BrianW

If I remember correctly you do snow removal. Do snow removal companies take a massive hit as there has been very little snow? Down here in CT there are front end loaders parked all over in parking lots that have not moved all winter. On a good note it looks like natural gas and heating oil have been plummeting in price.

3.5 here in Branford right on the shoreline. Quite the surge in temps earlier...

Getting smoked here as the last band moves through.

What a band just south of here on the sound...

Temperature just jumped 7 degrees from 22 to 29. Still moderate snow here.

Radar looks terrible. The heavy stuff seems to be south? Is it going to fill in?

95 is a mess already.

Its crazy down here along the CT shoreline. Most trees are budding and stuff is sprouting all over. I saw a bunch of dandelions today. Neighbor's were mowing their lawns on Sunday. My herb garden on my deck came back to life.

I just noticed the Vermont resorts are advertising like crazy on billboards along 95 in CT. I am pretty sure I drove by one that literally just said "We have snow in VT". Talking to people here many have the mindset that if there is now snow here there is none up there.

Just got a snow squall warning on my phone for Fairfield County Connecticut. Driving right into it on 95.

My maple trees have green buds on them and stuff is popping up in my flower beds down here on the CT coast..

Looks like the CT shoreline east of HVN might get in on this first band.

Down here on the CT shoreline my maple trees are budding and I got stuff sprouting in my flowerbeds...

Some interesting info on how their forecasts and data compares to the NWS.

Looks like IBM bought weather underground? The new ap is way better than the old version. The new temp map with the color is really cool.

How old is the house? Sounds like you have a well insulated newer house to have that fuel consumption. My sister is building a brand new house in Boston. The house is crazy insulated and airtight. The heating and cooling loss numbers were insane. Its going to cost practically nothing to heat and cool when I looked over the plans. Might have been much older mini splits. The stuff coming out in the last year or two are probably twice as efficient. The technology is rapidly advancing and getting more efficientl. I ran some numbers for Taunton MA. It looks like you have municipal power and pay significantly less than the rest of MA so your savings are pretty massive. At Taunton MA electric rates of .14 a kwh and the mass.gov posted average propane price of 2.92, here is what a million btus of heat would cost you. Heat pump- $9.33 Propane- $35.52 For others in MA here are the state wide average prices taken from the mass.gov website for comparision. Heat pump at .22kwh. $14.67 Heating oil $27.45 Propane- $35.52 Natural gas- $26.83 Natural gas is not cheap as cheap as it once was in New England and prices have doubled since the beginning of the year. There is not enough pipeline supply and a huge demand from gas power plants that prices have been high.

Maine is aggressively deploying heat pumps and has incentives for them. Here is an interesting article on it. Didn't realize they had soo many installed. I also attached a performance graph of how newer units can achieve some impressive cold weather performance. My unit can put out its full rated heat all the way to almost -20 before capacity drops. Maine is the most heating-oil-dependent state in the country. More than 60 percent of the state’s 550,000 households rely on heating oil as their primary energy source for heat. But because a little more than half of the electricity generated in Maine already comes from zero-carbon hydropower and wind power — and legislation signed yesterday sets a 100 percent renewable electricity target for 2050 — a rapid shift to electric heat could deliver significant emissions reductions. It should also save households and businesses money. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.greentechmedia.com/amp/article/maine-wants-to-install-100000-heat-pumps-by-2025

An Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) will typically produce around 4kW thermal energy for every 1kW of electrical energy consumed, giving an effective “efficiency” of 400%. It is thermodynamically impossible to have an efficiency of more than 100%, as this implies that more energy is being produced than is being put in. For this reason the performance is expressed as a Coefficient of Performance (COP) rather than an efficiency. The above example would be expressed as having a COP of 4. The reason that it appears that more energy is being produced than is consumed, is because the only “valuable” energy input is electricity used to drive the compressor and circulating pumps. The remainder of the energy simply transferred from a heat source that would otherwise not be used (such as the ambient air, ground or a river) so is not considered as an energy input.

How is that 380% efficiency measured? Google coefficient of performance. Here is a real fuel cost comparison calculator I use. I I inputed some real New England numbers so its pretty accurate.

I installed one at my Moms and the payback was like a few months from switching from burning a gallon or 2 a day in heating oil. Most oil hot water boilers cycle all day and the stanbdy losses are massive. If you havent got one yet I recommend you get the energy audit done as well. They install insulation, air sealed my ducts, installed weather striping, led bulbs, etc. There is a surcharge for energy efficiency on everyones electric bill that pays for all this stuff but nobody uses it. I am probably close to like 8k in free energy efficient upgrades I did through energize CT on my house. Those in Massachusetts have some of the nations best incentives/rebates available as well.

The tanks are like $1000-1200 but 6 years ago Eversource had a 1000$ rebate on them. I installed it myself so it cost me out of pocket like $300 or so. They are basically a dehumidifier as well so if you run one it eliminates needing to run one. Looks like the rebate is still available and is $750 so you can basically get one as the same cost as a regular electric tank. I monitored mine with an electric meter and it cost about 7-10$ a month to run. If you use oil for hot water your savings will be astronomical. In heat pump only mode they ise about 50-75 percent less electricity than a regular electric tank. https://www.energizect.com/your-home/solutions-list/energy-star®-heat-pump-water-heater-rebate