Be the change that you want to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi

Our 30 solar panels (minus the trees shadowing them), the 2022 Ioniq 5, and the 2016 Nissan LEAF

This is truly the year it has all come together after four years of working to make our green dreams a reality. We’ve reduced our carbon footprint 41% since 2018 and are now close to our 50% goal. We are finally driving only electric vehicles, which are so fun to drive! They are fast, comfortable, good in the snow and have lots of cargo space. We are thankful we don’t have to pay for gas, given the current prices. The EV’s are like big cell phones that we simply plug in to the charger in our garage, which is part of our solar panel inverter. They make the biggest difference in reducing our carbon footprint. We have produced enough electricity with our solar panels to power our home and two EV’s, while reducing our use of natural gas by 49%. We live comfortably, keeping our indoor temperature around 70 degrees in the winter (in the rooms we use) and 77 degrees in the summer. This is aided by zone heating in winter and we will add zone A/C to our bedroom in the summer of 2023. Our heat pump water heater and hybrid heating and A/C (HVAC) systems work on programmable thermostats, similar to our old systems. But they use a lot less natural gas and are more efficient because they move heat instead of creating it–what a brilliant idea! It has been fascinating and fun to experience these new, green technologies, which work more efficiently and emit far less carbon than what we were doing before. The extra bonus is that these changes have already paid for themselves and then some! We anticipate our savings to be about $5,000 per year, which will save us $100,000 over the next 20 years that we plan to live here! AMAZING!

We took some leaps forward this year in our quest to reduce our carbon footprint and live in a greener home. We traded our Toyota Highlander Hybrid for a Hyundai Ioniq 5 and became an all EV household! We also love knowing that when we drive, we are emitting zero emissions into the atmosphere. We’ve done some longer road trips in the Ioniq and have found it works the same for us as a gas fueled vehicle, because we like to stop and walk every 150 miles anyway. By the time we’re done stretching our legs, our baby is juiced up and ready to roll! If you want to know more about driving EV’s, see this theme in my blog: https://rhondaashurst.com/category/driving-electric-cars/. The other goal we achieved was adding a hybrid HVAC system. This system moves warm air from outside into our home in winter and out in summer. When it needs backup (temps below 40 degrees) it uses our high efficiency natural gas furnace in the winter. This system has further reduced our use of natural gas. To learn more about it, read this post: https://rhondaashurst.com/2023/03/03/our-new-hybrid-split-heat-pump-system/.

We were shocked to see that we are already beyond the breakeven point after only four years! I had neglected to add the increase in our home value due to these green improvements, even though I’d talked about it in the first year’s blog post. Studies are now showing that green homes sell for more and faster than other homes, because buyers want to live more sustainably and they know they are purchasing a valuable stream of savings (about $5,000 per year in our case). I added a modest 6% to the value of our home and I feel confident we could get that if we sold. But we are planning to stay for another 20+ years, so I thought it would be fun to look at how much we might save over that time and was shocked to find out it would be $100,000! We will likely save even more given the way energy and gasoline prices are going up. With this kind of savings, it would be worth taking out a home improvement loan and then paying it back out of the savings, especially with the new tax breaks and incentives.

How We Did It

I always say it’s like eating potato chips, once you get started it’s hard to stop! We began by adding 22 solar panels in early 2019 to take advantage of our big south-facing roof. In 2019, we also bought a hybrid Toyota Highlander and a Nissan LEAF. We learned quickly that the cars saved the most money and carbon.

In 2020 we added an EdenPURE high efficiency zone heater and another smaller electric heater in our bedroom. Between these heaters and our Lopi natural gas stove, we reduced our gas use by around 20%!

In 2021, we shifted our main focus to reducing our carbon footprint. We added 8 more solar panels (for a total of 30), cut down some trees that were shading the panels, and added a heat pump water heater. Our panels produce about 18 megawatts of electricity per year! The heat pump water heater made a huge difference. As of this writing, the heat pump saved another 40% of gas use over what we used in 2020!

