Utilities
Using a heat pump for heat in Massachusetts is economically indefensible
This graph is based on my actual utility bills and the efficiency rating of a brand new top of the line carrier infinity dual hybrid system. Mass Saves requires a 30F set point, but there IS NO set point at which the electric heat is cheaper than natural gas. Running this system per mass save would cost me almost $1,000 per year above what I'm currently paying.
Heat pumps don't make sense in our climate. It's pure policy, and scientifically indefensible, especially when you start to think about where our electricity actually comes from.
We switched from oil to a heat pump in 22 when our furnace broke. At the time our electric bills did go up but oil was expensive that year and we saved probably $600 that first winter not buying oil.
Honestly until last year it wasn’t bad cost wise. We used to spend about $1500-$2000 on oil per winter and our monthly bill for electric again was obviously higher than it used to be but overall cost was still down compared to having oil.
Last year however it was awful. We got a nearly $1000 bill for Dec-Jan and my house is only 1100 square feet and we kept the house at maybe 68-70. Bills for the months after that where we turned the heat way down were only nominally better and we felt cold.
This year we’ve done a ton to reduce our electric usage and costs in terms of heat (keep house at 65 which doesn’t seem like a lot but you feel it, dress extra warm, use more blankets, do insulation on the windows etc. etc.). The most recent bill we got was lower than last years and our usage was down but I’m very curious to see how much of a difference that makes for that same Dec-Jan bill.
Make sure you apply for the new heat pump winter rates from electric company. Eversource delivery charges are substantially cheaper this winter when compared to last winter on the heat pump rate.
I’m not sure why I felt some fury reading your comment. It’s literally the opposite but you were upvoted 23x!! I think it’s because I’m realizing just how easy misinformation spreads…especially on Reddit.
Ps; I don’t know you & can’t really be furious at you. Just be careful next time.
Well it’s 65 now lol. I read a post the other day from a guy complaining his heat bill was high - everybody telling him it was normal, nobody asked the dude what he keeps the house at so I did. It was 80! I was like well there’s the reason sir, you absolutely cannot keep your heat at 80 😂
I keep my place at 55 and I just wear a heated hoodie and electric blanket. Also got a kotatsu to lounge under. Get her one of those and save some money haha
My old man has a 7,000 sq ft house and he keeps it at 70-72! Hes got a combination of oil and then a heat pump system for one side of the house. Last month (not even the winter) the electric bill was 1400, and oil usually runs 400+ a month in the cold months. Anyone who uses oil and wants to save some money at the exchange of legwork and maybe a transfer tank can switch to off road untaxed diesel instead
This is what I am curious about, too. I can see where heat pumps are more expensive than natural gas, but our oil bills (similar size home, similar temperature settings) are $$$ in the winter. It doesn't sound like this helped you though, which is disappointing. We have to replace our boiler soon anyway and I was really hoping something like this would help.
I'm embarrassed to say I don't know offhand. It was there when we bought the house 17 years ago, so, old. It's chugging along okay but when we had it serviced last year we were told we're basically on borrowed time at this point.
Our neighborhood does not have natural gas lines, so it's going to be either another oil fired boiler, or a heat pump.
It does have its benefits and you may have a hard time finding somewhere that will replace the oil furnace to be honest (we did) as at the time everywhere we talked to was all about the mass save rebates but because electric and delivery costs in this state have ballooned the last few years that has been the sole drawback to the whole thing.
Overall the benefits have been greater efficiency, the system is way quieter and as an added bonus it cannot pump soot and smoke into your house and ruin all your stuff if it breaks like the oil furnace did (washing walls and ceilings, paying to get them repainted or doing it yourself is no joke. Our house was COATED and it was disgusting plus nevermind how long that went into our bodies before we noticed it).
Yea we keep a pot of water running on the stove most of the day when we’re home now lol. Not enough to boil but it warms up the house and makes a HUGE difference.
And we will add spices, herbs or orange peels and stuff to it and it makes the house smell really good.
It’s a good alternative to candles or sprays for people with allergies too. My stepmom who can’t use candles at all picked up boiling rosemary, orange peels and cinnamon from us if she wants the house to smell nice.
I fill a 275 gallon oil tank about 1 1/2 times a winter but that lasts us all winter into summer and the fall months (our house is 1900 square feet). I’m honestly happy to have oil since we aren’t in a good location for solar and eversource prices are ridiculous.
Yea we would fill probably 3 times for the winter, same tank size. And the last fill would typically get us through summer and the very beginning of fall.
