Owning a home comes with more costs than just your monthly mortgage payment. You also have to pay for home insurance, maintenance costs, property taxes and utilities. The cost to heat your home makes up a large portion of your utility bill, and if you have an inefficient heating system, staying warm could cost you thousands of dollars per year. Fortunately, there are some highly efficient ways to heat your home, such as using a geothermal heat pump.
Geothermal heat pumps are by far the most efficient way to heat your home, but just how much can you save? Since your potential savings can vary from province to province, let’s look at how much you can save on your monthly heating bill by installing a geothermal heat pump in Nova Scotia:
Save on Heating Costs with a Geothermal Heat Pump in Nova Scotia
As we mentioned above, the potential savings by heating your home with a geothermal heat pump can vary depending on your location, so we enlisted the help of The Water Shed, a heat pump installer in Nova Scotia, to give us a real world example of potential savings Nova Scotia. But first, let’s look at the cost of heating your home with another common heating system, electric baseboards:
The Cost of Heating Your Home with Electric Baseboards
Let’s imagine you have a 1,775 square foot home that is currently heated with electric baseboard heat. Your home requires 150 kWh of heat energy per square meter, per year, for a total of 24,750 kWh of heat energy per year. The electric baseboards are 100% efficient, meaning it takes 1 watt of electricity to produce 1 watt of heat. This might seem very efficient, but it’s not.
To be comfortable in Nova Scotian winters, you’ll need a total electric consumption of 24,750 kWh per year. On top of this, you also need to heat enough water for your family of four people, which will require 5,650 kWh per year. Here is a table showing the approximate cost to heat your home and hot water with electric heat this year:
| Electric Baseboards | Calculation | Total/year |
| Electricity Required x Electric Rate | 24,750 kWh x $0.16 | $3,960 |
| Hot water for 4 people | 5,650 kWh x $0.16 | $904 |
| Total Cost | $3,960 + $904 | $4,864 |
As you can see, if you’re heating your home with an electric baseboard system, the total cost will be approximately $4,864 per year. Next let’s look at how much you can save with a geothermal system.
The Cost of Heating Your Home with a Geothermal Heat Pump in Nova Scotia
Let’s take the same example family of four living in a 1,775 square foot home. They still need 24,750 kWh of heat to comfortably heat their home, but thanks to their efficient geothermal heat pump, they’ll only need a fraction of the electricity to do so. Geothermal heat pumps are about 350% efficient, meaning that for every 1 watt of electricity you use, you get 3.5 watts of heat energy for your home. The remaining heat energy comes from the ground, which is a constant, renewable heat source year-round.
Because of this efficiency, you only need to consume (24,750 kWh/3.5) 7,071 kWh of electricity to get a total of 24,750 kWh of heat energy for your home. Geothermal heat pumps also help you save money by applying their efficiency to your hot water heating. Because the hot water feature is active only a portion of the time, you can expect to save 35% on your hot water heating costs. Here is how much it would cost to heat your home with a geothermal heat pump:
| Geothermal Heat Pump | Calculation | Total/year |
| Electricity Required x Electric Rate | 7,071 kWh x $0.16 | $1,131 |
| Hot water for 4 people, 35% cost saving | 5,650 kWh x 0.65 x $0.16 | $588 |
| Total Cost | $1,131 + $588 | $1,719 |
The total cost to heat your home with a geothermal heat pump in Nova Scotia is $1,719. That means if you switch to geothermal from electric baseboard heat, you’ll save:
$4,864 – $1,719 = $3,145
That’s an impressive 65% savings! By switching to a geothermal heat pump from electric baseboard heating, you could save thousands of dollars per year on your heating costs.
Image Credit: Brendan Wood