer electricity demand peaks higher than for winter?
"There is more slack on the electricity network in winter which is being sized for extreme air conditioning peaks in summer."
This might be the case in Victoria, but not necessarily so far as the SE Australia grid is concerned. In NSW and Tasmania, at least, the winter demand peaks are higher than for summer. http://wiki.climatechangeadaptation.org.au/tiki-index.php?page=Seasonal+...
In which case Andrew Nance's query is well-founded.
Behaviouralism is not what is got my reductions - Reply J Cooper
I have cummulative watt meters on all of them, that give real time reading, peak demand, power factor and cummulative consumption etc
The standby power is consistently 4 watts. I am assuming that it is running the remote control receiver etc.
Renewable Heat - Reply Ben Courtice
Ben,
I have had a net increase in heating of my house, and a massive reduction in energy delivered to my house to heat it. I'm really happy to live in a more comfortable house now and am able to spend more time, writing articles, researching renewable energy and energy efficiency etc.
The grid can green up easily. So if there are coal and gas plants powering my heat pumps, I can buy green power or join in with the millions who are calling for the coal and gas to be shut down by governments and industry and replaced with renewable energy - namely Rooftop Solar Photovoltaic, Large Scale Wind Power and Baseload Solar Thermal w/storage.
Although I am happy with getting our housing stock, upscaled for insulation, air sealing, curtains and pelmets, double glaze etc. I'm also very happy to see people who haven't yet made the leap to insulate to swap gas wall furnaces and electric resitive heaters to heat pumps. The energy savings are just so huge. 90% of energy can be saved during the annual heating period.
Aircon uses A LOT of power even when its off Reply J Cooper
#1 The electrical parasites on my units are under 5 watts when not operating nothing like 150watts each They are panasonic reverse cycle inverter air conditioners. You have either made up your data or are quoting from a very inefficient old unit or a cheap low quality chinese unit.
#2 My units are achieving COP 4.5 at 0C that means that for 1 bar radiator worth of enegy to run the pump we get 4.5 bar radiators worth of heat delivered in the house. I found a report from the Swedish energy agency that shows that at negative 15Cthe Swedish version of my panasonic air conditioner achieves COP 1.8. Or 1.8 bar radiators for the equivalent of 1 bar radiator worth of electricity to drive the pump.
I'm not sure how upto date your information is, perhaps you should study up on the latest in heat pumps.
Reply Paul Wiszniak - Use solar instead of electricity
Paul,
The beauty of renewable ambient heat is that it is available 24 hours a day regardless of the solar or wind resource at any given moment.
Reverse cycle air conditioners - high end small modular inverter split ones would decrease energy demand all around the country. The reductions are huge in all states, least so in Queensland as they have more air conditoning requirement than heating. But the rest have huge ratios in favour of heating.Even WA uses 4x more energy for heating than cooling which Victoria uses 72 times.
Behaviouralism is not what got my reductions
How are you measuring the ACTUAL electricity consumption of the 6 aircon units, ie do you have 6 current clamps? Or are you just using the manufacturer's numbers and guessing cycle times etc or just working on a reduction in total kWh on your bill? And what is the "standby" power consumption of the 6 Aircon units, you still havn't addressed that question.
About six airconditioners lifecyle energy -REPLY Geoff Henderson
Compare six air conditioners to consuming and burning 10-15 times the amount of energy in gas to do the same job forever. I am now ready to run my house on 100% renewable.
A gas heating infrastructure involves 30-100 metres of gas pipe which is usually copper. Digging trenches, gas leaks. Gas processing plant that imports chemicals for processing.
To heat with gas many people have multiple wall units in different rooms. Or one big gas furnace with ducting and outlets. The total lifecycle embodied energy isn't much different. There are a few papers on this including.
Life Cycle Assessment and External Environmental Cost Analysis of Heat PumpsTo cite this article:
F.J. Rey, J. Martin-Gil, E. Velasco, D. Pérez, F. Varela, J.M. Palomar and M.P. Dorado. Environmental Engineering Science. September/October 2004, 21(5): 591-605. doi:10.1089/ees.2004.21.591.Published in Volume: 21 Issue 5: September 30, 2004
Too many errors - Reply Andy Saunders
Andy,
I see that you write pro-gas posts all over climate spectator. Do you have an interest in the coal seam gas / oil and gas sectors?
Perhaps you could start listing the errors. Our work is checked and put together by Chemical Engineers, Gas and Oil industry engineers, physicists, mech engineers. We have 8 in house and 200 volunteer pro-bono researchers.
Please send you criticisms questions through rather than just spreading FUD - Fear Uncertainty and Doubt
Matthew
Behaviouralism is not what got my reductions - J Cooper
J Cooper,
My huge energy demand reductions have come purely from the efficiency measures. I am not a believer in putting on a jumper as a solution to energy and climate. I have analysed the average climate data for a 60 day period this year and last and the average was very similar (within 1 degree C).
The behaviour of my household was to use more heating this year when we got the reverse cycle air conditioners than when we had the gas. With the gas we had one space heater and there was some zoned use of oil filled electric resistive heaters. Now we only use heat pumps and we heat all the spaces as we use them. So much more heat brought into the house and still a huge reduction in energy demand. The savings on not running the gas grid (close it down) not paying the service fees, easily pays for any upgrades needed to the electricity network. The electricity grid is designed to stay up, we need it for computers, microwaves, communications. The gas network is low grade and part of the 19th century fossil fuel economy. It's use should be studied in history of technology and in museums. The 21st century economy is electric with electric trains, heat pumps, electric vehicles, indusction stove tops etc.
RE: What about the distribution net peak demand -A Nance Reply
Andrew - There is more slack on the electricity network in winter which is being sized for extreme air conditioning peaks in summer. That said there would be an increase required in capacity on the grid if we moved everyone to heat pumps.
The money that is currently spent on upgrading, augmenting upsizing the gas grid and that we all spend on gas service fees can now be spent on the electricity network. I've done away with my $40 (and rising) bi-monthly gas service fee and the money I pay for buying gas. This all adds to economies of scale in the electricity sector. Using gas for direct heat is ridiculous. If you were going to use gas to provision heating (I'm against this and support renewables on the back end) you'd put it in a CCGT and then use the transmission and distribution grid and then get annual average COP 10 for the heat you deliver into the premises with a heat pump.
Gas converted to electricity CCGT 50% efficient from gas heat.
7% line losses 46,5% efficient to house. COP 10 annual efficiency (average outside temperature over heating period of 14C) 465% of the calorific value of the gas delivered as renewable ambient heat and electric heat into the premises.
Even better if you use Wind, Photovoltaic or Baseload Solar THermal to power the heat pump from the grid.