Switching to heat pumps could save one in five US homes over $20B/year. (RMI)
That averages out to around $1,500 in annual savings for single-family households with electric resistance heating, according to RMI’s Green Upgrade Calculator, reaching nearly $23K over a heat pump’s 15-year lifetime. The region with the biggest per-household wins? The Northeast, where heating demand and electricity prices are lofty.
The grid benefit: Upgrading these homes could shave 51 GW off winter peak demand (and 11 GW in summer) nationally. Texas alone would cut 7.5 GW in winter—roughly 25 gas peakers’ worth of headroom.Â
The hold-up? Each year, around 700K electric resistance systems are still installed in new builds and retrofits, locking in decades of inefficiency. To ramp up heat pump adoption, RMI says states need to update their building codes.