In 2022, we added a heat pump HVAC system and traded the Highlander for a Hyundai Ioniq 5, going all EV at last! Again, it was the EV that made the biggest difference in saving both carbon and money. This time we splurged on a new EV. It has all the latest features and is a blast to drive! Our strategy has been to buy one lower-end, old technology EV (the 2016 Nissan LEAF) and one higher-end, new technology EV (the 2022 Hyundai Ioniq 5). We use the LEAF for our in-town driving and the Ioniq for road trips. This combo works great and between the two, they cost only $13,700 more than their comparable ICE’s. I estimate they will save us $3,500/year to drive over those ICE’s, so will pay for themselves in four years. We don’t yet have enough data to know how well our heat pump HVAC is doing; we hope to have a good idea by summer.

In 2023, we plan to add a mini-split heat pump to our bedroom for zone cooling (and perhaps some heating). We’d like to keep our room cooler for sleeping in the summer, but leave the rest of the house in the 80’s. We’re hoping with this change, we will reduce our use of electricity and hopefully be able to generate all our required electricity off our panels. Plus, it’ll give us a chance to try out a mini-split! We’re curious about how it operates vs. our ducted heat pump HVAC.

In our case, this has been a long-term project where we look at the synergy between all the systems. They work together to save more money and carbon than they would by themselves. We are also lucky to live in NV with tons of sun and a big south-facing roof. Our house has extra insulation, double pane windows, and an attic fan which helps hold the temperature inside. Over time we have also switched to LED lighting; it especially helped to change out our old outdoor Christmas lights to LED’s.

For more details, see the blog posts from each year under this theme: https://rhondaashurst.com/category/going-solar/.

Thinking About Trying It Yourself?

We’d recommend you start with solar panels and increasing the efficiency of your home (insulation, windows, sealing cracks, attic fan, etc). The next thing to add would be an EV or two, as they will save you the most money and carbon. After that, the heat pump water heater is a great gas saver and super efficient. If you have electricity left over, then think about heat pump HVAC.

If you don’t have solar panels, electricity is more expensive than natural gas, but not as expensive as gasoline. So, an EV can be worth it, but the other systems might not be. If your electrical grid is mostly powered by fossil fuels (which most are), you are still burning carbon to run the systems. In many states, you can purchase renewable energy from your power company or you can buy “green tags”, see this site for more information: https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/articles/easy-way-use-renewables-buy-clean-electricity

Summary of 2022

This table has more detail on savings of both carbon and money, plus more cost detail. It also shows the history of the changes we’ve made since 2018 and how it builds over time.

Bottom Line: We’ve saved 52 tons of carbon from entering our atmosphere, while saving money (past breakeven after 4 years), increasing the value of our home and enjoying the pleasure of driving really fun EV’s!

NOTE: The heat pump systems were purchased at wholesale and installed by Scott, his brother and friends. This significantly reduced our costs. In the table, we are only looking at the additional costs of replacing our old units with heat pumps vs. older technology.

THE DATA FOR MY FELLOW NERDS:

The Quest to Reduce Our Carbon Footprint

Last year we began a new quest to reduce out carbon footprint. We are excited to see that we have reduced our carbon footprint by 41% since 2018! This year we used a new, more accurate carbon calculator on the Nature Conservancy’s site. Here’s the link if you want to try it yourself: https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/carbon-footprint-calculator/. This calculator uses US data, while last year’s used UK data. It is best if you use a calculator that is based on your country’s carbon data.

According to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, we have a limited time to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions before we reach a point of no return. They are asking us to cut our emissions 50% by 2030. When all of us do what we can, we create a tidal wave of change! What we have learned during this journey is that we can drastically reduce our carbon footprint without sacrificing a comfortable, modern lifestyle. There are great technologies out there to help like solar panels, electric vehicles, and heat pump systems which allow us to cut our emissions significantly. It is actually not that difficult to replace old systems with these technologies and it makes such a difference. It’s also easy to install these more efficient systems in newer homes. In Nevada we are lucky to have this amazing sun and a net metering power company that allows us to bank and use our excess solar energy. Did you know that the biggest part of our carbon footprint comes from the energy we use in our homes and vehicles?