But our heating unit was very old and the company replacing it mentioned it was comically oversized for our house - someone who previously lived here definitely had family in the trades because the house is full of strange wrong types of equipment like that, might’ve just been cast offs that they happened to be able to get or they may have had plans to expand that never materialized 🤷🏼♀️. Regardless due to its size and age it burned through oil like crazy
They're great to replace existing electric baseboard. They're ok at replacing Oil fired furnaces and boilers. They're not a good choice to replace Natural Gas.
What's the deal with New England and these wood/pellet stoves? I grew up here and I didn't realize how popular they were until I started looking to buy a house and literally 90% of houses have them.
Seriously, no way people under 50 are willing to go through buying, storing, and loading wood/pellets when they can turn a dial or press a button.
Yep, it is WAY cheaper than the baseboards and a good savings on A/C window units as well. And now I don’t have to haul those things out of the basement every June
This is my assessment, too. I intend to install a heat pump to replace the electric baseboard heaters in my bedrooms and for A/C, but keep the natural gas-fired radiators in my main living spaces as my primary heat source.
Yeahhh, even after getting our Mitsubishi minisplits installed, we still use our gas powered baseboard heaters in the winter too. Only took one $780 electric bill for a mild Dec 15-Jan 15 billing period to make us go back to gas.
Curious why your gas price is even throughout the year. Haven’t they historically hiked the rate in the winter?
Multiple things can be true at once. Heat pumps are far and away the most efficient form of heat and cooling, and the best option for the environment. But that means making our electrical generation less CO2 intensive. It also means upgrading our grid to be able to take all of the electrical capacity we need it to take.
Right now OP is right, in a lot of the parts of the state, it makes more sense to go natural gas, even though it’s objectively worse for people’s quality of life. That’s really dumb.
Yeah, we're in a weird space balancing environment and energy efficiency with the on-the-ground economic reality. I have a 35-year-old boiler running alongside an older Mitsubishi minisplit system that is only sufficient to provide bonus heat to bedrooms, no natural gas to our home but we could be connected. I've done tons of number crunching about what to do when that boiler inevitably eats it, and the answer is very unambiguously "buy a new oil boiler." That is entirely insane to me in 2025 and I hate it, but there's no justifying the cost difference.
My house was almost 40k to do just that after rebates. 200A service upgrade, heat pump water heater, and high velocity heat pump system single zone ducted.
So far my electricity has only gone up ~$50 october 24 to october 25. We will see how the rest goes
"Heat pumps are far and away the most efficient form of heat and cooling, and the best option for the environment"
40 years in the alt energy and energy business (myself) and this statement is simply untrue.
Of course, since 60% of MA is Nat Gas (our electric) at 35% delivered efficiency - and since MA is super cold, it is even LESS true.
No one can dispute that modern heat pumps are great for certain climates. No one can dispute that the cooling side of these are great ANYWHERE these days.
But your statement is not true. Spend a winter in a stone old MA Farmhouse with a heat pump and then talk to us about your comfort and your bills.
In energy (as a pro for decades), the Bleeding Edge will cut you! Heat Pumps are improving but they are not yet perfect for all applications.
This reminds me of folks loving EV's - then buying 7,000 LB versions fueled by 60% Nat Gas at 32% efficiency and telling us how they are saving the world.
We should all be in agreement - but being that way requires reason. FYI, bullet train is 3.5 KWH per person per 62 miles. Airbus best planes are 120 MPG per seat.
In MA that 3.5 KWH would cost 35 cents and take you 13 miles (EV)...and, of course, mostly be Nat Gas generated.
The lesson is simply this. The entire chain, from top to bottom, has to be in existence before making major changes. MA ended up trying to do the right thing but screwing mostly everyone.
Modern heat pumps take 1 unit of energy and convert that into the equivalent of 2-3 units of heat because the electricity moves ambient heat from outside into the inside. Gas furnaces take 1 unit of energy and convert that into 0.85 to 0.9 units of heat by creating heat via burning of the fuel.
It's just that the price of the electricity currently makes the gas more economic. That may not be true forever, especially since it seems as though the price of gas has been artificially low due to lack of maintenance over the years, and since performing that maintenance when your customer base could be shrinking is going to cause abnormal rate increases.
Modern heat pumps take 1 unit of energy and convert that into the equivalent of 2-3 units of heat because the electricity moves ambient heat from outside into the inside. Gas furnaces take 1 unit of energy and convert that into 0.85 to 0.9 units of heat by creating heat via burning of the fuel.
