One thing to keep in mind, though, is that even though the electricity here is mostly produced by burning gas you do actually burn less gas by turning it into electricity and then using it to run a heat pump than just burning it for heat.
Fascinating! I guess it’d fall into the “more moving parts to break” bucket, but it gets me wondering about switching from my current propane HVAC to propane generator + electric heat pump.
Searching the web for models that do both in a single unit, I find a lot of heat pumps using propane as their refrigerant, but no immediate hits using it as their fuel.
My question about this is, are there generator systems that allow you to safely dump the waste heat from combustion inside the way a forced-air furnace system does?
Getting more speculative/forward looking: if we can get the up front costs down enough to consider swapping the generator in your model for a methane fuel cell, would it be cheaper to heat and power your house with natural gas than to run off the grid? (Not that any MA town I’ve lived in would be likely to approve a building permit for such a thing, but still, interesting question).
FWIW there are RVs with electric heat pumps (though less efficient than residential ones, usually) as well as on-board (propane, gas, or diesel) generators. In this context there are definitely cases where it’s cheaper to run the generator and heat pump than to run the propane furnace. These kinds of systems also benefit from the presence of batteries (which, set up properly, can stabilize power draw and from the generator, and minimize generator run time and start/stop cycles, as the heat pump turns on and off). Last summer I dry camped in Wyoming for about a month, and my 10kWh battery + 3kW inverter let me cut my generator fuel use (for AC, not heat, but similar idea) in half (would have been even better but I was limited by max converter charging rate and battery thermal management) compared to if I didn’t have that.
Fascinating! I guess it’d fall into the “more moving parts to break” bucket, but it gets me wondering about switching from my current propane HVAC to propane generator + electric heat pump.
Searching the web for models that do both in a single unit, I find a lot of heat pumps using propane as their refrigerant, but no immediate hits using it as their fuel.
My question about this is, are there generator systems that allow you to safely dump the waste heat from combustion inside the way a forced-air furnace system does?
Getting more speculative/forward looking: if we can get the up front costs down enough to consider swapping the generator in your model for a methane fuel cell, would it be cheaper to heat and power your house with natural gas than to run off the grid? (Not that any MA town I’ve lived in would be likely to approve a building permit for such a thing, but still, interesting question).
FWIW there are RVs with electric heat pumps (though less efficient than residential ones, usually) as well as on-board (propane, gas, or diesel) generators. In this context there are definitely cases where it’s cheaper to run the generator and heat pump than to run the propane furnace. These kinds of systems also benefit from the presence of batteries (which, set up properly, can stabilize power draw and from the generator, and minimize generator run time and start/stop cycles, as the heat pump turns on and off). Last summer I dry camped in Wyoming for about a month, and my 10kWh battery + 3kW inverter let me cut my generator fuel use (for AC, not heat, but similar idea) in half (would have been even better but I was limited by max converter charging rate and battery thermal management) compared to if I didn’t have that.