Air Conditioning the Winter

I like the slogan Electrify Everything.

The idea is to replace things that make direct use of fossil fuels (like gas-powered cars and natural gas heating) with their electric equivalents. Then you can work to make your electricity as clean as possible. I have an electric car, an electric lawn-mower, an electric induction stove top, and recently we bought two new heat pumps to keep the house warm. The natural gas furnace is still in place in the basement, but I’m hoping we won’t need it. Winter is upon us, so we’ll soon find out.

I was raking leaves this afternoon. It was a cool day, and I happened stroll past my new heat pump. I felt a gust of icy air coming out of the machine. Now I’m used to air conditioners dumping heat outside on a summer day, but since I have less direct experience with heat pumps, this caught me by surprise. But of course, by moving heat from outside to inside, my heat pump was reversing the summer scenario. It was effectively acting as an air conditioner for the world. On a cold day, it was exporting coldness. Selling ice to Eskimos. Sort of like propping open the door in the summertime, only it’s not summer. It amused me to think that I was air-conditioning the winter.

The last thing I have to electrify at this point is the water heater. Heat pumps are stepping up to that challenge to, so maybe there’s one more heat pump in my future. Then I need to get going with the solar panels.