| Another concern in many cases is the lack of reliability of overall power thanks to our provider. Last year I bought a couple 'battery backups' because the day or two without power was causing spoilage/etc. Not saying a NatGas furnace is easy to hook up in that case, but the overall 'usage' of a battery slew or generator is going to be far better if it's a winter outage. Cause, let me tell you, DTE -sucks- and I know people who have gone up to a week without power with medical need for it in very populated areas. (oh bonus points there was a live wire at least once.) ------- This truly is the biggest 'missing link' to adoption in my area. We all dealt with the Northeast blackout, we have the dumb stuff DTE does where even some gas stations have generators and walk state gouging lines, so until they can easily 'hook up a power source to their car to charge in an emergency' (i.e. to go up north to the cabin or on a mini-vacation till it all blows over) without it being a PITA and dependent on the state's power infrastructure working... but I digress; > Lastly (chicken-and-egg), the lack of a strong market meant that the available heat-pumps were niche products. There were fewer options, higher costs, and few installers who knew how to deploy them properly. There was also less clear reliability info for a consumer to decide whether it was a worthwhile choice, and FUD from early adopters who encountered those under-skilled installers. Between the Influencer market, The 'SEO Optimized Marketing Video', and every other marketing technique, no player has found a way to just get some competent installer teams in a network? FFS based on my recent experience with furnace repair, it would be easy for them to try and vertical it. As I mentioned in my original post there's a lot of parts of the US where people do even worse things than natural gas, due to the general lack of reliability of service lines, or abhorrent cost to install reliably. Those places still need heat when the power's cut in a nasty storm and they are days/weeks down on the roll. ----- I wager the reliability of the US power network and maintenance SLAs thereof are the biggest hurdle to mass adoption of heat pumps vs natgas/etc. At the same time I'll note that NatGas -heating- is, last I was aware, still more efficient than CGCC->Heat Pump in my area. Happy for alternative info as we may need to shop soon. |