The EU should be the heat-pump pioneer
economist.com
economist.com
Thus you get plumbers with experience installing gas boilers, resulting in poorly specified and installed systems that provide nowhere near the efficiency that they should reach.
This then leads people to say “heat pumps don’t work” or “heat pumps are expensive to run”, which only feeds into the whole anti net-zero rhetoric.
> without a basic understanding of thermodynamic principles.
that when you have them come quote say “heat pumps don’t work” or “heat pumps are expensive to run”
Tell me, what is the average SCOP of heat pumps in the UK and what is the ratio between the price of electricity and gas?
https://www.lowcarbonhub.org/p/spark-gap/
The UK is worst in Europe and has been as high as 4.7x recently, more than the average Heat Pump can overcome.
In reality, a very good gas based system that is well specified and installed might reach 80% as a whole. Most UK gas/oil heating systems are significantly lower.
You can find over-specing in the US/CA as well because of rules of thumb, or installers just looking at what the old system was and replacing it 1:1 with the same new system—never mind that more insulation or better windows have been perhaps put in.
For new builds, a lot of jurisdictions are mandating standardized calculations be done for estimated energy needs, equipment selection, etc:
* https://mrcool.com/blog/understanding-calculations-for-manua...
If you're going to do a retrofit/replacement, it may be worth finding an HVAC company that will do that process for your non-new dwelling. The fact that a company could offer it may mean they're a step above Random Bob's HVAC.
And there are horror stories from there being too many poorly qualified green installers doing a half-job. Some systems wildly underperform. My octogenarian neighbour had no central heating for two weeks while a replacement pump motor could be sourced and somebody could be found to fit it. You wouldn't have that with gas.
Heat pumps are catching up —I want them to win, we need them to— but this stuff has to get better. Installing one should be certified, performance should be mandated to protect consumers and grant money.
That seems entirely like a lucrative insurance product that the market could offer. (Just like extended warranties for your electronics.)
I wonder if any actuary is working on it.
Pay for rental of propane heaters during a cold snap when they're all gone?
Insurance is not the answer here.
How is a certificate and a mandate that oliwarner suggested going to provide heat? Burning a certificate takes at most a few seconds.
To spell it out for you, the mechanism is pretty much the same as elsewhere:
Companies can offer customers some warranties that their system will work as advertised (ie provide heat with a minimum of fuel). Lots of companies in the private sector offer such warranties on a variety of products. The warranty by itself does not keep you warm, but it typically provides for some restitution in case of failure. (In an extreme case, you can imagine that people would be happy to be paid a million dollars in return for putting up without heat for two weeks. In practice, the warranty will probably settle on something less extreme. For example, some modest monetary compensation plus help with sourcing propane heaters as you suggest. Your imagination is the limit here.)
Because the small companies that do this kind of heat pump installation go bankrupt and disappear all the time, you can administer the warranty via a third party insurance company.
And here's where the certificates come in: just like some car insurance companies give you discounts in return for eg a clean driving record, you would imagine that your heat pump installation company would also be able to purchase much cheaper insurance to benefit their customers if they can provide evidence that they know what they are doing.
In practice the main benefit of the whole scheme would come from insurance companies keeping an eye on the installation companies. The payouts are mostly there to provide discipline and align incentives; but in a well running system the payouts shouldn't be necessary very often.
You can't just brush aside the way that actually works that easily.
When I was doing some extensive renovations of a house about 7 years ago now (in the UK), we called a company whose main business was to install heat pumps (along with underfloor heating, etc). The person asked me a bunch of questions, and based on the age of the house and the insulation and such, she said, "I appreciate what you're trying to do, but I'm really worried that a heat pump won't be able to heat your house sufficiently on cold days; I'd really recommend that you take the money you'd spend on a heat pump and spend it on better insulation for the house instead."
Given that's their main business, and that she was knowingly turning me away as a customer, I tend to give some credence to her assessment. At least it can't be due to a lack of understanding or bias.
Now that our house is better insulated, I might try again next time our boiler is up for replacement, particularly if I can arrange to get the heat pump to cool the floors in the summertime as well as heat them in the wintertime.
