Question about gas furnaces and electric heat pumps

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farmerjohn1324

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From doing some research, gas furnaces are more energy efficient than electric furnaces, but less efficient than electric heat pumps. Is this true?

Pictures on Google show me that a heat pump looks similar to a condenser unit. Are they two separate units if I wanted to get one installed?
 
A heat pump is essentially an air conditioner that exchanges temperatures in the opposite direction; the condenser is inside the house and the evaporator is outside. I cannot imaging anything that runs on electric, to generate heat (I'm not talking about the pumps or fans needed in an HVAC system), could be more cost effective than natural gas, propane or oil, at current residential prices; however, if you are speaking about pure energy efficiency, it may be the case, but if you are talking about cost-effectiveness, that's a totally different story, and I don't think you will find electric very cost-effective.
 
Here is a quick calculation I did, I'm using a theoretical 100% efficiency in all the numbers:
100,000 BTUs from Electric at $0.20 per kWh:
100,000 BTU/3412 BTU/kW = 29.30 kW/Hr
29.30 (kW needed for 100,000 BTUs) x $0.20 (price per kWh) = $5.86 per hour of heat.

100,000 BTUs from Natural Gas at $1.10 per Therm:
0.9643 (% of Therm needed for 100k BTUs) x $1.10 = $1.06 per hour of heat.

You can plug in your actual commodity costs, and apply your efficiency percentages to that, but I doubt you'll find electric beats any hydrocarbon fuel.
 
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