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July 08, 2004
Pump It Up!
I always thought that heating with electricity was supposed to be a bad idea. Yes, electric resistance heaters--which operate like the element on an electric stove--are pretty efficient at turning electricity into heat. But turning fossil fuels into electricity is incredibly inefficient. In a typical coal-fired power plant, only about a third of the energy content of coal is actually turned into electricity; the rest is wasted. The newest types of gas-fired power plants are more efficient, but still waste about 45 percent of the energy content of the natural gas they burn. Then, transmitting electricity to your home wastes additional energy.
So all things considered, it makes far more environmental sense to heat your home with gas directly than it does to burn the gas to produce electricity, transport the electricity to your home, and then use it to power a baseboard electric heater.
But electric-powered heat pumps--which work sort of like refrigerators in reverse--are making me change my thinking about using electricity for home heating. Unlike resistance heaters, heat pumps don't actually convert electricity into heat. Instead, they move heat from place to place, which is much more efficient: one kilowatt-hour of electricity in a heat pump may produce two to three kilowatt-hours of usable heat. (And no, this doesn't actually defy the laws of physics: heat isn't being created, it's just being moved around.)
The Northwest Power and Conservation Council has identified heat pumps as the second most-important source of electricity savings in people's homes (see page six, here--but be careful, it's a big .pdf download). And as this Canadian report confirms, heat pumps beat just about every other heating method in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced per unit of heat generated--even in British Columbia, where virtually all of the electricity comes from hydropower. And unlike gas-fired furnaces, heat pumps can be completely greenhouse-gas neutral, provided that they're powered with electricity that wasn't generated from fossil fuels. Even the new generation of high-efficiency gas furnaces can't make that claim.
Posted by Clark Williams-Derry | Permalink
Comments
I need help locating Thermostats for Electrical
Baseboard heat, the only number I see on my
thermostats is YW67832.
I haven't removed any of the old thermostats to
examine them. One of my thermostats is causing
the room to be always too hot, or too cold,
so I just shut that thermostat off. I figure all
my baseboard electric heat thermostats are the
same age and the same type, so they are probably
all ready to start starting to acting up, and
thus should all be replaced.
So far everyone has said that the YW67832
means nothing to them.
I live in Derry New Hampshire and am looking
for some place local that I can bring one of my
thermostats to in order to find a suitable
replacement.
1. I need to know if this is a single pole or double pole thermostat?
2. If this is a 2-wire system or 4-wire system?
3. How much current is being switched by my present thermostat?
How do I find someone that can answer these questions?.
If they make a digital thermostat, that
will provide much better regulation; but if
these thermostats don't default to a predefined
temperature (should we have a temporary power
outage), then it is best to go with a mechanical
dial type. You don't want a momentary power
outage to shut off your heat while you are away
in the winter time and have your pipes freeze.
Appreciate your assistance.
Take care,
Larry
Posted by: Larry Oliveto | Jul 15, 2005 7:36:27 PM
I am building a new home in PA. The builder is insisting a heat pump is the best way to go. I always thought I lived too far north for a heat pump to be effective. Any thoughts?
Posted by: Laurel | Mar 19, 2006 6:23:11 PM
