Last updated: By HeatPumpIndex Evidence Desk
Every claim on this subject rests on two prices and one efficiency, and almost nobody shows you theirs. This does. Put in the gas your house burns, the efficiency on the furnace label and the electricity price you are actually on, and it prices the same winter of heat both ways at Ontario’s published rates.
Add the m3 lines off twelve Enbridge bills, or take the annual total off your account. Shown at NRCan's 2,700 m3.
It is on the yellow EnerGuide label and on the quote. Toronto installers price three classes: 80, 95 to 96, and 98.
A year of heating, before HST
At the best heat pump NRCan lists for this market, HSPF 13.2, the furnace is $475 a year cheaper. A worse unit widens that.
The heat pump would have to reach HSPF 21.8 to break even here. NRCan puts the whole Canadian market between HSPF 7.1 and 13.2, so nothing on sale reaches it on this electricity price.
Spread over five heating months the heat pump draws about 1,410 kWh a month on its own. The tiered threshold is 1,000 kWh a month between 1 November and 30 April, so that is the arithmetic that decides whether your extra kilowatt hours are Tier 1 or Tier 2. Neither side includes a fixed monthly charge: you pay those for the connection, not the heat.
Ontario is an unusually hard place to win this argument, and the reason is a price ratio rather than anything about the equipment. A cubic metre of natural gas holds 0.038 gigajoules and costs 26.87 cents delivered, which works out at roughly two and a half cents for a kilowatt hour of chemical energy. The same kilowatt hour of electricity, delivered to a Toronto meter on the tiered price, is nearly seven times that. A heat pump has to make up the whole of that ratio out of its coefficient of performance before it saves anybody a dollar.
It does not have to make up all of it, because the furnace throws some of the gas away up the flue and the heat pump throws nothing away. A 96 percent furnace turns 102.6 gigajoules of gas into 98.5 gigajoules of heat in the rooms. That is a four percent handicap against a price ratio near seven, which is why the break-even figure the calculator prints lands where it does.
Change the electricity price and the whole thing moves. The ultra-low overnight plan prices the small hours at 3.9 cents before delivery charges, and a house that could shift a real share of its heating into that window is playing a different game entirely. So is a house on oil, propane or electric baseboards, where the thing being replaced costs several times what gas does. Toronto is the hard case, not the general one.
A seasonal figure is an average, and averages hide the part of the winter that decides the bill. NRCan is explicit that its HSPF figures are calculated for AHRI Region V, a climate like Ottawa’s, and that actual seasonal efficiency varies with where the machine is installed. It is also explicit that a coefficient of performance between 2.0 and 5.4 at plus 8 degrees falls to between 1.1 and 3.7 at minus 8. The hours a Toronto heat pump spends below freezing are not the hours the seasonal rating was measured in.
Then there is the backup. Most air source installations shut the compressor off somewhere between minus 15 and minus 25, and something else covers the house below that. If the something else is electric resistance heat, those hours run at a coefficient of performance of one and cost roughly six times what the furnace would have. If it is the existing gas furnace, the house is on a dual fuel system and the honest comparison is a blend of the two columns rather than either of them.
What is left out on the other side is the equipment. This page prices fuel, not capital: no purchase price, no rebate, no financing, no maintenance, and nothing for the air conditioner a heat pump makes unnecessary. It is one line of a decision that has several, and the ones about capacity, ductwork and electrical service are on the HeatPumpIndex cost guide and comparison pages.
No figure in the calculator was estimated, averaged across provinces or carried over from a previous year. Each one is a component a regulator, a utility or a federal department publishes, quoted at the precision it was published at, with the date it took effect travelling beside it.
The figure that decides your case is the one nobody can look up: the balance point of your house, and what happens below it. HeatPumpIndex lists 221 heat pump installers across the Greater Toronto Area, and these three rank highest on our HeatPumpIndex score. A quote worth comparing names the equipment, states its rated HSPF and says which fuel covers the coldest hours.
In its own words, from its website: Experience top-notch HVAC repair and maintenance services in Milton and Oakville ON with Free Air Heating & Air Conditioning Ltd. Trust our expert team for AC, furnace, ductless mini-split, heat pump services, and more. Schedule your service today!
Carried on this directory for ductless mini split work and heat pump installation from a base in Leaside. Their own website names heat pump work, and the company appears on Ontario's Home Renovation Savings register.
In its own words, from its website: Family-owned for 75+ years. Service, repairs, installations & honest pricing.