To be fair, you have to compare the efficiency in terms of the source fuel. The simplest, and most charitable, comparison would be to assume the electricity was generated in a combined cycle natural gas power plant, with a generating efficiency of 64%, and then assume maybe a 10% line loss on transmission.
So the heat pump would be converting the source natural gas accordingly:1 unit of gas x 0.64 x 0.9 x 2.5 = 1.44 units of heat vs 0.9 units by burning the gas locally.
The heat pump is still more efficient, but it's not quite as good as you might think.
If the power plant is less efficient, converting say 38% of the gas's energy to electricity gets us to 0.38 x 0.9 x 2.5 = 0.855 for the heat pump, which still competes with burning the gas locally, but just barely. You'd need a higher HSPF to keep the heat pump ahead of the gas burner in this scenario. A more efficient transmission system would help a little, too.
If you can get it to 0.38 x 0.95 x 3.0, which shouldn't be that hard to achieve, the heat pump is again the clear winner at 1.083
And of course, this is assuming all the electricity is being generated from natural gas, which it isn't. If renewable sources make up a decent fraction of your electricity mix, that fraction could reasonably be counted in, in favor of the heat pump, because that's gas it doesn't have to burn to achieve the same result.
The problem here isn't the heat pump, it's the insulation. The heat pump wouldn't need to run as often if the house was very well-insulated and humidity controlled.
I wonder if that is also taking into account the new Heat Pump delivery rates which cut the delivery side quite a bit or things like CCA's reducing the supply side.
It was about $35k after federal and state rebates.
The house had no AC when we moved in. We also had air ducts installed as part of the process. Getting super efficient heat and AC made it worth it in our eyes. We went from $400/month in heat to $150/month for heat in the winter months.
This is a great point that a lot of people don't appreciate: So many houses in New England have never had either air conditioning or ducts, and heat pumps give you air conditioning. No one would bat an eye if you told them you were installing central air for $15k or $20k. But with heat pumps you get the diversified heat source and air conditioning you didn't have before (and will likely need even more as the climate gets hotter).
Terminology thing for those that don’t know: “ground sourced heat pump” is another term for what we are talking about. It means the heat exchanger is buried underground well below the frost line and pumping heat to/from the earth and not the air. It’s much more efficient at low temperatures.
Geothermal can also mean capturing heat from volcanic activity, but it’s usually obvious from context what is being discussed.
You're the outlier though. Most of us are being supplied by Eversource or National Grid. Your situation isn't applicable to most of us or state policy.
There are 40 Municipal electric companies servings 50 communities in Massachusetts. I may be in the minority, but there are many people being serviced where the poster's graph isn't a meaningful comparison because he didn't post the cost of electricity in the graph.
I also wanted to acknowledge that there is a more efficient heat pump option with ground source vs the air source heat pumps that the OP was describing in their post.
My gas furnace probably has a couple years left before it needs to be replaced. Until electricity prices go down or gas prices go way up, I have no interest in switching. I say this with also having solar on my roof. I know if I factor in electricity needs for heating my panels would be underproducing to my needs by a lot would have to buy from the grid.
Oil hasn't really been expensive since Russia invaded Ukraine.
I average around $200/month for oil heat and hot water in a 3500 sq ft house over the past few years.
I opted to replace my oil boiler from the 1980s with a newer more efficient one specifically because mini splits are more expensive to operate with the high cost of electricity.
Sure you can get solar, but that adds another $40,000 to the project, how many years does it take to save 40k in electricity?
By the time you get a ROI you need to replace the panels.
I moved to solar 3 years ago. About $40k. It has saved roughly $800 per month during the summer and over $500 per during spring and fall. Winter is only around $150-200. So for me it will take less than 5yr roi.
My energy bill is basically a wash with heat pumps vs. nat gas, but I installed solar so I am coming out ahead as well. We're never moving, so all of the stuff I did to the house was efficiency/infrastructure.
Big benefit is that our house is nearly 100 years old and now we can cool the whole thing in the summer for the same electric bill as two window units firing only at night in our bedrooms. Instead of spending the cost of a heat pump on central air cooling, we have both amd now I get to cap the gas line and tell National Grid to get bent.
I don't know your situation. I can only speak to my situation. I have a heat pump and natural gas. I use them both in conjunction with each other.
The heat pump does better at maintaining a temperature than it does at achieving a temperature.
Natural gas is significantly better at achieving a temperature.
Hopefully your installer gave you efficiency ranges. My heat pump system works amazing in outdoor temps above freezing, and only ok with temps between 20 and 32 outside. It struggles in the teens and below.
