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Canary Media’s Electrified Life column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power.
Kathy Palmer was intrigued when her neighbor, an environmental lawyer she’d met while volunteering on a Minneapolis climate committee, sang the praises of the new heat pump he had installed in his home.
Now, Palmer is enjoying the warmth of her own heat pump.
For the past three decades, the 72-year-old retired educator has relied on a fossil-gas boiler system to heat her two-story stucco home in Minneapolis — first via cast-iron radiators and then through radiant flooring as well.
That system was sluggish, said the resident of the coldest major city in the continental U.S., where the temperature falls below 0 degrees Fahrenheit more than 20 days out of the year. Palmer often needed to wait an hour or more for the boiler to warm up her home.
She couldn’t afford to replace her entire gas system, but she realized a heat pump could supplement it. Her new heat pump — a 3-ton Daikin model that delivers heat at nearly its maximum output down to 5˚F and works at a reduced capacity at -13ˆF and lower — has been a revelation. The two wall-mounted air handling units rev up in one minute to bathe a space with warm air. Give them 10 to 15 minutes, and they make a chilly room comfortable, she said. “It’s wonderful to have that happen so quickly.”
Palmer is just one of the tens of thousands of U.S. residents who have installed heat pumps in recent years. The technology is crucial for kicking fossil fuels out of homes and has proved again and again that it works even in bitingly cold climates. Maine has rebated more than 175,000 heat pumps for space heating since 2014. And Vermont installed more than 10,700 heat pumps through its rebate program last year alone. (Minnesota utilities will make heat-pump rebate data publicly available starting in April 2025, a spokesperson of the community-based nonprofit Center for Energy and Environment told me.)
Heat pumps now consistently outsell gas furnaces in the U.S., but they’re still relatively rare in homes across the country. Only about 14% of U.S. households use heat pumps as their primary heating tech, according to the Department of Energy.
But all heating system sales need to be heat pumps by 2035 to decarbonize the economy by 2050, per electrification nonprofit Rewiring America. In Minnesota alone, heat-pump sales will have to climb to more than 100,000 per year by 2030 to reach state climate goals, according to a June 2024 study by Synapse Energy Economics and commissioned by the coalition Clean Heat Minnesota.
Since August, Palmer’s heat-pump system has delivered comfort, efficiency, greater peace of mind, and lower bills.
Because heat pumps are two-in-one heaters and air conditioners, she has abundant cooling for the first time, allowing her to ditch the clunky and less-efficient window AC units she used before.
And since heat-pump systems are modular, she now has different heating zones that can be independently controlled. Palmer is a widow and empty-nester, so there’s no need to always heat the whole house. The system, which provides heat to some rooms through vents and others via wall-mounted units, allows her to heat just the rooms she’s using, reducing her energy consumption. “I really love having the different zones,” she said.
Another detail that factored into her decision to get a heat pump: Having one will boost her home’s resale value. According to a 2020 study in the journal Nature, homes with heat pumps sell for at least $10,000 more than those without, on average. Nick Bender, the contractor with more than 25 years of heat-pump experience who designed Palmer’s system, noted that Minneapolis homes with air conditioning command a premium of $20,000 to over $30,000.
Kathy Palmer's 100-year-old Minnesota home has a new heat pump. (Nick Bender)
Palmer’s heat pump also reduces her family’s exposure to toxic pollutants emitted by burning gas. She noted that access to clean air is particularly important for her daughter who has asthma.
What’s more, Palmer is thrilled to be taking action to help fight climate change, the effects of which she’s already feeling. She and her family spend a lot of time outside in northern Minnesota’s shimmering Boundary Waters, she told me. In 2023 and 2024, choking smoke from wildfires in Canada made worse by climate change was a “wake-up call,” Palmer said. “If we can’t be outside enjoying the summers here, then that’s really impacting my life and also my granddaughters’ lives.”
In Minnesota, switching to a cold-climate heat pump can make a huge difference in annual household emissions, cutting them by an estimated 8.2 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent per year, according to a 2024 study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. That’s like not driving a car in the U.S. for nearly two years.
If Minnesota fulfills its commitment to get 100% clean power by 2040, the emissions savings from switching to a heat pump could be even greater.
Palmer’s heat-pump system cost about $25,000, but two big incentives lowered the sticker price: the $2,000 federal tax credit and a $1,600 rebate from utility Xcel Energy.
Installing an AC-only system would have cost around as much, according to Bender. In fact, incentives typically make it “a little cheaper to put in the heat pump than the AC” for Minnesota homes broadly.
Thanks to a utility incentive, Palmer will reap ongoing savings. Xcel drops the electricity rate for households with electric heating from 11 cents per kilowatt-hour to 8 cents per kilowatt-hour — a 27% discount — on all the electricity they use during the heating season of October through May.
Perhaps most importantly, the heat pump has significantly reduced how much Palmer uses her 30-year-old gas boiler system.“I didn’t turn on my radiators until December,” Palmer said. “Usually in Minnesota, I would have turned them on in September.”
Bender expects the heat pump to save Palmer $500 to $800 annually. “In these older homes, there’s a lot of savings to be had” because of how inefficient existing systems can be, he said.
Looking ahead, Palmer is considering going to an all-electric heat system. The lowest-cost option in that scenario would likely entail taking out the boiler and radiators, installing ducts, upgrading the electrical panel, adding more heat-pump equipment, and using electric-resistance heat strips for extra heat on demand — at a potential cost of $35,000 to $40,000, Bender said. However, Palmer would avoid spending $15,000 on a replacement boiler, he pointed out. She’d also be able to take advantage of incentives for such a project, which are currently a whopping $7,100 for someone living in Minneapolis.
Going all-electric tends to be easier in newer homes, Bender said. In a 1980s Minneapolis home with ductwork and a 200-amp panel, for example, choosing an all-electric system over a hybrid gas-and-electric system may cost just $2,000 to $3,000 more.
As for Palmer, her new heat-pump system is already attracting notice in her social circle, she said. One intrigued friend recently swung by to check it out for himself.
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