Northwest goes ductless for savings

by Christina Williams
Sustainable Business Oregon

Ductless heat pump installation

The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance has set its sights on overhauling the heating systems in 500,000 Northwest homes by 2014 — and in the process saving enough average megawatts to power 330,000 additional homes.

Energy efficiency is hailed as easiest path to lower bills, less carbon and more sustainable living.

And for a subset of homes in the Northwest, ductless heat pumps are an easy way to achieve substantial energy savings.

Portland-based NEEA is in the midst of a pilot program testing ductless heating pumps that has trained about 1,000 contractors in four states and pre-qualified five suppliers of the heating and cooling units to sell them in the region.

"We’re very optimistic about what we’ve seen so far," said Alexis Allan, project manager on the pilot for NEEA.

Ductless heat pumps typically have a wall-mounted component and deliver heated or cooled air directly into the home, avoiding efficiency losses associated with ductwork. They have been used in Asia and Europe since the 1970s and in U.S. commercial buildings since the 1980s, but are virtually unknown in the U.S. residential market.

The DHPs are 25 percent to 50 percent more efficient than electric baseboard or wall heaters and cost between $3,500 and $5,000 to install.

The NEEA pilot is the largest of its kind in the United States. Between October 2008 and December 2009, 59 participating Northwest utilities installed 3,899 ductless heat pumps — beating their goal of 2,500 units by 35 percent. Seventy-four utility partners offered incentives to homeowners for installing ductless heat pumps, ranging from $400 to $2,375.

And for the installers, the boost in business couldn’t have come at a better time.

"It was phenomenal. We installed 300 systems under the NEEA program," said Jerry Sutherland of Vancouver-based Metfab Heating, the highest-volume contractor in the program. This in an environment for his business he described with one word: terrible.

"For the HVAC installer, this was often a population of homes they haven’t served before," Allan said.

An early report on the pilot program — data collection is underway and the final report is due out in 2012 — showed that between 80 percent and 90 percent of participating homeowners were "very" or "extremely" satisfied with the ductless heat pump.