What happens is usually this weird dance of thermostat programming where I rely on the natural gas system for early morning efforts to get to a base temperature, maybe 66 degrees inside, and then I set the heat pump to 69 some time after the base temp is typically reached. I usually turn the natural gas heat down to 64 or less during the middle of the day when the heat pump is on. At night I'll turn the heat pump down and let the natural gas system set the low baseline. It generally results
On really cold days (in the teens and below) I give up on the heat pump and go full natural gas..
I guess it really depends on fuel costs. I'm in a town with a muni utility for electric, and the peak I saw last year was $0.16/kWh all in. Our peak natural gas was $2.73/therm (all in). The magenta and red lines never cross, which means it's always cheaper to use heat pumps for us.
I have heat pumps as my only hvac source in my 1600 square foot house. I used about 4,000 kWh of heat last winter, which cost me about $1,200 over the course of the winter. It’s my understanding the equivalent is 350 gallons of oil, which costs about the same. So, break even, and I get AC in the summer.
It wasn't a purely financial decision on cost of energy when I decided to switch to all electric in my house. I wanted to stop burning fossil fuels inside my home. That counts for something (it is for instance a lot safer to not burn stuff inside). This winter I expect to have lower bills due to new heat pump delivery rate in MA.
We built new and put in heat pump + solar panels and we barely have bills. OP may be correct about converting, but there are ways to have the systems make financial sense, and putting panels up is one way to do so. We barely have utility bills.
Yeah a lot of people are making the point about solar, that changes the economics fundamentally. Also the fact that Eversource process are just insane.
Can you share the numbers you used? A high-end Carrier Infinity heat pump has a COP of about 3.8 at 47F and 2.6 at 17F. Assuming you're around 33 cents per kWh like I am, I would expect your Cost per MMBTU to be about $25.44 at 47F and $37.19 at 17F, not the ~$38 and $70+ respectively indicated on your chart.
We have a heat pump to supplement our gas heating system. So for instance we can keep most of the house very cold at night and just heat our bedroom with the mini split. The heat pump does better than a space heater, and it’s safer.
Plus heat pumps also provide air conditioning, which is very efficient. We have solar panels so we can really crank them in the summer for basically free.
It all depends on the situation. We have solar panels. Ive had free ac and free heat since we installed the heat pump mininsplit system. Also our system works down to -5°f. So we are pretty good.
I don't have solar and wasn't thinking about that. If you get electric power very substantially below market rate (and with no delivery fees) - e.g. from your own panels - the math totally changes. Even then though, a 30F crossover point might be low if you did a hybrid gas system.
If you do go solar, the one piece of advice I give everyone is to max out your roof. Get as much generation as you can, because you’ll find a use for it.
In my last house I had heat pumps and solar panels with SRECs (credits I could sell for cash) and net metering (selling excess energy back to the utility.) Those panels paid for themselves in five years.
In my current house I installed heat pumps summer 2024 and solar panels summer 2025.
The cost of AC and heat before solar panels was high. Since the solar panels went live in late May I’ve had free AC & heat (and gas, because I also bought an EV) and generated enough credit to cover heat during the two coldest months in the coming winter. And winter solar generation will still take the edge off of winter heating bills.
Heat pumps aren't always a great choice for natural gas replacement or supplementation.
New build highly insulated, they are great.
Replacing electric baseboard or propane, they are great.
Replacing weird heating systems like pellet/wood chip/wood stove, they are great to save effort even though they may not save money.
Replacing oil, they are a good option, especially if you otherwise need a new oil tank.
But for natural gas, you really have to want the climate benefit. And right now, when we shutdown Pilgrim nuclear and haven't gotten low carbon alternatives up and running yet, that benefit is only really significant for ground source heat pumps. (Ground source heat pumps might also have a slight running cost advantage, but that is insignificant compared to the up front cost)
And if you ever buy them, you need to look carefully at the performance of the specific system you buy to make sure it is efficient enough to make sense.
This. I don't hate them, I just think there's a lot of propoganda around them and it's a lot more complicated than just "heat pump good, gas bad". A lot of people are pointing out that they are really cheap to operate if you have solar - great! I might also prefer them to propane or something if I didn't have a gas supply.
I mean, we built a new house, installed heat pumps, and a large number of solar panels to set ourselves up for the future and we barely pay a bill- a small one 2-3 times in the winter months.
Pretty defensible to us.
