[colatkinson]

> Heat pumps can have back up electric heating elements to provide the heating in the extremes. You get a more resilient system than gas.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but wouldn't the backup electric heating elements require, well, electricity to function?

I'm no fan of gas, but the idea of losing heating, phone service (the old copper wire systems could function even in a blackout), the ability to cook (since gas stoves are being phased out), and the ability to travel (EVs and some trains) because a transformer exploded is kinda scary. Like, we're putting all our faith in a system that is routinely knocked out by errant tree branches.

Maybe we could do buried lines, but given infra costs in the US that sounds... expensive. Someone in another thread mentioned heat reservoirs of some kind, but I have no idea how realistic that is. Even if it buys a few extra hours, that'd improve things dramatically.

From the sound of it, you're far more familiar with specific legislation than I, so maybe I'm totally off and all this has been taken into account. But having experienced an extended blackout and my family realizing we couldn't even boil water, I'm apprehensive to say the least. IMO it'd be nice to move away from fossil fuels without betting lives on ConEd doing repairs in a timely fashion.

[rightbyte]

> we're putting all our faith in a system that is routinely knocked out by errant tree branches.

Ye ... one would have thought that JIT delivery would have gone out of fashion after Covid messed everything up.

With e.g. wood pellet heating the energy is stored in your home already. No amount of tree branches falling in the wrong places will make you freeze to ice.

[pasttense01]

"Do pellet stoves use a lot of electricity? They also require electricity to run fans, controls, and pellet feeders. Under normal usage, they consume about 100 kilowatt-hours (kWh) or about $9 worth of electricity per month. Unless the stove has a back-up power supply, the loss of electric power results in no heat and possibly some smoke in the house."

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/wood-and-pellet-heating

In other words the same situation as when you have a natural gas furnace: the electricity goes out and your furnace no longer operates.

[tomohawk]

We have a dual fuel heat pump / oil furnace set up. The heat pump is ok above freezing, but you can see the efficiency drop off starting at 40F.

Friday night, we had a several hour power outage as the temps dropped to 10F.

So, fired up the diesel generator (runs off the same fuel as the oil furnace) and had no problem heating the house. Our neighbors with their heat pumps spent a very chilly and uncomfortable night, which could have turned deadly had the power not been restored when it was.

Heat pumps require a considerably larger and more expensive generator, well outside of the reach of most people to buy and keep in good service.

Wood, gas, and oil are all much better than heat pumps in this regard, as even a solar battery can provide enough power so you can survive events like these.

Heat pump are good on average, but have really bad failure modes in this regard.

[rightbyte]

Sure. But you can put pellets in a cage and burn them manually in fire stoves.

A pellets heated water system will need power to circulate the water so that won't work.

The gasoline power generator needed to power a pellets furnace is way smaller than for a heat pump system. Like 200W vs 10kW.

I meant more inline with "you got the energy in your house already".

[antisthenes]

The OP was trying to suggest that at some point the temperatures drop to the point where the heat pump is less than 100% efficient, whereas a backup resistive electric heating element is always 100% efficient.

The problem with that is..like you mentioned, it still uses electricity.