Energy costs in Augusta? (for sale, house, heat pump)

[mcallidi]

I am moving to Augusta area soon and looking at homes for sale. Which is more economical for heating, electric or gas? Also, how good is a heat pump system year in and year out? Does it really keep the house warm in winters?

[LoeCraw]

Originally Posted by mcallidi

I am moving to Augusta area soon and looking at homes for sale. Which is more economical for heating, electric or gas? Also, how good is a heat pump system year in and year out? Does it really keep the house warm in winters?

I've done some research on this topic before when I was purchasing my house, but I'm definitely not an expert, so take what I'm about to say with a grain of salt.

From what I have read, electric heating via a heat pump is very energy efficient down to a certain temperature. Once the temperature drops to around 40F and below, the heat pump cannot sufficiently extract warm air from the cold air outside, so it has to use a very inefficient heating element (essentially an oven with its door open) to heat the air. Now a lot of this depends on how good of a unit you have. I hear that some of the high quality units can still extract hot air, even with the temperature outside is in the 20s, and thus don't have to use the inefficient auxiliary heat, so the bill is much lower.

I personally have an electric heat pump in my <1 year old house (actually everything is electric). It's probably relatively energy efficient because of the newness, but I'm pretty sure it's a basic unit outside of that. With that said, our highest electric bill was around ~$170 in January, or maybe February, to heat ~1500 square feet. For comparison, our electric bill last month for May was only ~$65, so you can see it's a lot more expensive to heat a house with electricity, but, this past winter was very, very cold, one of the coldest ones on current record. I'm confident that if the winter had been more mild, the bill would have been significantly less.

As far as heating goes, our heat pump did a good job of maintaining heat. We left it on 65F for most of the winter, and would raise it up to 68-70F if we had company over. However, keep in mind that electric heat is "forced air" heat. The temperature of the air coming out of the vents is only slightly warmer than room temperature. You will not feel heat sitting next to the vent. Gas heating is much warmer by comparison.

I hope this helps. If I've given out in any wrong information, please feel free to correct me.