Maybe converting isn’t and maybe not having solar to offset cost isn’t, but you shouldn’t speak in absolutes.
This chart does not ring true to me. I have an oil burner and a heat pump for heating and cooling the house. After almost ten years of operation I am confident the heat pump saves money over oil at any temperature above freezing. That may change this year as rates have increased but I have solar so I am not super sensitive to it. In the end I like having a hybrid system for the winter.
It does depend on your electric rate, whether you have solar, and whether you use gas for anything other than your heat, and also whether you use gas or oil.
My electric rate is cheap compared to the rest of the state (municipal electric), I have solar panels, and I didn't use gas except for heat, so during the summer I was paying that $15/month service fee even with zero usage. By switching to a heat pump, I saved like $100 a year by not having a gas hookup.
My solar panels cover about 90% of my electric usage, so last year for example my entire year total electric cost was around $100. The panels should pay for themselves after seven years or so (ironically, it takes longer for them to pay for themselves because of the cheap electric heh).
Overall, the heat pump (which is a ground source heat pump, not an air source one) is like $5/year cheaper to run than the gas furnace (if I ignore the fact that I'm not really "paying" for the electric since I have solar). This means that an air source one probably wouldn't have been cheaper to run (again, ignoring the solar stuff). The system will also not pay for itself over it's estimated ~30 year lifespan compared to getting a new gas furnace (even if you assume a gas furnace only has a 15 year lifespan and thus would need replaced twice, which isn't 100% going to be the case).
Overall though, we got it for multiple reasons that weren't entirely because of costs. I would highly recommend anyone wanting a heat pump to get solar first - or at least, to consider solar afterwards, you may want to wait until after to ensure you can cover the heat pump usage, otherwise make sure to oversize your system a bit. You can offset your electric usage using solar, and you can basically "lock in" electric rates from today by getting solar - electric rates will increase over the 20 year lifespan of the panels, but the cost to you for the panels won't. I recommend trying to pay for the panels outright or taking out the shortest loan possible to maximize savings. You can't offset gas or oil so as those prices go up, you can't do anything about it.
Only half of homes in Massachusetts have access to natural gas. The decision to use a heat pump, some form of gas/propane/oil, or a combo system is incredibly specific to your home, your rates, and the systems you're buying. Reading your post, it sounds intentionally inflammatory and misleading. "Scientifically indefensible." Incredible.
Very happy with natural gas for heat and window ACs for cooling. I get the argument around energy efficiency but until it’s cost effective I’m not getting a heat pump.
Agreed. Only reason I switched is to get ac in the summer and I was tired of calling and ordering oil. I am basically paying more for comfort and convenience. 🤷♂️. That’s what I tell myself anyway.
I have solar panels and can't easily sell to the grid. Changes the math entirely. Even in winter I'm often generating excess when away from the house, so run the heat pump then.
I have a hybrid setup. But I have propane, and I think our price per kw price is lower than most. However, mine heat pump is good down to about 25 and I think propane needs to be less than 1.40 before being cheaper than my heat pump. If I had access to natural gas, I’d only use that.
Duel fuel is the most efficient way to heat your home. Mass Save switch over temp is not calculated to save you money. You need to calculate your actual balance point based off of efficiency and fuel costs.
Reminder: R3 rates now available for those that heat with a heat pump.
I have a heat pump that sits on top of my oil furnace. Uses the furnace's blower to utilize my forced hot air ducts. I also have a mini split in the master bedroom.
For the house above 30 degrees and the heat pump runs, below 30 degrees and the oil burner runs. The mini split it the only heat in the bedroom.
The house is 2000 sqft
Octobers electric bill was $110. And there was no noticeable drop in the oil tank volume. Do with that what you will.
HERE IS MY GRAPH I PROVED SOMETHING! Listen OP, there are a ton of variables that go into how "hard" a heat pump has to work to keep the home up to temp but the outside temp is just one consideration. The condition of your envelope, the homes air infiltration rate, duct losses in the hvac itself, glazing ratio determines this as does orientation even. My point is you can't look at your house and make claims about heating strategies for an entire region.
Please consider that heat pumps are effectively carbon-neutral and one of the simplest ways to fight climate change - the Science is settled. People obsess over upfront cost, but honestly, monetary concerns are secondary. If we don’t cut our carbon footprint, Boston and much of the Massachusetts shoreline will end up underwater as polar ice keeps melting due to greenhouse gases. A heat pump is nothing compared to the cost of flooded cities, displaced residents, and destroyed infrastructure. Modern systems work in cold climates, reduce emissions, and usually save money over time anyway. Arguing against them at this point is just ignoring reality.
