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High power bills impeding heat pumps, California’s electrification goals (calmatters.org)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/climate@slrpnk.net
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[–] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (6 children)

Got off residential gas in Australia a few years ago. Bills are $600/yr for power, were up to $1500 one year for power+gas. At $600/yr a residential battery investment of $7k isn't worth it for my household. It won't run the AC because I've got a multi-split system for the bedrooms. Had I known I'd've gotten individual units for the bedrooms so I could get on on the battery backup system but I'm not cashed up enough to go pulling out a fairly new multi-AC to replace it with a bunch of individuals for the bedrooms so that I can get AC when the summer heat takes out the power.

e: love the downvote.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    I have been thinking of getting a battery, not sure how much it costs to get installed though - labour more than equipment. Could significantly reduce bills, but they are not super expensive in the first place.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    $7k AUD was for a ~42kw FoxESS battery with a 10kw Inverter. I need another $2-3k of work done on the house power supply first. I'm having a lot of trouble finding a sparky to do the mains upgrade that I need.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (3 children)

    I thought that there were heat pump mini splits? Maybe not yet in Australia

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    There might be. Any of that stuff in Australia is very much "pay a licensed professional" to do the work, so it costs a fortune and companies defend their share in the market rather than embrace new tech.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    Here in the US heat pumps are unreasonably expensive too... We already have AC, it's the same damn thing but backwards! There was a government credit to lower the cost, but I'm guessing that mostly affected the sticker price (since it was X% of the cost up to some maximum I think) so the heat pump company can make more. Adoption is more challenging if a building has older central AC as well, since we use different refrigerants now (much better for environment), but they run at a different pressure, so you need to replace the coils and all refrigerant lines, which is expensive.

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