Hi folks. We have 40,000 gallon pool here in the SF Bay Area. We swim year round, and the girls really like the pool heated to around 85 degrees. The pool is 20x50, and has a pool cover on it that helps retain heat and is dark enough to heat the surface quite a bit when it's sunny.
We have a lot of solar, but our PGE bill is dominated by gas charges, which can run $600-700 dollars a month. We have a sta-rite 400K BTU gas pool heater, and when I used the calculator on the Pentair site about gas vs electric heat pump comparison, it seems like we could save a lot of money by adding an electric heat pump, even with our extreme prices from PG&E (we pay $0.25/ KWh off-peak, but gas prices are $2.80/Therm).
The goal would be to use electric heat pump to maintain pool temp during electric off-peak hours, and use the gas heater to bring the pool back to temp after we get back from a vacation or to heat the spa. Pentair heat pumps can be connected to the intellicenter system pretty easily, but the intellicenter can control a heat pump using a relay option. The control system for this may be more complicated than what my pool guy can handle, but I am an engineer, and have the pool controlled through Home assistant, and using the poolcontrollernodejs system, I can control things down to the relays pretty easily.
So some questions I'd love to get feedback one:
1) Given my energy prices and situation, does this idea make sense?
2) Is there a better gas vs heat pump calculator available?
3) Has anyone implemented this 2 heater approach before?
4) What heat pump models do folks recommend? The size of the unit would be on the upper end I think to be able to handle keep temps stable, but a scrolling inveter unit like our Mitsubishi heat pumps would be seem to be a good option to deal with both winter and summer environments. The SF Bay Area climite is very mild, so heat mumps work well here.
Thanks!
We have a lot of solar, but our PGE bill is dominated by gas charges, which can run $600-700 dollars a month. We have a sta-rite 400K BTU gas pool heater, and when I used the calculator on the Pentair site about gas vs electric heat pump comparison, it seems like we could save a lot of money by adding an electric heat pump, even with our extreme prices from PG&E (we pay $0.25/ KWh off-peak, but gas prices are $2.80/Therm).
The goal would be to use electric heat pump to maintain pool temp during electric off-peak hours, and use the gas heater to bring the pool back to temp after we get back from a vacation or to heat the spa. Pentair heat pumps can be connected to the intellicenter system pretty easily, but the intellicenter can control a heat pump using a relay option. The control system for this may be more complicated than what my pool guy can handle, but I am an engineer, and have the pool controlled through Home assistant, and using the poolcontrollernodejs system, I can control things down to the relays pretty easily.
So some questions I'd love to get feedback one:
1) Given my energy prices and situation, does this idea make sense?
2) Is there a better gas vs heat pump calculator available?
3) Has anyone implemented this 2 heater approach before?
4) What heat pump models do folks recommend? The size of the unit would be on the upper end I think to be able to handle keep temps stable, but a scrolling inveter unit like our Mitsubishi heat pumps would be seem to be a good option to deal with both winter and summer environments. The SF Bay Area climite is very mild, so heat mumps work well here.
Thanks!