> It's just not feasible to heat a home using electric in these areas
I live in Massachusetts and the cheapest source of heat is an electric, air-based heat pump matched with solar panels.
Without solar, electric air-based heat pumps are cost competitive. You have to do the math, though. (How much BTU per therm of gas or gallon of oil; reduce by efficiency, then convert BTU to kwh, then divide by the COE of your heat pump.)
At my old house in Massachusetts I paid $0.12 per kwh, my gas price was equivalent to paying $0.04 per kwh to run a resistive heater; a heat pump with 3.0 COE would be "break-even" with gas.
At my current home my solar loans are estimated to cost about $0.04 cents a kwh. Obviously, I went with a heat pump instead of a gas furnace!
Was that $0.12/kWh the all-in cost or just the power cost? Also in MA, I pay about that for the power, but an additional $0.09/kWh or so for the transmission/distribution of that power.
The total delivered price is $0.19xx for me per marginal kWh and seems to be close to that across MA.
I live in Massachusetts and the cheapest source of heat is an electric, air-based heat pump matched with solar panels.
Without solar, electric air-based heat pumps are cost competitive. You have to do the math, though. (How much BTU per therm of gas or gallon of oil; reduce by efficiency, then convert BTU to kwh, then divide by the COE of your heat pump.)
At my old house in Massachusetts I paid $0.12 per kwh, my gas price was equivalent to paying $0.04 per kwh to run a resistive heater; a heat pump with 3.0 COE would be "break-even" with gas.
At my current home my solar loans are estimated to cost about $0.04 cents a kwh. Obviously, I went with a heat pump instead of a gas furnace!