Electricity Production and Accumulated Credits

Our Online SolarEdge Panel. Click to see what we are producing with our rooftop solar array!

Our gratitude to Travis and the guys at Great Basin Solar (https://www.greatbasinsolar.com/) for the awesome job they did designing and installing our system.

We produced 17.9 megawatts, 4.7 megawatts more than last year! We were thrilled to see what a difference it made to install 8 new panels in 2021 and take out the trees that had been shading some of the panels. We are hopeful that we can now produce enough electricity to power our EV’s and our home with the addition of the heat pump systems.

Our banked power with NV Energy went from 2.0 to 2.2 megawatts, so we have a little extra going into 2023. Both electricity and gas prices went up significantly in 2022, so we are now using our banked credits at a higher rate. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out next year…

Because of the increase in utility bills, we added 20% to our previous annual charges to account for inflation. With the reduction in our use of natural gas, we saved a $950.47 on our utility bills this year!

These are the graphs from our SolarEdge inverter showing the production of electricity off our roof. You can see that our lowest production months are November-February, which is when we are using the electric zone heaters and running Christmas lights. It’s during these months that we tap into our banked power with NV Energy. In the higher production months, we send more power into the grid, which is used by other households and increases our banked power.

THE EV’s

This table shows the miles we drove in our EV’s (about 5.5 months in the Ioniq), the electricity we used and the miles per kWh. It’s interesting that we get about the same mileage on both our EV’s. If we had to pay for this electricity, it would have only cost $287 to power them. The next two tables show what it would have cost to drive the comparable gas cars–about $2100! The gas prices went up from an average of $4/gallon in 2021 to over $5/gallon in 2022. This really increased our savings in 2022, plus driving a second EV.

We were shocked when we asked our Nissan Tech how much it would have cost to do the 45,000 mile service on a Juke and he said an additional over $800! Ouch! We are definitely at the stage with our LEAF where there are big savings in the repairs and maintenance. The LEAF has become Scott’s ride (it’s amazing what he can fit in that car!). At over 45,000 miles and 7 years old, it still has a range of 85 miles when charged to 100%. This is only a loss of 25 miles or about 23% of what it could do originally. We are down to 7 out of 10 bars on our battery. The LEAF still has plenty of range for around town trips and has had no major mechanical or electrical issues.

The Ioniq is my ride and I LOVE her! Most awesome car I’ve ever driven! (You can read more in the Driving EV’s theme.) She is our road car, so we anticipate we will put more miles on her than our LEAF. So far road tripping has been comfortable and easy. We’ve been able to find chargers whenever we need them. We get two free years from Hyundai at Electrify America, so for now our charging on the road is free! The other thing we love about Electrify America is their power comes from renewable sources. It will be interesting to see how much we save driving the Ioniq for a whole year. We got her in July 2022, so this is only a little over 5 months of driving.

We said farewell to our Highlander when we traded her for the Ioniq in July. It was an awesome car when we needed a V-6 to tow Pearl. In July we also sold Pearl, our cute little teardrop trailer. If you’re in the market for a large SUV hybrid, the Highlander is a great choice and saved us a lot of money over our old 4-Runner. The above table shows the $800 we saved driving the Highlander for 1/2 a year.

EV’s powered by solar are one of the best ways to reduce both your transportation cost and carbon footprint. We recommend get solar and get EV’s–it’s worth it! If you don’t feel comfortable going all EV, plug-in hybrids are a next best choice, followed by regular hybrids. All these vehicles will save you money, while helping the environment. EV’s and plug-in hybrids assembled mostly in the USA are eligible for a $7,500 tax rebate when purchased new. Used EV’s can qualify for up to $4,000 in tax rebates as well. We like having one newer model and one older, used model. These cars cost $13,700 over their comparable gas cars. I estimate they will save us $3,500/year in gas and R&M. So we’d break even on the extra expense of buying the EV’s in 4 years.

