HElGHTS t1_j34g2wz wrote on January 5, 2023 at 11:46 PM

Reply to comment by Cuprunnethover2022 in Are high electricity bills the norm in JC? by PretendSky2322

Since you said "house" and OP said "Newport" I'm going to assume this advice is much more likely to work for you than for OP, although in reality it's more to do with ownership than building type, so if you rent the house then it's not likely to work well for you:

Switch from regular electric heat (the technical term is "resistive" and it converts electricity into heat) to a heat pump (uses refrigeration technology to move existing heat from outside to inside). The electricity required to move existing heat is roughly 1/3 the amount required to create heat.

If you're unfamiliar with the concept, you might be wondering "how can I move heat from a colder place to a warmer place" to which the answer is simply "refrigerators do it, and nobody bats an eye."

pixel_of_moral_decay t1_j34h4x9 wrote on January 5, 2023 at 11:52 PM

That’s a half truth. Heat pumps can be that efficient if large enough.

But most apartments don’t have room for free standing exterior units. A PTAC sleeve is to small to be that efficient. If ultimately comes down to surface area to transfer heat from the air to refrigerant on the coils. Physics is at play here.

And depending on the size, at some point heat pumps given their shorter lifespan don’t even payoff. Compressor lifespan is measured in starts/stops. It’s cheaper to just get AC with resistive heat, one less valve that can fail and a compressor that will only run part of the year.

People forget wear/tear on equipment is also a cost. The fan on either setup runs all the time, but that’s a cheap fast repair.

objectimpermanence t1_j35l44f wrote on January 6, 2023 at 4:37 AM

The person you’re replying to was specifically talking about a house rather than an apartment.

However, heat pump systems do exist in apartment buildings. The high rise I live in has them (the condensers are up on the roof) and I definitely prefer it to PTACs, but this type of setup seems to be rare in JC.

In Asia, lots of high rise apartments have heat pumps, but they typically just mount the condenser units on the facade of the building, which is not aesthetically pleasing but way cheaper to install than how we typically do it in this country.