These New Heat Pumps Will Make a Real Difference
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- Опубликовано: 7 мар 2024
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Most buildings across the globe are heated with gas and oil despite heat pumps being a much more energy-efficient alternative. While some countries have been keen on adopting them, others have been slow on the uptake. Why have some countries been hesitant to push the technology? Could a new upgrade to heat pumps make them a more viable heating option? Let’s have a look.
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I will never tire of the Germans and English hemming and hawing over heat pumps because what if it gets cold outside, while in the meantime here in the Nordics we're barely even bothering to install anything else these days. You'd think we'd make a more compelling source of social proof.
It sounds like the trouble is with poorly insulated homes. Is it the same case in your country?
Ground source heat pumps work Air source heat pumps are a scam! They cannot work!
Some poorly installed systems , especially those in ponds or water bodies end up running on emergency heat mode(heat pumps have an electric heater to assist when therms/Btu contents are low so you dont run out out heat. Or with burying them too shallow and ground temp getting to low around the loop.
Funny, I recently read a rant from someone who lived in a Nordic country and their house never got above 60 degrees because heat pumps are so horrible. If you can't heat your house above 70 degrees -- or 75 degrees, if that's your choice -- you don't live in a civilized a place. I don't have have a problem with heat pumps as an adjunct, but I completely reject the European idea that "austerity and suffering is moral". Austerity is a sign of a civilization in decline, and it's NOT NECESSARY, nor moral. Energy usage is a human right.
You might also want to look at the electricity prices in Germany (don't know about the UK) and countries like Norway or Sweden. People usually do not complain about saving money.
I think another big advantage of the heat pump that hasn't been mentioned is that they can also invert working cycle and cool the house during summer
So you get warm and cold with only one system
Believe it or not in the UK you lose the £7500 grant if your new shiny heat pump can also cool. They all come with locked firmware. But you usually can just update it to the EU version...
@@johnzach2057 You lose the grant by getting a dual-use system? Is there a good reason for that, or is it another case of government derping things up?
@@emanwe01 just an idea: cooling requires energy as well, energy, that people did not need before. It could hugely backfire if people install cooling systems this way now and use a lot more energy in summer.
@@salia2897 This issue should be solvable by installing solar panels. Usually when the cooling is needed, the sun is shining.
@@johnzach2057An why specifically you cannot get government help for air /air systems I believe.
I live in Sweden, my father and several neighbours installed heat pumps in the late 70s, 1978 in our house if I remember correctly. They all chose to sink windings of plastic tubing in the lake and dig trenches up to the houses. It cut the energy cost dramatically. We had temperatures down below -30 degrees C outside and it never got cold inside our house. So yes, insulation and heat pumps is a good idea if you want to save energy. I bought and old house last summer with a broken wood furnice. I installed an IVT air to air heat pump in combination with floor standing 230V radiators as a temporary solution before I install the new permanent heating. I will throw out the old furnace and the old radiators and install a bedrock drilled heat pump and new water radiators. We had -26 degrees C this winter and the IVT air to air heat pump held 21 degrees C in my house together with the 230V radiators. The IVT heat pump is rated down to -25 degrees C, and the efficiency sinks with lower temperatures, still it delivered enough to keep me warm. Bedrock drilled and lake heat pumps has better efficiency because it never gets below zero in lakes and bedrock. New heat pumps saves a lot of energy, they put out 4-5 kW warm air or water for every 1 kW of electricity you put in. Regarding sound emissions, the old 1978 heat pump in our house I grew up in was loud, it was a 3-phase synchronous pump and its vibrations was felt and heard throughout our house. Modern heat pumps are nothing like that, my air to air heat pump has a inverter regulated pump and I rarely notice it. The inhouse radial fan makes the usual fan noise as any other radial fan. I can live with that noise if it saves me hundreds of euro every month. And as a bonus, it can be used in reverse in the summer run as a AC cooler if it is hot out side. Cant go wrong with a heat pump if you ask me. It saves energy, and therefore money. And an air to air heat pump isn't that expensive either, and down in Germany you have warmer winters than here in Sweden so better efficiency for you. :)
Warmer winters but less lakes you can use as a private person.
Yet, I can't maintain those 21 in Lisbon with an air to air IVT heat pump.
And that goes to show how important insulation is.
@@Martin_Siegel But you do have air in Germany, yes? Air to air heat pumps should be seen as a complement to your existing heating system. Air to water heat pumps can be used as a primary stand alone heating system. I first tried to use my new air to air heat pump as a primary stand alone heat source without supporting heat sources, but it did not work well at all. Cold air from the house corner rooms were were circulating irregular to the inhouse fan thermostat making the fan rev up to a high airflow to compensate for the cold air, the next minute warm air from the central big room was "inhaled" and the thermostat was like "oh shit, this is to hot" and the fan went down to idle until the next puff of cold air from the corner rooms was inhaled again, making the heat pump alternate between min and max air flow. Not before I turned on the electrical radiators in the corner rooms, the heat pump found its normal balanced operating mode. It still varies at bit, but not at all as much as when it operated on its own. Now it is a balanced system with the heat pump set one degree higher than the electrical radiators. To sum it up, an air to air heat pump is an excellent complement to your existing heat system. Just turn the original heat system down a degree or two and let the heat pump do the heavy lifting.