If you made it this far, I’m impressed! Stay tuned for updates on driving EV’s, life with heat pumps, and the next adventure of installing and using a mini-split. See if we can actually meet all of our electricity needs off our roof. Yesterday I learned that Tesla is opening up its supercharging network to those of us who don’t own Teslas. We’re looking forward to trying that out and will let you know how it goes!

NOTE: This blog has been updated as of May, 2025 to reflect what we have learned since we installed this system in June, 2022. Changes are noted in red.

After months of trying, we were finally able to get a Trane Heat Pump! Jimmy, Scott’s brother, is an HVAC guy and was able to get one for us wholesale.

Our old A/C had been in use for 22 years and it was time to replace it. Jimmy and Scott had installed the Bryant high efficiency natural gas furnace in 2009 with the ability to support a heat pump, called a Hybrid Heat Split System. We were waiting until we had enough solar panels to power it, which happened in September 2021. Then we had to wait for the supply chain kinks to work out in order to secure a unit, which we got in winter 2022. Jimmy and Scott installed it in May and we used it for the first time in June 2022. As of this writing, we have been using the system for 8 months.

What is a Heat Pump?

A heat pump works differently than a conventional heat and A/C (HVAC) system. Instead of making hot air, it moves hot air–a brilliant idea that makes very efficient use of the electricity used to power the unit. It looks like this:

In winter a heat pump moves warm air into your home and pulls cold air out; in summer the process reverses and warm air is pulled out while cool air moves in. The basic idea is that heat is attracted to cold, so the coolant in the system collects heat and then transfers it in or out depending on the season.

Then What is a Hybrid Heat Split System?

Unless you live in a moderate climate, a heat pump isn’t enough to provide all your heating needs. In the winter, it is usually backed up by a natural gas furnace in colder climates like ours here in Reno. We have set our thermostat to use the Bryant gas furnace when temperatures outside are lower than 40 degrees F. We tried setting it to 35 initially, but found out that was a very inefficient use of electricity after we used all our banked electricity and got a $200 power bill! It turns out that the heat pump has to work very hard to extract heat at temps below 40 and it uses too much electricity, so it’s best to use the gas furnace instead. NOTE: We have a ducted system which is less efficient than a ductless (mini-split) system.

During the warmer afternoons of winter and the shoulder seasons of fall and spring, the heat pump can take over heating our home.

NOTE: Prior to installing the heat pump, we were using a zone heating system which included an EdenPURE infrared copper heater, a Lopi natural gas stove and a Dyson electric heater. We were only using our gas furnace to take the night chill off and when temperatures were too cold for the other systems to keep up. We have experimented with using a mix of these systems over the last 3 years-see below for how we heat our home now. Spoiler Alert: we don’t use the heat pump system very much anymore.

What It Cost

Wholesale Cost of Trane 5-ton Heat Pump $5,317

Cost to run new line set, add new coil, and change refrigerant $2,000

Honeywell Thermostat $268

Trane Tech to Check System Function $284

Total Cost $7,869

Less Federal Tax Rebate: $200

Net Cost $7,659

Compare this to the cost of replacing our old A/C with a new one:

Cost of Average New A/C $2200

Cost to run new line set, add new coil, and change refrigerant $2,000

Total Cost: $4,200

Additional Cost of the Heat Pump: $7,659 – $4,200 = $3,459

NOTE: This system was purchased at wholesale by Scott’s brother and installed by them with some additional paid assistance. This significantly reduced our costs. We would have had to run new line set, add a new coil and change the refrigerant either way.

In general, heat pump systems are used to replace oil heat, propane, or older electrical heating systems that are very expensive to operate. In these cases, they more than pay for themselves over the course of their lives. We wanted to see if our system could further reduce our use of natural gas and our carbon footprint, since we have solar panels on our roof to produce the electricity. For us, this system works in synergy with all our other systems to further reduce our use of natural gas and our carbon footprint. We will have to see if we generate enough electricity to cover the additional needs of our heat pumps, plus driving two electric cars. Stay tuned to find out! (See the Trane Heat Pump section below…)

How We Heat Our Home

NOTE: We are lucky to have good insulation and efficient double-paned windows in our home, which helps us keep the heat and cool in.

