Skeptical of heat pump rebates, now I'm eating crow in Madison

I figured the whole heat pump incentive push was a scam to get me to spend $12k on something that'd die in a Wisconsin winter. Last January, my old furnace hit 22 years and the repair guy quoted $1,800 just to keep it limping. Out of options, I applied for the local utility rebate plus the federal credit, ended up paying about $7,400 out of pocket for a dual-fuel setup. The real shock was the run time: the pump carried us down to 15 degrees before the backup kicked in, and my January electric bill only went up $38 compared to last year's gas costs. What convinced me was reading the Energy Star performance data for my specific model at -5 degrees, it still hit a COP of 1.8, not amazing but way better than I assumed. Has anyone else in a cold climate run one of these past a real polar vortex, or did I just get lucky with a mild season?

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jenny_sullivan9729d ago

Did you track the auxiliary heat run time, or just look at the electric bill? Because that's where I'd bet the real story is. I know two guys in Green Bay who got cold climate units last year and both said the same thing until February hit. One of them had a string of -10 nights and the backup strips ran almost constantly for a week, and his bill was over $200 more than his old gas bill for that month. The COP numbers on paper at -5 are one thing, but in real life when the pump is cycling hard and defrosting every 20 minutes, the math gets ugly fast. You might have gotten a mild season, or your home's heat loss is low enough that the pump keeps up, but I wouldn't call it a win until you've seen a real long cold snap.