> Heat pumps can be installed with backup heating as I understand it.

Then, what's the point? If you still have to have gas lines and infra, just use the gas. It's vastly cheaper.

> Then, what's the point? If you still have to have gas lines and infra, just use the gas. It's vastly cheaper.

A) Not everywhere

B) Heat pumps can be powered with solar, reducing costs even if your gas would normally be cheaper

C) Some people are willing to spend a little more if it helps push electrification forward, for environmental reasons

> Some people are willing to spend a little more if it helps push electrification forward, for environmental reasons

It's not a little more though, that was the point. In my area, California, it's about 4x more. Gas here is so cheap, it's almost free.

Anecdotally, I don't know anyone who's opted into the "green energy" plans offered by the area's utility providers - because they all cost a lot more than regular.

People talk a lot - but their bank account dictates their actual decision making. Running a heatpump seems very expensive for a lot of the country, with negligible gains.

Natural Gas isn't exactly what we would call "dirty"... seems like a min-max issue, with people forgetting there's still areas burning coil and oil for electricity production.

> Heat pumps can be powered with solar

Not in the dead of winter you can't... not everyone lives in big cities folks, and where it snows, it gets quite cold.

Lots of places are looking into phasing out natural gas though. California gives you rebates for heat pump water heaters and there's plenty of discouragement to block new gas appliances and hookups.

There will be a feedback loop once that really starts: individual prices go up because infrastructure costs remain the same. Once natural gas prices go up, people will switch to more efficient appliances, or switch to electricity. Forcing prices to go up some more to make up for infrastructure costs.

At some point running a heatpump will be cheaper than maintaining a natural gas hookup in your house. And that will just make it more expensive for everyone else until they do the same.

I tend to need heat when the sun isn't warming everything up.

D) Carries the risk of killing you with CO.

> Then, what's the point?

Minimizing your gas use?

That depends on the temperature difference. For smaller differences, heat pumps are much more efficient, but at some level they lose efficiency and gas is cheaper.

> That's an extreme situation

Depends on where you live

Its 48C down to -10C here. Some years get down to -18, but not enough to build for it. That extra 8C has a qualitative difference to the steps that need to be taken for people and structures. The problem this year has been high humidity at that high end, much more than normal. When you have over 40% relative humidity and its over 45C it makes air conditioners work extra hard due the specific heat of the water vapor they are cooling. There were some dessication technologies being talked about last year that would really help as they operated prior to cooling the air but I haven't seen them rolled out yet. I've heard anecdotes about EVs refusing to operate due to battery safety, and public transit shutting down due to insufficient cooling capacity.

It's an extreme climate that ever reaches -40.

A vanishingly tiny percentage of the world population lives somewhere that regularly reaches -40°.

Fahrenheit or Celsius?

-40 is the one value where Fahrenheit and Celsius line up exactly.

Yes.

It doesn't matter.

You also get "hybrid" heatpumps that work alongside other sources of heat.