Prior to 2013, our main source of heat was the Bryant high-efficiency gas furnace. Since then we’ve been tweaking our heating system by adding zone heating.

Lopi Natural Gas Stove

In 2013, we added a Lopi Ben Franklin style gas stove (below) to our living room (also Scott’s office area). It keeps the front of our home toasty, which is really lovely for my morning practice, keeps Scott warm during the day, and makes our evenings cozy in the winter. It is very efficient and we keep it set at 69 when we are awake. During the day, this south-facing room is warmed by the sun (when it isn’t cloudy), so the Lopi gets a break. When we go to bed, we set both the main thermostat and the Lopi to 62. The front room where the Lopi is gets colder than the center of the house, so most nights it keeps the house warm enough that the main heating system doesn’t come on until 5:45 a.m. In the mornings, the Lopi helps bring the temp up so the main heating system can shut down after taking the night chill off the house. From that point on, unless it is below 15 degrees outside, the Lopi and EdenPURE (see below) take over.

EdenPURE Infrared Copper Heater

In 2019 we added an EdenPURE infrared, copper heater to our kitchen/dining room area (which is also my office area). When the temperature is below 40 degrees outside, we use this heater. Between it and the Lopi, the front part of the house where we hang out during the day is always around 69-70 degrees. We turn off the EdenPURE when the heat pump kicks on at 40 degrees during the warmer days in winter.

After trying this method for a couple of winters, we finally figured out that the EdenPURE runs at 1.5 kWh and the heat pump at around 3.0 kWh. The heat pump heats the whole house, while the EdenPURE and Lopi heat only the areas we occupy in the front of the house. (Interestingly, I checked and the back of the house still stays at 65-67 degrees, which is pretty comfortable.) To see what this cost us see the Trane Heat Pump section below.

Now we use the EdenPURE during the days from when we get up until sometime in the afternoon when it is often warm enough to go without heat until the sun goes down. After sunset, we use this heater while we are making and eating dinner.

Master Bedroom and Bath Systems

In our bedroom, we have a Dyson electric heater for a little extra boost while reading in bed in the mornings and evenings. (It gives us a more constant heat in winter than the mini-split, so we only use the mini-split for A/C in the summer.) We also have a heated tile floor in the master bath which keeps our master bedroom warm (and our old cat). It also helps hold warmth in the bedroom when the Dyson isn’t on.

Bryant High-Efficiency Gas Furnace

The furnace’s main function is to boost the temperature from 62-68 in the mornings. It comes on at 5:45 a.m. for about an hour before it gets warm enough for our zone heaters to take over. We turn them on when we get up around 6:00-6:30 a.m. The Bryant works the hardest from late-November-February. These are the months when we use the most natural gas to heat our home. It is also available for backup if it gets really cold (below 15 degrees). This last winter I only heard it come on twice at night, when it was below 15 degrees outside. The rest of the time our Lopi in the living room held the heat at 62+ degrees at night.

Trane Heat Pump

The Trane heat pump serves two functions: 1) it heats our home once the temp gets up to 40 degrees and above, which usually happens by afternoon in winter, except during the cold and stormy days; 2) it cools our home in the summer (see below). During the shoulder seasons of spring and fall, is when the heat pump is most efficient and is able to handle any heating or cooling needs we may have. Generally we don’t have to use much of anything from late April until about mid-June and then again from late September until about mid-October. In 2022, we used less electricity and gas from mid-September to mid-November using the heat pump, so it did it’s job. For example, in October we used 1/3 of the gas we used in 2021! (It was a very warm month, so that also contributed.) We are excited to see how the system performs this spring. Keep an eye out for a blog update this summer, after we’ve had the heat pump in place for a year.

