A California Program Is Bringing Down the Cost of Heat Pumps by Buying Bulk

Heat pumps are probably vastly under-installed in the southern part of the US because natural gas has been cheap and plentiful. If you live where natural gas isn't available your fuel option is propane. Propane tracks the price of gasoline, perhaps slightly lower in my experience.

Here in Texas, electricity is only about $0.11/KWH so heat pumps work out like this:

Heat Pump 5.0 COP : $6.50 per MMBtu Natural Gas : $12 - $15 per MMBtu Propane at $3.00 / gallon : $32 per MMBtu

The unfortunate characteristic of heat pumps is that they become less efficient the more you need them, i.e. cold weather, but if weather is generally above freezing, heat pumps are close to their spec range that is based on 47F outdoor temperature.

A buried heat exchanger or a water well makes it a weather-proof geothermal system- this seems like the ideal; if you also need air conditioning it will make your cooling more efficient too.

I'm always amazed at how much these costs in the US. Wild prices even for a Norwegian.

We have a two-story home half his size, but one minisplit upstairs and one downstairs would be $3-4000 installed, combined, and that's upper or top-end models.

The ones I got would easily handle a house of his size.

a bit rich since california is probabaly a major reason the systems are expensive to begin with.

Why can't we do this for lumber. And drywall. And plumbing. And wires.