Tag: Air-Source Heat Pumps

Governor Polis Signs into Law Massive Tax Credits for EVs and Home Electrification

A package of new climate-related legislation signed this year by Governor Polis is designed to make it more attractive for Colorado households to ditch fossil fuels.

Many of the discounts are designed to be combined with other incentives, but not all the savings will be available right away.

Here’s a guide to what’s coming and when:

Electric Vehicles: Right now, Colorado has 80,000 registered plug-in hybrids and battery EVs, a long way from the state’s goal of 940,000 EVs on the road by 2030. The new incentives are intended to speed up their adoption through a $5,000 tax credit on the purchase of a battery-electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle with a suggested purchase price of less than $80,000. For cars priced under $35,000, buyers can get an additional $2,500 credit. Any Colorado resident qualifies, beginning on July 1, 2023. After Jan. 1, 2025, the base rebate decreases until it’s phased out in 2029. 

E-bikes: Denver proved the power of e-bike rebates last year. The state is now hoping for similar success. The Colorado Energy Office plans to launch an e-bike rebate program for low- to moderate-income residents this summer but hasn’t detailed the size of the discounts. 

The plan for all Coloradans regardless of income is clearer. Under legislation signed into law this year, the state will offer a $450 discount on e-bikes starting on April 1, 2024 and continuing through 2032. The discount will be applied at the point of sale. 

Electric lawn equipment: Because gas-powered lawnmowers and other lawn equipment is a major source of ozone pollution, the state will institute a 30 percent discount on electric lawnmowers, leaf blowers, trimmers and snowblowers, applied at time of purchase, starting Jan. 1, 2024 and continuing through December 2026.

Heat pumps: Heat pumps for household space heating and water heating, powered by electricity, are seen as key to reducing pollution from natural gas. Colorado currently has a rebate worth 10 percent of the cost of installing heat pump equipment. It was scheduled to expire at the end of this year, but recent legislation extended it through 2024. The same bill also includes new incentives depending on the technology. 

For air-source heat pumps, a resident is eligible for a one-time $1,500 tax credit from 2024 through 2026. After that, it drops to $1,000 until 2029, then to $500 through the end of 2032. 

For ground-source heat pumps, residents are eligible for a $3,000 tax credit from 2024 until 2026. After that, it drops to $2,000 until 2029, then again to $1,000 through the end of 2032. 

For heat pump water heaters, residents can apply for a $500 tax credit from 2024 until 2026. After that, it drops $250 until 2032. 

You can expect vendors of such equipment to be well versed on all these discounts and rebates.

Geothermal Heating and Cooling Can Be Practical and Affordable When Done on a Community Scale

When it comes to “kicking natural gas” and reducing a home’s carbon footprint, geothermal heating & cooling is the “gold standard.” But it’s extremely expensive to implement as a retrofit and still quite expensive on new construction.

My friend, Martin Voelker, a leader with the Colorado Renewable Energy Society, recently replaced his gas forced air heating system with geothermal, and the cost for drilling the 300-foot-deep wells in his backyard was $18,000, which included running the pipes into his house but didn’t include the heat pump itself. Even though such a project would garner a 30% rebate under the Inflation Reduction Act, that’s still a heavy lift for any homeowner.

I know of another home which installed geothermal pipes horizontally in their large backyard at far less cost.

New construction is more affordable, because you can have the wells drilled within the footprint of the future home while it’s still open ground. And if it’s an entire subdivision, such as the Geos Community in Arvada, the cost is reduced because all the wells can be drilled one after the other.

In that scenario, each home still has its own geothermal well, but what if you could drill a geothermal well that was extensive enough to feed multiple heat pumps in multiple buildings?

That was the concept proposed by a group of Harvard students in Ivory Innovation’s annual Hack-A-House competition, for which they won first place in the “Environmental Solutions and Construction Technology” category.

Those Harvard students may have known something the judges didn’t — that Eversource Gas, a Massachusetts utility, had already begun a “networked geothermal” demonstration project 17 miles west in Framingham. That project is featured at www.HEET.org, short for Home Energy Efficiency Team, which in 2017 started promoting the concept of gas utilities delivering 55º water instead of gas to multiple buildings from a grid of geothermal wells. (The above graphic is from their website.) Think of it as a 21st Century version of what Con Edison still does in NYC, which is to deliver steam from its central boilers to local buildings through pipes under Manhattan’s streets. But steam, unlike water, can’t be used in the summer for air conditioning.

A local vendor that I recommend for both geothermal and air source heat pumps is Sensible Heating and Cooling, (720) 876-7166.

How Does Geothermal Work?

Geothermal heating does not require the presence of a thermal feature such as a hot spring. In fact, if you dig down about 10 feet anywhere at our latitude, you’ll find that the soil temperature is about 55ºF year-round. Circulating a fluid through underground piping heats that liquid to 55º so a heat pump can then raise its temperature to 100º or so for heating purposes utilizing either radiant floor heating, baseboards or forced air.

Geothermal is far more efficient than an air-source heat pump system which takes in outdoor air as cold at 10 degrees below zero and works much harder to achieve the desired temperature for heating.

In the summer the 55º fluid from geothermal requires far less energy to be cooled further for air conditioning your home.

What Is a Heat Pump, and How Does It Work?

I came across a website that gives a great description of heat pumps, how they work, and why they are more efficient. Here’s the link for it.

Most Americans are accustomed to heating systems that generate heat using fossil fuels, wood, or electricity. But heat pumps don’t create heat, they move heat. Here’s how the process is explained on that website:

Heat pumps function similarly to refrigerators or air conditioners, which take warm air from one space and send it to another. In the winter, a heat pump transfers heat from the outdoors inside and, in the summer, it reverses this process.

There are two main types of heat pumps, and both can function as space heaters or coolers and as water heaters.

A ground-source (or “geothermal”) heat pump sends a mixture of water, antifreeze, and/or a refrigerant through a network of pipes buried below the frost line. As the liquid passes through the pipes, it absorbs the earth’s approximately 55-degree heat. The liquid is then drawn up into a compressor, which heats it further, creating a vapor. The heat pump then distributes the warm air through ducts or tubes throughout your home. In the summer, the heat pump reverses the process, taking warmth out of the house and transferring it to the earth.

An air-source heat pump extracts heat from the air rather than from the ground. It functions the same way, but because air temperature, unlike earth temperature, can get very cold, it has more work to do bringing up the temperature. As with a ground-source heat pump, a reversing valve inside the heat pump allows the same unit to function as an air conditioner in the summer. At right is an air source heat pump that was retrofitted into a ducted forced air heating/cooling system of one of my current listings in Golden.

Looking for a vendor who specializes in heat pumps? I recommend Sensible Heating & Cooling, 720-876-7166, or Helio Home, Inc., 720-460-1260.