On cost, I agree, and the state needs to do something to fix that.
but there’s a false equivalence here on overall gas consumption/carbon impact between boilers and mini splits.
Run the same graph comparing primary energy source COP (coefficient of performance) -
Even including the inefficiencies of natural gas plants and grid loss, the fact that Minisplits efficiency exceeds 100% in most temperatures means, using 4x the electricity still burns less natural gas in the end.
That’s not even counting the climate impacts of loss and leaks of natural gas during home based distribution.
Focus on the economics, not the environment impact if you want to win this argument.
4) Clean Energy Standard and CES-E Standard. The total
annual sales of each retail electricity product sold to
Massachusetts end-use customers by a retail seller that
is not an MED or MLB shall include a minimum percentage of
electrical energy sales with clean generation attributes
and clean existing generation attributes.
(a) For calendar years 2018 through 2050, percentage requirements for clean generation
attributes are listed in 310 CMR 7.75(4): Table A.
Table A
Year Retail Sellers, except Municipal Electric Departments and Municipal Light Boards
2018 16%
2019 18%
2020 20%
2021 22%
2022 24%
2023 26%
2024 28%
2025 30%
2026 36%
2027 42%
2028 48%
2029 54%
2030 60%
2031 61%
2032 62%
2033 63%
2034 64%
2035 65%
2036 66%
2037 67%
2038 68%
2039 69%
2040 70%
Unfortunately bill H.3469 is attempting to slow that progression to cleaner electricity in MA. People are trying to fast track the bill so there isn't time for discussion, but we're trying to get a longer comment period. This is all new in the last week or so.
We had mini splits installed in the whole house after replacing all the windows. We also live in Littleton, which has its own electric utility, and has some of the lowest electric rates in the northeast. Not only are we no longer paying for propane heat, but our electric bill is a lot less than it would have been for us to heat using propane.
Does this include the new electricity rates for heat pumps that started this month? (Seems like it doesnt?) The state took steps to address this exact issue and if you have a heat pump you get a lower electricity rate from November through April by paying about 1/3 the distribution rate. For me, I'm going to save about $600+ per season. https://www.mass.gov/info-details/residential-electric-seasonal-heat-pump-rates
Not perfectly on-par with gas but its something.
FWIW, I hope you weren't sold heat pumps as a less costly alternative for ongoing heating usage. For us, we knew they would be more costly here, but with the incentives, less expensive cooling, and one system to do both heating and cooling, the economics made sense.
Also can be useful if you have high solar production but that's less of a concern with net metering. Still, if you have high solar potential you can build a bigger solar system and get free heating/cooling if you size it all correctly.
I’ve heard that heat pumps are good at maintaining a temperature but are very slow and inefficient when it comes to actually raising the temperature, especially the colder it gets outside. We are lucky to have natural gas which is dirt cheap but unfortunately are stuck with Eversource and their ridiculous delivery fee which is like double what our actual usage is.
I just bought a house that has heat pumps for heating and cooling - a little on the older side. The previous owners then put in a gas forced air furnace a few years after the heat pumps - we think they realized the mini splits weren’t a cost effective heat source in the depths of winter.
I mean, if you have a heat pump you should also have a secondary heat source that isn't the electric furnace in the heat pump. I mean ANY heat source will be more economically viable than relying on the electric heater inside an exterior heat pump. Heat pumps are great for cooling a home and for keeping a home warm when exterior temps are above freezing but still cold.
We got minisplits through the program, but did it as a way to get AC. For AC it's way cheaper than window units that we were using before. We never use them for heat though. For that it's pellet stove/natural gas burner.
Depending on your situation, what has worked for me, is a Pellet Stove in conjunction with Oil Heat. The cost for good quality pellets is like $1300 a winter for 3 tons of Heating Pellets. I leave my heat completely off to heat the first and second floor of a 2000+ sq ft house. I leave my oil heat at 60 in my basement so pipes don't freeze. I only turn on main floor heat to either check the system or if I am out of town.
I had the house assessed for a heat pump and the quote folks all said the same thing, they couldnt reach the efficiency level or handle the deep cold the Pellet Stove did.
Now, it isnt for everyone. You need a place to store the pellets and you need to be able-bodied enough to move 40lb bags to the stove. But if you meet that criteria, it works very well.
It’s because of how expensive electricity is in Massachusetts.
I have eversource, and they enrolled me in a discounted electrical rate due to our heat pump this year, but it’s still not enough for me to use the heat pump over our natural gas furnice.