1. A system that also provides cooling isn’t allowed under the heat pump government grant.
2. You might actually need planning permission for this
3. Especially in a humid environment like the uk, you can end up with condensation and damp issues, which you really don’t want in an underfloor slab install
If you also want cooling, better to go an air-air based system (aka air conditioning)
The amount of cooling this way is limited. Though the nice thing is that it tends to keep the house cool. There is no cold airflow.
With respect to government grants. Sometimes you can buy units that can only heat to get the grant. But a simple change enables cooling after the unit is installed.
Might provide some benefits on really hot days, but it’s still uncomfortably warm for working in.
There is no reason to set all units to the same value in the entire country.
In general, if you want to save money, you should set your aircon to the highest temperature you can tolerate. We typically operate at 26-28C at home here in Singapore, and our dew point is typically between 24-26C.
The modest reduction in air temperature from 30-33C outside feels amplified, because the aircon also reduces humidity. We also rely heavily on ceiling fans.
That said, I'm guessing 22 (or 18 or whatever) is the lowest temperature you can have on the pipes; that wouldn't translate to 22 in the house.
If their working fluid is water, you are right. But most aircons work like fridges, and their pipes don't transport 'cold' by literally having a cold fluid, but by having an ambient temperature fluid that they turn into a gas inside your interior aircon unit (and then later turn back from a gas into a liquid on the outside unit).
The actual pipes are always at pretty much ambient temperatures.
You only end up with condensation issues, if you cool below the dew point.
Here in very humid Singapore our dew point is typically at about 24-26C. If you set your aircon to no less than 26C here, you never have any problems with condensation.
(Any old weather reporting website or app will tell the dew point. Apparently right now as I am writing this comments, it's 12C in London.)
How was that not an issue with coal/gas boilers? I don't know. Perhaps people just cranked up the gas and lived with the resulting bills.
People talk about needing larger radiators for heat pumps. You also needed similar sized radiators for condensing gas boilers to work at the claimed efficiency.
People were just burning 20% more gas for no good reason.
For heat pumps, 40 degrees is about the max for efficient operation. So radiators need to be quite a bit bigger compared to what you need for a condensing boiler.
So if a new system got installed and sized for running at 60, then it's losing 10-20 percent efficiency.
https://www.theheatinghub.co.uk/articles/turn-down-the-boile...
> The correct temperature setting for heating on a combi boiler is 'as low as possible', but as a guide most older homes can run their heating systems at 60°C and newer homes at 50-55°C. They start to reach their very highest efficiency potential at 45°C flow temperature or lower, but this can be too low for older properties.
> Ultimately how low you can turn your flow temperature down will depend on the size of your radiators, how well insulated your home is and your thermostat temperature.
....
> A vast skills and knowledge gap (that dates back to 2005 when condensing gas boilers become mandatory) means 99% of installers do not understand how condensing gas boilers work and therefore cannot set them up to run as they were designed to. Installers have been let down and so have UK households. We have simply not benefited as much as we should have from this leap forward in boiler efficiency.
If you go lower, efficiency may increase by tiny amounts, but in most practical setups the system is likely to become unstable and you will lose more than you gain. This is especially true if the system is also used to provide hot tap water. For hot tap water, in particular for a shower, the system needs to be able to heat a lot of water quickly.
> NB turning down your heating flow temperature is separate to setting your hot water temperature, but we cover that too - see section 11
I am trying to get AC installed and these are some of the responses I got:
> Air the room properly, wrap a damp towel around yourself and get on with it. With energy prices like these, that's just throwing money out the window, not to mention the environmental impact.
> I don't think it's bad yet. It's important to keep busy when it's hot, not to moan "it's so hot" and do nothing. Get used to the fact that it's getting hotter every year. Wear more clothes in the cold season. Get used to warmer clothes. Try to do more for the environment. Drive less, throw rubbish in the bin instead - don't get lazy, vote for parties that tackle the climate crisis and don't deny it.
> I just sit around in my underwear and sweat, I prefer it.
I can't even...
Of course even though new buildings should be livable without AC, this is not true in practice. I live in a new building and right now I have 33C indoors inside my apartment. But some bureaucrat signed that it's 26C certified so who am I to complain!
(Yes, there are two-way heat pumps, but those are surprisngly rare get and install across europe).
(The majority of installations are for heating only with separate A/C units if they exist at all.)
But now it can be multiple months where everyone's productivity clearly drops because it's too hot at the office. And suggesting to improve the conditions by installing an AC or heat pump will invariably result in getting looks like you are a crazy person.
