I live in MA and heat my whole house with a heat pump. It works fine. I have an electric strip for backup.
My house (and heat pump) are five years old. The newer ones are better; Lennox's new model can work in Upstate New York without a backup heat source: https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-announces-breakthrough-r...
(I will admit that I have a gas stove in my basement to handle power outages, a gas stove, and a gas grill. I will also admit that I really, really regret installing a gas stove and will switch to an induction stove when it's time to replace the stove.)
Why?
We HAVE to run the fan when we turn on the stove or oven. That's not the case with electric / induction.
Given your concerns, I wouldn’t cook using electric/induction without the fan on either.
Not true, heat pumps are widely used as primary heat sources in environments as cold or colder than NY, like in Montreal and other parts of Canada. The take that heat pump tech only works in very moderate temperatures is stale at this point.
1. Ground source heat pump -- which can work pretty much anywhere people live, but costs a lot more and people don't necessarily know about them.
2. Failover to resistive heating when it gets too cold outside. It's fine to do this in Montreal, because electricity is relatively inexpensive there. It's fine to do this in New York City, or even somewhere a little cooler like Boston, because you're doing it for max like 2 days a year even in an outlier year. Not sure if it's fine to do this in Buffalo.
As the owner of a 5 year old heat pump in a milder climate in Indiana, I can tell you this:
* When it is under 10°F, my heat pump switches to emergency heat... forced air electric and is very expensive to run. * Often the temperature swings are pretty wild... 40-50 degrees and that also can force emergency heat.
Oh, and since the electric company is usually using gas to generate the electricity, isn't the environmental impact somewhat of a wash?
Interesting reading: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-least-dependen...
However you need to look more at the average scenario to draw a complete picture. When your heat pump isn't in emergency heating then it's more efficient to burn the gas for electricity to power that heat pump than it is to burn the gas for heat (moving heat is substantially cheaper than making heat). So how often is your heat pump in regular heating vs. emergency heat? And then is it in emergency heating often enough to justify having a secondary piece of infrastructure to get gas to your house where you then also need a gas furnace which is more expensive than some resistive heat strips are?
This is something that can be improved.
I mean cities do not work because "what if everybody decides to leave at the same time -and I mean everybody".
"What if its really hot and everybody turns on their aircon at the same time"
Gas heating is inefficient when compared to heat pumps and gas stoves are extremely inefficient when compared to say an induction stove. It simply will not make sense to install them very soon. A heat-pump is really just an air-conditioner with very few extra bits stuck on so houses might have everything in place already. And the grid isn't collapsing because of that.
As for the ban - there might be market forces at play that would make gas real cheap for a time - this would lead to an inclusion in practically all new buildings. But it fairly certain that after that gas will get expensive and supplying it at the individual building level might get less reliable. This will cause a liability because the state will probably be called to fiance the mitigation of that.
Actually I think this will happen regardless. So the ban is simply a way to prevent it getting more costly than it already will be.
Induction is fantastic and even superior to gas in some ways (even faster for boiling water, for example). While some may still prefer gas, given that induction gives instant power and is more powerful, I have a hard time believing that it results in a "large cost to lifestyle".
Besides, gas stoves actually cause a significant amount of indoor air pollution, which may be more relevant than the climate change impact. They are quite literally bad for you: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/have-a-gas-stove-how-to-...
> Children living in households that use gas stoves for cooking are 42% more likely to have asthma
At this point, you should just assume that anything you see with the words "observational research" is wrong. it used to be a sort of questionable research that people mostly ignored or used for hypothesis generation, but now that political teams are picking up the mantle of "science" to justify whatever they want to do anyway, these kinds of bad papers get spread widely with little critical analysis.
Someone else posted this link up-thread, and I think it's a reasonable summary of the current data:
https://peterattiamd.com/putting-out-the-fire-on-the-gas-sto...
Induction is a far better choice for residential use.
gas ranges: $949, $848, $676. boujee model is $1199
induction ranges: $1198 starting, $4138, $1848, $1598, $2498
plus i can't use my nice copper diffuser with them :(
nah, imma stick to gas :)
By stove I mean the cooktop and oven in one package. That is what my house needs so I haven't looked at the other options.
This is the more common arrangement where I am and the price difference are much smaller.
Dunno what kind of pricing y'all have on that side of the Atlantic.
For the obvious reason that it’s much cheaper.
Ban cooking gas as well, and they save a ton of money running gas pipes, and utility companies having to maintain that gas pipe.
Also, “serious cooks” can still use their gas stoves. They just need to hook it up to a cylinder like most of the world manages just fine, but apparently the people in the richest country in the world can’t figure out.
Scandinavia here. Heat pumps work just fine down to -20C
Regarding heat pumps phasing out gas heat, in NY it isn’t feasible. It gets too cold. In more temperate climates, sure, but in the northern US and further, there will be a need for on-demand heat for a long time to come. The heat pump is being oversold as the answer to everything, but there are use cases it doesn’t account for.
The path forward to carbon neutrality is electrification. Electrify new construction, use steam to heat them, etc. Something which addresses heat will dwarf any of the benefits from coming after people’s stovetops, at a fraction of the lifestyle cost.
It almost feels like this is something designed to turn heads; a political act focused on banning something quite popular, that everyone knows about, for very marginal benefit. It’s almost certainly not to help with “climate change”; if it were, the legislation would target non-negligible emissions sources.