It’s taken us 3 winter seasons to figure out how best to use our Trane heat pump. As mentioned above, we have learned a hard math lesson: the EdenPURE runs at 1.5 kWh and the heat pump at around 3.0 kWh (uses twice as much electricity). We didn’t get the heat pump because we were cold; we got it to reduce our carbon footprint.

Instead, we used about 1.5-2.0 megawatts more electricity than we needed during the cold months by using the heat pump, and we were only saving about 15 therms of natural gas! (We use about 250 therms per year now, so relatively little savings). We essentially added about 2,500 pounds of carbon to the atmosphere heating the back of the house for no good reason! OOPS!! To top it off, this increased use of electricity pushed us over what we could produce with our panels, so our power bills went up by about $300 per year.

Now we are using the Trane for heat only on mornings when the temperature is 40 degrees or above at 5:45. It takes over the Bryant furnace’s job of taking the night chill off the house and raising the indoor temperature to 68 degrees. This means it doesn’t operate very often except during the shoulder seasons when the temperatures are more mild. This is where heat pumps really shine, but unfortunately our shoulder seasons are short. We are still using the Lopi and the EdenPURE once we get up as they use less electricity.

We are disappointed that our experiment with the Trane was not what we expected. If we had it to do over, we would have replaced our old A/C unit with a newer, more efficient model and skipped the heat pump. But there is a place for heat pumps in certain settings, just not ours. See the section below on how our neighbors use their heat pumps….

How We Cool Our Home

NOTE: We are lucky to have good insulation and efficient double-paned windows in our home, which helps us keep the heat and cool in. We also have an attic fan that helps to remove heat from our attic area and keeps the house cooler in the summer.

To cool our home we use the Trane heat pump in A/C mode from about mid-June-mid-September when temperatures are in the high 80’s to over 100 degrees F. We generally keep our thermostat at 77 degrees in the summer. We used to open our windows to enjoy the cool night air, but now the ring road close to our house has become a drag strip and we can’t sleep with the windows open anymore. Truly a bummer! This summer the new heat pump A/C kept us cool and was quieter than the old system. Comparing the electricity use this summer with last summer, the new sysem uses about the same amount, which is to be expected because it uses the same technology as the old A/C to cool. Scott has decided he would like our bedroom to be cooler in the hot summer nights, so this year we will add a mini-split heat pump to our bedroom, then we can keep the thermostat for the rest of the house set to 82 degrees during the night. This should save some electricity in the summer.

We are loving our Perfect Aire mini-split that we added in June 2023! It keeps our bedroom cool on hot summer nights and also gives us the white noise we wanted to block out the drag racing. It has worked out beautifully and saves us about 500 kilowatts of electricity every summer, because we aren’t using the Trane to cool the whole house. We keep the Trane set at 82 and crack our bedroom door so the mini-split’s cool air stays in. For more information about the mini-split, see this blog: https://rhondaashurst.com/2024/03/11/our-mini-split/.

Our Neighbor’s Systems

Coming soon…

Thinking About Your Own System?

If your old A/C condenser needs replacing, a heat pump is worth considering if you have solar panels to provide the electricity and you can’t use zone heating. It can really be a win if you are using expensive heating fuels like oil or propane, or you have an old electric heat system. It can be trickier to figure out if a heat pump is best in colder climates where natural gas is available, like ours.

It’s best to get the solar panels first, since electricity is more expensive than natural gas and most of our electrical grids are powered by fossil fuels anyhow. If you live in a moderate climate where temps rarely fall below 40 degrees, you may be able to use just the heat pump. If you live in a colder climate like we do, you will need either a hybrid system like ours or you can install a ground source heat pump. With this system the heat comes from the earth, so it is more consistent and really saves electricity. If you are building a home or have some acreage, this may be the system for you. If you have a smaller home with an open floor plan, a mini-split system may be the way to go. Mini-splits are more efficient at creating heat than our ducted system and some of them with a hyper mode can create heat at temperatures well below freezing. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes tax credits to help defray the costs of adding these systems (and solar panels) to your home. We hope to be able to save 30% on the purchase and installation of our mini-split thanks to this new legislation! And we did!