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I'd like to switch to as much solar heat and solar electricity as possible.

But with temperatures as low as -40° during the winter I don't think a heat pump with resistive heat as a backup would cut it. I'd like to continue using natural gas (which would he much cheaper than electricity off the grid) or wood for backup heat. But I'd also like to first put that heat, be it wood or gas, to a steam engine to generate electricity when the sun is scarce, and using the waste heat to heat the house.

Of course I've started where it counts the most by adding more insulation and better windows first.
 
I'm a big proponent of heating/cooling the person rather than the house. Next winter we are going to see if a couple of nice battery heated vests will keep us comfortable at a lower overall temperature in the house.
 
SageBrush said:
I'm a big proponent of heating/cooling the person rather than the house. Next winter we are going to see if a couple of nice battery heated vests will keep us comfortable at a lower overall temperature in the house.
Very Very Very true!

I set my thermostat to 40°F for the most part and use a heated mattress pad and a sweater, long underwear, etc. Now I'm spending less than $50 per month on gas in an early 1970's house with less than 1inch of insulation where many of my friends are paying 5 or 6 times that with similar sized homes and much better insulation!
 
IssacZachary said:
SageBrush said:
I'm a big proponent of heating/cooling the person rather than the house. Next winter we are going to see if a couple of nice battery heated vests will keep us comfortable at a lower overall temperature in the house.
Very Very Very true!

I set my thermostat to 40°F for the most part and use a heated mattress pad and a sweater, long underwear, etc. Now I'm spending less than $50 per month on gas in an early 1970's house with less than 1inch of insulation where many of my friends are paying 5 or 6 times that with similar sized homes and much better insulation!

You are hard core! I don't think my thermostat goes anywhere near that low. If we are comfortable at 50-55F I'll be really happy. Sounds like our home might be a bit better built and it does have excellent heating from the windows so the gas heating only becomes a high consumption issue on cloudy days.

We rent, so my options are limited. I'd love to install a double wall and much better windows. And get rid of the miserable NG boiler and radiant heating. Bloody inefficient mess.
 
IssacZachary said:
I set my thermostat to 40°F for the most part and use a heated mattress pad and a sweater, long underwear, etc. Now I'm spending less than $50 per month on gas in an early 1970's house with less than 1inch of insulation where many of my friends are paying 5 or 6 times that with similar sized homes and much better insulation!

That is truly hard core :mrgreen: Our house in the mtns was sometimes 40ish when we had nothing but wood heat and were away all day but once we got propane and a thermostat, it was never that low.

And 1" of insulation? Wow! When we bought our house here in town (built in 77) it had 3 1/2" of fiberglass in the ceiling. I thought that was nuts. We now have about 18" of cellulose up there. We had it blown in during a hot day in the summer and the inside temps dropped about 10 degrees 'instantly'. Huge difference and I'm sure it's repaid the cost multiple times over since.
 
Well half of the house, namely the bathroom and bedrooms, still have 1" fiberglass in the walls and ceiling as well as the entire floor has that too. But I'm working on not only filling up the walls and ceiling and eventually the floor but also I've added another 1 1/2" of foam board sandwiched between the studs/rafters and the drywall. So far I've got the living room and kitchen done. I'm not looking forward to getting in that crawl space to do the floors though.
 
iPlug said:
Zythryn said:
...Heat pump technology for our heating, cooling, domestic hot water and clothes dryer...
Over in PriusChat, I think you mentioned a couple years ago that you got a ventless Whirlpool model? Any issues with the dryer? We have been hoping there would be more competition joining the fray of heat pump dryers, but not really any new players in the last couple of years. When our electric dryer goes, we definitely would like to go heat pump and probably Whirlpool if they remain one of the few games in town.

Zythryn said:
PV with batteries.
Everything running smoothly with the PowerWall batteries? I think you mentioned there were some bugs to work out initially. Really nice to have that buffer/storage.

The dryer is working great! We don’t use it often, pretty much just bedding and towels.

Regarding the PowerWall batteries, while they work, we are still having the same issues. They charge very sporadically, cutting in an out. Charging them takes 2 to 3 times as long.
Discharge is very smooth and the ability to easily change how much is reserved for backup and how much is used when the sun goes down is wonderful.
Better than I expected.

The installer has been in touch with Tesla Energy. The current line of thought is that a wireless connection doesn’t have a solid connection, so they are going to hard wire it.
 
There are some interesting developments in IL with regard to renewable energy mandates. As a result, just received a quote to cover 110% of our energy usage on a 1 year net scale. We'll produce more solar than we need in the summer which can carry over to the winter months where we have less day light.

Quick rounded paper napkin math:
$30k for Panasonic 10kwh production system (25 year warranty) - considered one of the best panel manufacturers
less $10k federal tax credit (30%)
less $15k IL Solar incentives

About 5K for the solar deal after the incentives. This ties into the states goal to jumpstart renewables and with the interconnection agreement to the Utilities allows them to fulfill this quota by subsidizing home owner solar install. Anticipated utility bill will fall from $120/month to $15/month (flat rate interconnection fee).