I'm not sure why a majority of people insist in gaslighting that it's not a big deal. If people are actively sweating while sitting at the office they are for sure not at 100% mental effort. Besides, if it really is only a limited time per year when it's needed, you can just not use it the rest of the time, right?
Lee Kuan Yew, first prime minister of Singapore, said this about air-conditioning[1][2]:
> Question: Anything else besides multicultural tolerance that enabled Singapore's success?
> Answer: Air conditioning. Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk. The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.
Everywhere is getting hotter; Europe is seeing heatwaves that exceed temperatures seen even in the tropics. In summer Europe gets 15-16 hours of sunlight, and the fairly high humidity doesn't help. The tropics—especially those countries almost bang-smack on the Equator with Af Köppen–Geiger climate classification—are mostly uniformly warm and wet, with extremely hot (> 37 °C) air temperatures quite rare because of the uniform day-night cycle. And even then the very high humidity means the daytime heat is carried into the night, and the urban heat island effect necessitates air-conditioning indoors in highly built-up cities like the aforementioned Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and many parts of Indonesia.
[1]: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5842.2009.01120.x
[2]: https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew...
That's why i think that buiding-scale ventilation systems without heat pumps make no economic sense. They mean leaving a very low hanging fruit, hanging.
That makes some sense. But your call for criminalisation is silly.
I mean, equally cooking tasty food is not actually that much harder nor more expensive than cooking yucky food. But similarly, that's not a reasonable excuse for outlawing any cuisine (or execution of a cuisine) we disagree with.
I live in a 2-floor building covered under trees (built in 1936) and even when it’s above 30 degrees it is pleasant in our house.
We pay a lot for the trees to be properly managed, but it’s for sure less than cooling the house with A/C would be.
What happens if you just wheel in a portable AC unit and duct it out a back window?
I still use one but it's very far from ideal.
[0] so loud that neighbours might complain, I had neighbours complain about my computer fans running 24/7.
You could import one.
> Generally nothing
I'm surprised, then, that the EU AC bans we're discussing don't lead to mass noncompliance and civil disobedience.
In cold climates many people still use gas heating because its cheaper, making electricity cheaper would be the only realistic way to increase heat-pump usage in winter.
I'm one of the few who have built a new home, all electric main car included, and yes even friends and parents told me it's a mistake, it will cost much more heating and cooling or it's even impossible to heat and so on. There is much resistance but the real point are prices. Similarly to BEVs.
In other places prices drop, that's why sales goes up, here they do the opposite and that's why sales goes down.
My mother won't install a heat pump because she claims she doesn't want to be dependent on electricity. She likes the idea that if it goes down, she can still heat her home.
It is irrational because her gas burner needs electricity to run anyway, and if electricity shuts down, she lights a wood fire, which she could have as an alternative to the heat pump.
Humans have religion-like behavior in every aspect of their life, not just God-related things.
If you haven't heard about the French pushback against the linky, a smart electricity meter, google it. You will have a good overview of what can go wrong if we force the issue on people.
She doesn't care about making sense.
She cares about her stance on electricity heating.
I’m putting in underfloor heating powered with an air source heat pump, but leaving the boiler and radiators in place for midwinter and power cuts.
Most people don't do that.
"I heard that..."
"I believe that..."
Is mostly the source of their decision making.
Forcing heat pump on people will make them react like you are stealing from them.
Because you are: you are stealing their ability to choose.
But they choose badly.
But most people didn't care about that.
The main contenders were:
- Linky calculates my electricity bill badly. It was in fact more accurate, but sometimes it meant a raise in bill.
- Linky emits dangerous radiation or magnetism. That was, of course, a total hoax.
- Linky didn't allow me to cheat on my bill anymore (lots of people around me were hacking their meter to pay less).
- Linky is forced on us by Big Electricity. So it's bad.
The privacy thing is legit, but all those people had full facebook accounts, most of them had full sync on their smartphone, use chrome without an adblock, and so on.
Only geeks like us really care about the privacy aspect.
On the other hand, it's a greener solution:
- Less people in cars to check meters.
- Live load balancing on the power grid.
- Clear consumption stats so that you can optimize your own bill.
So the linky, which eventually got into most homes, is deployed with success.