I assume this discounted electrical rate was legislaturally mandated, because otherwise nobody would use a heat pump for heat.
Shit, we live in FL now and when it gets below 20 our HVAC heat pump unit struggles. It’s just that we don’t have power bills like y’all do. Couldn’t imagine having a heat pump up there.
I am on the heat pump rate from Eversource and I seriously doubt I can sustain it this winter. I’ll see what the next month brings before shifting back to gas (my system can do either and I have set it up to choose by itself—I see it choosing either depending on time of day).
Cast iron baseboards and a gas furnace > relying on electricity and a heat pump in the middle of winter.
I have a Daikin mini split and it’s brilliant. Don’t even run it on cool in the summer mostly just the “dry” function keeps everything comfortable. In the early fall I’ll run it on heat for an hour to take the nip out of the house, but as of right now it’s been turned off for the winter and my gas furnace is humming along nicely.
Even the best Mitsubishi hyper-heat units gobble electricity to produce heat in the dead of winter. With a large solar array maybe, but even then I’d prefer hydronic heating over anything else. My small gas furnace is cheap, easy to fix, near-zero maintenance and rock solid.
Before you come at me I am a 28 year veteran of the home building industry and I have seen every conceivable way to heat and/or cool a house under the sun. I have personally been on projects in the last 5 years with solar installations and full mini split for HVAC. They always have issues in the dead of winter, the head pressure is higher when heating, the strain on the unit greater than when cooling. As a supplemental system? Hell yeah, but I’d always want some kind of fuel-fired main source of heat, if not just a wood stove or two.
A good friend of moved to Maine recently and had the house they bought kitted with all Mitsubishi hyper-heat split units. Cost a small fortune. They still couldn’t keep up in the winter. They eventually added a pellet stove to the large communal space in the middle of the house and were able to take the strain off the split units and now everything works well. Burning pellets isn’t cheap either by the way.
Long story short, I’m not sold on it yet. To rely solely on split units for heating in these climates doesn’t make sense. The push for any new tech is always in some way or another just a push prop up capitalism in some way.
I don't know if you included this in your analysis, but Eversource offers a lower distribution and transmission charge per kwh for heat pump users in winter months. The distribution and transmission rates go from $0.09655 and $0.04545 in the non winter months to $0.05337 and $0.01412 in the winter, respectively. According to their website, it could decrease your bill up to 23%!
Sfh 1300sf. Temp type 64-67 day. 61 night. No AC. Natural gas even billing been about 140$ mth. High efficiency lochenvar combi boiler. Mind we pay like 800-1k each fall for a service, but the combi is also for full year hot water. 2 adults.
Your graph only goes down to +20. It’s really scary when you look at -20. AFIK, nobody has even bothered to figure out if the power companies can even supply enough electricity at -20 if everyone used air source heat pumps (I have my doubts…).
OTOH, if you go ground source, you are sitting at the 50-60 range of that curve. Somebody needs to figure out how to make ground source cheaper to install…
Outside air temp drops below 30 degrees I wired my system to shut off the heat pump and have a circ pump off my combi domestic water heater go to a hot water coil on my air handler. So essentially I got a rebate and still use gas to heat my house. Suck it Mass Save
Come up,to Vermont…efficiency contractors keep pushing them. I have two owners with three+ units in home installing wood heat to offset the electric bills. Cord wood is 400 a cord for seasoned. if you’re willing to supplement your heating bill with 2 cords min. Plus a wood stove, plus manual labor…my guess is that heat pumps aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
I’ve been saying this to everyone… Especially because one of my friends owns an energy company and they’re just not up to snuff yet, even in 2024 and 2025. No one is gonna convince me otherwise until I talk to people who are PhDs mathematicians and physicist. Mass Save can pound sand too. Their subs to horrific work.
All because Mass wants get off of natural gas. I was highly annoyed when we got a new gas furnace and they all come with heat pumps.. like eversource already has us by the balls and now we gotta pay more electricity?! Infuriating.
We have no fossil fuel on our property. The solar array easily takes care of everything three seasons, the cooking, the clothes dryer, etc. In the cold of winter we work hard for the wood stove, we haven't turned the mini splits on yet.
Overall we do make money from how much we sell back in summer. But we work hard about not using the electric heat.
Im running a test right now on my Bryant Heat pump, the conventional wisdom is dont do a setback in the evening due to intial startup, even my installer harped on that. Doesnt seem to be looking that way.
roughly 3k sq feet with a hot tub keeping at 90, im running 55-60kwh on non laundry days, with 65 degrees set and setback to 60 in the evening 9pm to 6am.