ROI is about 5 years. Panels are warranted to 25, however typical life span is 40 years. Anticipated property value increases by $30k as well.

We also have LED lights everywhere, a Nest thermostat, some areas of the house with motion sensing light switches and auto timers. Our garage and electrical panels have been upgraded and we also preemptively installed 2 EVSE's in the garage due to available IL benefits a couple years ago. (50% rebate for parts and labor for EVSE install - that included panel upgrades)
 
Phatcat73 said:
There are some interesting developments in IL with regard to renewable energy mandates. As a result, just received a quote to cover 110% of our energy usage on a 1 year net scale. We'll produce more solar than we need in the summer which can carry over to the winter months where we have less day light.

Quick rounded paper napkin math:
$30k for Panasonic 10kwh production system (25 year warranty) - considered one of the best panel manufacturers
less $10k federal tax credit (30%)
less $15k IL Solar incentives
Can I assume the following?

- You meant 110% of your electricity usage on a 1-year net scale.
- You meant a 10-kW system, not 10-kWh.
- You do not heat your home with electricity. (Otherwise, you would almost-certainly need more than a 10-kW system in IL.)

Is the additional production to provide for more EV consumption in the future?
 
Phatcat73 said:
Correct. Model 3 on order and I recently started working from home which I anticipate will use more energy.
Yes, you will use more energy at home, but I suspect you will save more than that amount of energy by foregoing the commute (unless your commute was very short).
 
Actually I'm currently driving a Ford Escape hybrid which will be passed down, while the wife typically drives the Leaf and we share it on the weekends. So we're adding 1 more EV later this year. (waiting on Model 3 AWD info prior to pulling the trigger)
 
Phatcat73 said:
Actually I'm currently driving a Ford Escape hybrid which will be passed down, while the wife typically drives the Leaf and we share it on the weekends. So we're adding 1 more EV later this year. (waiting on Model 3 AWD info prior to pulling the trigger)
Are you trying to say that the Ford Escape hybrid doesn't consume energy when you commuted to work in it?
 
I'm saying that I will be using more electricity by adding another EV to the household. The Escape is a gasser.

Although I work from home I still intend on driving it about 6000 miles/year.
 
RegGuheert said:
...In your case, I certainly wouldn't install a gas furnace, but if you have enough electricity at your panel, you might want to add in a resistive furnace. That way you can have heat if/when the outdoor unit has issues.

Any home air sourced heat pump brands you recommend or suggest to avoid?

This year we might be preemptively replacing our 16 year old central air-conditioner and completely ditching the 16 year old gas furnace as you suggested.

We would consider the most efficient Trane as previously mentioned, but this brand might be among the priciest. The Rheem RP20 series is 20 SEER/11HSPF, so would like to cross shop that as well.
 
iPlug said:
Any home air sourced heat pump brands you recommend or suggest to avoid?

This year we might be preemptively replacing our 16 year old central air-conditioner and completely ditching the 16 year old gas furnace as you suggested.

We would consider the most efficient Trane as previously mentioned, but this brand might be among the priciest. The Rheem RP20 series is 20 SEER/11HSPF, so would like to cross shop that as well.
I'm very happy with the 11+-year-old Trane unit that we have currently. The only problems I have had so far are the following:

1) The dual capacitor in the outdoor unit failed and had to be replaced. (It cost me about $25.)
2) A 5A automotive-style fuse blows when the batteries in the thermostat get low. That one only cost me a few fuses, but it took quite a bit of time to figure out what was going on.

OTOH, I hated the York unit that was replaced by the Trane.
 
RegGuheert said:
I'm very happy with the 11+-year-old Trane unit that we have currently. The only problems I have had so far are the following:

1) The dual capacitor in the outdoor unit failed and had to be replaced. (It cost me about $25.)
2) A 5A automotive-style fuse blows when the batteries in the thermostat get low. That one only cost me a few fuses, but it took quite a bit of time to figure out what was going on.

OTOH, I hated the York unit that was replaced by the Trane.

Thanks,

We're working on getting a few quotes over the next couple of weeks. One installer who does Trane just wrote back "...Attached is the proposal that is our best effort at getting to what you asked for. We no longer install the Trane XV20i, due to equipment performance on previous installs. We can install the XL18i..."

So looks like others have had good results with your unit, but pushing the envelope further into a higher efficiency Trane sounds like might be an issue.

Over the next few weeks we will try to price out:

Lennox XP25 (SEER 23.5, HSPF 10.2)
Rheem RP20 (SEER 20, HSPF 11)
Carrier Infinity 20 Greenspeed (SEER 20.5, HSPF 13)
 
We're scheduled to replace our old AC and gas furnace with a Carrier Infinity 20 Greenspeed (SEER 20.5, HSPF 13) air sourced heat pump in two weeks.

A Costco affiliated company was set to install a Lennox XP25 (SEER 23.5, HSPF 10.2) unit and upgrade us to a variable speed pool pump later this week, but they deployed some bait and switch tactics with the pool pump, so we had to cancel that install.
 
My Carrier AC unit died two weeks after the warranty period and the manufacturer refused any assistance. I won't buy from them again.
 
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