But it took so many years because of the pushback.
Eventually, if the pushback would have been just about the privacy, we could have focused on fixing that and would have had a cheaper, faster deployment, with privacy.
We had the worst: expensive, long deployment, and the privacy invasion is still in place.
Mom grew up on a farm in the 1950s in a big farm house that thing leaked air. It was so cold they used to put a heated brick in their beds to warm it before bedtime.
Only problem can be if you have a lot of tiny rooms - in that case it's expensive to install everything.
What matters is the SCOP for the system as a whole.
In a traditional Victorian house with a fireplace in every room, radiant heat will provide far greater efficiency than a forced air system, in which all of that warm air will literally go straight up the chimney.
No.
> What matters is the SCOP for the system as a whole.
That's exactly what my numbers are.
They are the efficiencies for moving the heat-energy from the outside air into the inside air, assuming constant 20 degrees celcius indoor temperature and a specifically weighted outdoor temperature (there are multiple types of SCOPs, depending on the climate-zone and I was refering to the moderate one as it is present in most of middle Europe).
Whether you transfer the heat from the outside air (or some other medium) into the indoor air or into the indoor water does not matter - except that for the latter, you will need to consider that the water has to still transfer the heat to the indoor air, so you need to know how hot the water will have to be to calculate the SCOP correctly for your house.
> In a traditional Victorian house with a fireplace in every room, radiant heat will provide far greater efficiency than a forced air system, in which all of that warm air will literally go straight up the chimney.
What kind of "efficiency" are you even talking about? Can you please provide a definition and some example calculation? Otherwise it's meaningless to discuss.
In those cases, heat pumps are usually the more economical choice, depending on government incentives and other considerations. For example, it is quite certain that current EU-legislation concerning the inclusion of domestic fossil fuel usage in the CO2-certificate trading scheme will result result in price increases of 20-40% for natural gas and heating oil by 2035 or so.
This includes older houses. Modern heat pumps are quite capable of heating even less insulated houses economically.
[1] https://www.bdew.de/service/daten-und-grafiken/entwicklung-b...
However, the damage is done.
Also, even with Germany's relatively expensive electricity, heat pumps are economical after 15-20 years, which is good enough.
I suppose the real economics are going to be better, as you probably need to make gas more expensive by carbon trade or something in order to decarbonise. And electrical power should be very cheap.
I am currently renovating a house in Germany and had a quote for a heat pump system and a quote for a central gas heating system. The heat pump system was quoted at 66.000€, it would however be reduced by 24.750€ to 41.250€ as the government is currently giving a subsidy for these systems. The Gas system was quoted at around 18.000€.
Both of the quotes included removing the old Oil Heating system and disposing of it. The Gas System included the price of connecting to the cities gas supply.
I went with the Gas System, as not only the install would be cheaper, the running cost would also be substantially cheaper. Some electricity providers have a seperate tariff for heat pumps that is marginally cheaper. However even then my calculation was that a Heat Pump would only have a comparable running cost if I also invested in a large Solar install on the Roof.
Air source heat pumps are at least 300% to 400% more efficient than just electrical resistance heat. Ground-source heat pumps are even more efficient.
All you do is use a bit of electricity to power a pump and some fluid to move heat around no need to burn things. Even better if the power comes from solar, wind, hydro, nuclear.
In contrast, if you have underfloor heating, you have a relatively large surface filled with warm water that heats up the floor. And then you have an even bigger surface that transfers heat to the rest of the house.
In the end the house is more easy to heat because it doesn't depend on an airflow to reach all parts the house.
Based on my experience, it's true. As for the other people. it must be true too, because the norm in my southern country is to have installed proper radiators all around the house. Family, friends, formal visits, I wouldn't be able to name even once in my life that I've been at someone's main place during winter without its proper radiator installation. And when it is turned off, the whole building is warm, not only the air in the living areas, so the place stays warm for a long time.
So heat pumps exist but just as a "not very good" alternative, relegated for things like small secondary homes at the beach (where it doesn't get too cold anyway).
EDIT- I was thinking about the aircon that on winter can be switched to output warm air. But reading replies I'm now learning that heatpump doesn't necessarily always mean air, but radiators could also be used!
If you have a heat pump driven water boiler for your hot water supply you even get the bonus of allowing it to cool the room in the summer (if properly installed with a switchable duct for winter usage).
