Hey Ed, can you give a brief summary of the balance points that we deal with?

In this edition of "Hey Ed," Ed discusses thermal and economic balance points.

Hey Ed, can you give a brief summary of the balance points that we deal with? Balance points are, dare I say, fairly simple if you understand them. Wait a second, everything’s fairly simple if you understand it. The balance points that we specifically deal with are going to be thermal and economical. When we say a thermal balance point, that can be for any heating system. And the thermal balance point is simply the outdoor temperature that we reach where the indoor temperature neither goes up or goes down because the system’s capacity and the heat loss of the structure are the same. That would be known as the thermal balance point. The economic balance point is something that we see with heat pumps when we have a supplementary heat system that may or may not be more cost effective than the heat pump. And we have a process where we can determine which costs more and which costs less at a specific outdoor temperature. And that would be known as our economic balance point. And that’s the way I see it.