Three more Juneau Carbon Offset Fund lower income family home heat pump installations are eliminating oil use! The latest batch of JCOF heat pumps is eliminating oil at a valley home near the airport, a valley home near Rotary Park, and our third trailer home in the Thunder Mountain Park. Roughly 1200 annual gallons of heating oil will be eliminated every year from these three homes. And, each home will save hundreds of dollars, if not much more, in annual heating bills!
What does 1200 gallons look like??
The water tank and fish tank are actually 1200 gallons. This pool is much bigger! A pool 3′ deep and 8′ wide holds a bit over 1200 gallons. In short, 1200 gallons is a lot!
About those cost savings…it can be a bit confusing, or maybe misleading. If you’ve just installed a heat pump over the past few months, you probably have noticed a large bump in your electrical bill and it may have you questioning your potential savings. A heat pump uses electricity and electricity is billed every month. Your oil bill only arrived every 2, 3, or 6 months. You’d pay it and move on, slowly forgetting about the $1200, $1500, or even greater expense of high-priced heating oil. Electric bills are more in your face, arriving every month, making it seem as if you are paying more. Trust me, you are not! It is best to average your monthly electric bills across an entire heating year in order to be accurate, especially if you’re comparing your new heating bills to earlier ones.
The colder the weather, the harder your heat pump has to work. Their efficiency drops in line with the outdoor temperature. Luckily, as far as heating is concerned, deep cold snaps are not all that frequent here in Juneau. While these chilly periods will require more electricity, temps like we have been having recently, in the 30s, allow your heat pump to purr along and gently sip on the electric juice. I monitor my pump’s electrical draw with a SENSE monitor. I can scroll back in the SENSE app and see every day’s power consumption. Doing so tells me that for January, my heat pump has used about 22 kWh per day on average. We pay 12 cents per kWh so my daily average heating expense has been just a bit under $3 a day. 1650 sq ft of home. Not bad at all. Last year’s total? $550! A whopping $1.50 per day. That’s equivalent to around 1/3 of a gallon of heating oil. Days in the 30’s used to see about 1.5 gallons of oil through my Monitor stove, $8.00 at today’s prices!
The moral of the story? Heat pumps save money.
And now, with the IRA federal heat pump tax credit, you can see up to a $2,000 deduction on your tax return liability if you install a heat pump in your home or business. Get the full scoop on all the possible tax credits savings over at the Alaska Heat Smart IRA FAQ page!