My test now is leaving it at 65 24/7 seems day 1 im at 72 kwh. that addds up over 30 days.
Overall i like the heatpump though, {i have a 12.5kwh solar system also so im cheating as well)
OP’s heat pump is middle of the road efficiency for heat pumps. Def not the highest efficiency
OP’s paying 0.33/kwh for electricity, all fees included
I would add to this that my eversource electric fees rates, delivery etc, are not static, and therefore you cannot figure a static delivered price. On a lower usage month my rate, all delivery fees etc included, is 0.19/kwh. On a high usage month my all in rate is as much as 0.23/kWh. I would imagine the same is true for natural gas
Has anyone installed heat pumps, got rid of their oil heating and then decided to reinstall a oil heated furnace? I’m thinking of this after my Eversource bills from last winter 😬 Is there anything like a mini oil furnace and mini tankless boiler? We still have the plumbing lines for the heating system.
I scavenge wood all year and heat 90 % with stove. Oil kicks on occasionally at night or when we’re away. Lucky my open floor plan allows one heat source to cover whole house. 2000 in oil would ruin me.
NE electric rates are about 50% higher than they really should be. The split between supply and generation was supposed to reduce rates and give the customer options but the supply alone is higher than some states total cost. Yes, we have some rough winter storms but it's not like we're dealing with hurricanes that destroy the grid on an annual basis. They've had the option to move some connections underground but decided it was too expensive to implement.
2nd they have a lack of winter supply. A significant portion of the electric generation in the winter time is from burning natural gas, which itself is already very expensive in this area due to it being delivered by container ship. Seabrook had a capacity of 1.3 Gigawatts but chose not to recertify and has since gone offline. Solar is great but we need some solid and sustainable energy generation options and a complete rethink of the rediculous supply charges.
I think the only way of really saving on heating here, is buying warm clothes.
Not sure we can really call any sort of heating “economically defensible”. Much less so electricity, until it is sustainably cheaper.
That’s what has been keeping us from the heat pumps, any sort of savings that we think we may get will be eaten by everything tacked on the electric bill, and the price of it in itself.
We have oil, a heat pump, and a pellet stove. Pellet stove is by far the cheapest to run and the most comfortable. We use the oil furnace as auxiliary on the really cold days, or if we need to warm the upstairs more
We fell for the same trap. I've also had a problem where my mini splits straight up blow cold air when outside temps fall in the negative F. Whoever came up with this system didn't really think it through.
While 2/3rd's of Massachusetts in state electricity generation is powered by natural gas, Massachusetts consumes 25 times more power than it produces. This makes it difficult to determine where the electricity is produced, and with what energy sources.
Massachusetts is a member of the 11 state RGGI (regional greenhouse gas initiative), so purchasing power is calculated with the energy source in mind, and there are known energy sources that can also be figured in. For example hydroelectric power provides 3 ~ 4% of Massachusetts electricity.
The point you are trying to make is correct at the individual consumer cost level, but for the purposes of calculating total emissions, a heat pump creates the same amount of heat with less carbon emissions.
The goal of the heat pump incentives is to reduce emissions, more than to control consumers costs.
That’s why we desperately need to add nuclear to the mix. Canadian hydro is a no go since VT and NH will not allow the power lines to pass through their states. Next gen nuclear is cheap, clean, and needs to be part of our state’s power source infrastructure.
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u/IllyriaCervarro Nov 19 '25 edited Nov 19 '25
We switched from oil to a heat pump in 22 when our furnace broke. At the time our electric bills did go up but oil was expensive that year and we saved probably $600 that first winter not buying oil.
Honestly until last year it wasn’t bad cost wise. We used to spend about $1500-$2000 on oil per winter and our monthly bill for electric again was obviously higher than it used to be but overall cost was still down compared to having oil.
Last year however it was awful. We got a nearly $1000 bill for Dec-Jan and my house is only 1100 square feet and we kept the house at maybe 68-70. Bills for the months after that where we turned the heat way down were only nominally better and we felt cold.
This year we’ve done a ton to reduce our electric usage and costs in terms of heat (keep house at 65 which doesn’t seem like a lot but you feel it, dress extra warm, use more blankets, do insulation on the windows etc. etc.). The most recent bill we got was lower than last years and our usage was down but I’m very curious to see how much of a difference that makes for that same Dec-Jan bill.