In order to heat up a radiator you need very hot water (>60C), that takes a while to heat up and then sits in the radiator slowly cooling off. Simply keep the air pump on for longer at 20C and you'll get the same temperature for _way_ less energy consumption. With a radiator you simply consume more energy upfront, you don't save money (on the contrary, you spend way more if the electricity doesn't come from fossil fuels because burning things is not efficient by any metric).
Now, the misconception is that people are thinking in terms of "if it's on, it costs a lot of energy, if you turn it off, you save that enegry". But for heatpumps, that's not true. Running them 2 hours with 50% eletrical power costs less energy than running them 1 hour with 100% eletrical power.
The efficiency of heatpumps is non-linear, whereas it is linear for radiators which is unfamiliar to people.
My current garage has radiators installed but I've never used them as the heat pump is just fine.
I guess they must build the houses or heat pumps differently where you live!
Ofc you can hook the pump to a water circuit with traditional radiators…
With air-air heat pumps you get warm air and the air has to warm up the walls, furniture, ground and so on. Warmer air rises so in order to warm up the ground (or your feet) it has to displace/heat all of the cold air first. If you vent before the room itself has been warmed up, you have to start over.
Floor heating on the other hand heats up the floor and anything standing on it first. The heat still rises but by the time the hot air has displaced/heated all of the cold air, everything else will already be warmed up and give off heat if the air is vented.
Of course the correct answer is that heat pumps don't need to be turned off because it's actually more energy efficient to run them at lower settings for longer. And with proper insulation heat loss from air currents is less of a problem so this is more of a consideration for heating up a room from scratch (e.g. after turning down the heat pump during a vacation).
This is the same principle as in traditional gas and oil boilers. The only difference is that in newer, well insulated buildings, radiators need much lower temperatures so they may feel colder to the touch (i.e. you don't burn yourself on a radiator anymore).
But modern heat pumps also can provide relatively high temperatures in case of installation in older buildings with legacy radiators (70°C are not really an issue anymore).
"So heat pumps exist but just as a "not very good" alternative, relegated for things like small secondary homes at the beach (where it doesn't get too cold anyway)."
In Germany, famously not a very warm country, heat pumps are used in well over 50% of all building projects requiring a permit (this includes renovations). Heat pumps are the definite standard, not an "alternative".
- air-air heat pumps which function like "inverted" AC, which is what you were thinking of - another quirk being that in some models the air vents have optional electric heating which provides more instant more intense heat at the cost of massive energy use
- air-water heat pumps which use air to heat up water similarly to a conventional boiler - a noteworthy difference is that they usually target 40°C instead of 60°C but like other heat pumps they're very energy efficient and are typically used with floor heating
- brine-water heat pumps which use brine running through underground pipes to heat up water similar to air-water heat pumps - these are arguably more efficient but more expensive to install due to the excavation necessary to lay the heat exchange pipes
The latter can further be categorized based on the layout of the underground pipes (YMMV on the exact nomenclature as English is not my native language):
- area collectors use a horizontal grid requiring a large area of land and limiting its use for things like trees or swimming pools (or anything that needs to go deeper)
- trench collectors use a vertical grid, essentially turning the area collector on its side - these of course require much deeper excavation but have a much narrower footprint but depending on where you live you may need to get additional permits
- basket collectors use a three-dimensional grid, usually split across a number of "cages" or "baskets" combining the footprint advantage of a trench collector with the depth advantage of an area collector
In Germany air-air heat pumps are the default with many prefab construction companies due to the ease of installation. When we built our house with a conventional construction company we went with a water-air heat pump because that's what the plumbing company was most experienced with. A brine-water heat pump would have been a good option due to the soil consistency and ground water level but sadly national regulations enforced a minimum depth much lower than what would have been otherwise possible and this made the option cost prohibitive for us.
The main advantage of air-air heat pumps is that they can be better used for cooling (because at the end of the day it's literally just AC) whereas other heat pumps are usually capped by the dew point to avoid condensation.
> as soon as you turn it off
You're not supposed to turn it off - then the room will get cold again. Spending the energy to heat up the whole house and radiator mass is very energy-inefficient. Just leaving the air heat pump on the whole time, letting the thermostat regulate and just heating the air inside the home is more efficient, even though it's "running for longer".