A heatpump salesman has a buddy that is a government official. Has outdated models he needs to liquidate. Salesman guy needs to be richer. Government official can't take the money directly, but sure would like to fly on salesman guys' private jet when they go golfing. Meanwhile government official guy goes and buys a bunch of Salesman company stock and profits explode.
Heatpumps should absolutely be the primary choice in the correct climates. But these deals are rarely good or efficient for a taxpayer.
On top of that, you can't have just any contractor install it, they need to be certified to install heat pumps, and of course the ones who are certified will only install a heat pump they sell you.
If you want a modern energy efficient heat pump in California, without waiting forever and paying several times list price, you're going to have to install it illegally.
We have the same problem that the entire country has with mediocre, overpriced contractors. And we also have the same problem with ever-changing refrigerant rules. But heat pump availability seems just fine here, even for VRF systems. (Actually, VRF systems seem to be very common among new installations lately.)
I'm amazed at the cynicism here. [thing] is objectively good, but it's still bad because government is involved and therefore corruption should be assumed? Even if we assume the government is corrupt by default, surely corruption that uses better technology is better than continuing to use the old technology? Otherwise we'd be continuing to burn coal because we wouldn't want the corrupt gas/solar companies to make money.
Lots of evil out there, apparently.
Here in Texas, electricity is only about $0.11/KWH so heat pumps work out like this:
Heat Pump 5.0 COP : $6.50 per MMBtu Natural Gas : $12 - $15 per MMBtu Propane at $3.00 / gallon : $32 per MMBtu
The unfortunate characteristic of heat pumps is that they become less efficient the more you need them, i.e. cold weather, but if weather is generally above freezing, heat pumps are close to their spec range that is based on 47F outdoor temperature.
A buried heat exchanger or a water well makes it a weather-proof geothermal system- this seems like the ideal; if you also need air conditioning it will make your cooling more efficient too.
But yes, many makers push the crappier old tech models that bail around 50F.
No they don't. Their efficiency is linearly correlated with the ambient temperature. They don't "keep efficiency" nor is there a concept of "efficiency drop". It's just a straight line down.
We have a two-story home half his size, but one minisplit upstairs and one downstairs would be $3-4000 installed, combined, and that's upper or top-end models.
The ones I got would easily handle a house of his size.
(In a more enlightened world, I think that a system with the refrigerant fully contained within the outdoor unit that uses plain water as the heat exchange fluid could make a lot of sense, and this would not change the pipe situation.)
The new heat pump system cost roughly $14,500 and provides heating and cooling via ductwork that was already in place.
There’s no need to subsidize commodity items, there’s plenty of competition to keep prices reasonable barring any massive supply/demand shifts.