No you can't cheat on the HP log diagram. Indeed you will be able to extract heat at minus 32C. but your COP will be close to 1, in other words the same as a electrical heating 1 kWh electric or 1 kWh heat. Only in England Duidsland and certainly Belgium is electricity very expensive! that makes the difference. so not the heat pump
@@luc-alaindehaes3512 I don't understand your logic. What has energy price to do with efficiency? A air heat pump must work harder to maintain 21C inhouse if the outside temperature drops. A bedrock or lake heat pump isn't affected in the short term by cold ambient temperature because of the larger heat mass in bedrock and water, so you get higher efficiency with bedrock and water heat pumps because they work with a smaller temperature difference. Still, an air to air pump is better at delivering heat (warmth) than direct electric heating kW for kW consumed electricity. Maybe you are comparing cost of electricity with gas heating? I know nothing of gas heating, I live in Sweden and we don't use gas at all in our homes because it is stupid. Burning of gas has particle emissions bad for your healt, and it is bad for the CO2 emissions also. As a side note, why on earth did Germany close down its clean nuclear power plants and ramp up natural gas and coal? Stupid!
There are some small areas in southern Sweden that has gas stoves and perhaps gas heating as well, but if I had to guess I say less than 5% of homes in Sweden uses gas in any form, and I would say none uses coal.
Propane was originally used as a refrigerant some 60 years ago. Now it's a revolutionary new refrigerant.
Just watch. There will be a fire or explosion and they will turn to CO2 refrigerant becuse it's not flammable. It's all about making money!! It's all old technology.
Ha! You're right, too. Ammonia will be next.
No it isn't revolutionary if we don't do anything different.
@@melissachartres3219 Heck, let's bring back CFCs!
Then water will be called the new super coolant
Installed our first heat-pump 20 yrs ago. With Norwegian electricity prices it was a nobrainer already at that time. Earn-back time was approx 3,5 years (now its approx 2,5 years).
What surprised me was that when visiting Germany or Britain, people we visited used electric heating (ovens) at least in parts of their homes which makes no sense as an alternative (could understand gas if that was cheap). I suspect it came down to the fact that rental is more typical on the continent. The landlord had no interest in investing since the tentant paid energy, while the tenant didn't invest because he is, well, a tentant.
In Norway pretty much everyone ownes their home, so making long term investments in the house comes more natural.
British people own their own homes and electric heating is quite unusual. Most homes use a gas boiler to heat water and then pump it around the house to radiators that give off heat. As you say gas is cheap and that's why it's so common.
Electric heating is under 5% in Germany, infrared is a thing in recent years, but in new houses heat pumps are already over 50%.
@@sie4431 35.7% rent in Britain (Statista 2022), while only 23% are renting in Norway (Statistiska centralbyrån 2017).
But this perception probably comes from visiting bigger cities, where a relativly high proportion of people tend to rent instead of owning the properties they live in.
What do you use for heating when it's below -10 degC outside? Is a heat pump still sufficient and cost-effective enough at such conditions? I always assumed people in rural areas of the nordic countries often use a combination of heat-pump and a stove/fireplace to burn wood.
In Germany electric heating isn't a thing since 30 years or more and it never was big. Older installation usually use gas or oil. Decades back night electricity units existed, basically ovens that would be heated up with cheap electricity over night. But they have been gone for decades. Electricity is so horrifically expensive nobody will use that for heating without a heat pump.
As a Canadian viewer who loves our new Mitsubishi heat pump I was shocked to hear Sabine say that heat pumps are noisy. This is a common complaint of older heat pumps, which was the case with our 20-year old unit. I can say definitely that they are extremely quiet now, as our happy neighbour can attest.
For how long?
My 13 year old heatpump is pretty much identical noise wise as to when I put it in…
@@Etacovda63 Neither are loud, but new units are quieter. Particularly new units with inverter compressors.
Our new carrier heat pump is very quiet. However when it ices up, like in freexing rain or blowing snow, it's self heating mode kicks in and it sounds like a 747 coming in for a landing (but quieter)😂. Just for a minute or so.
Still, the noise is an issue that wasn't there before. During the day we don't really notice noise because in urban areas there is such a high level of background noise that it all blends into one. But at night, when most of the sources of noise die down it becomes apparent how noticably loud some of them are in isolation. We'll probably notice the effects when there are no more birds left, because now the stray cats can get to them unnoticed...
In Australia we've been using these for decades to cool houses in summer, and then warm them in winter. We've always referred to them as 'reverse cycle airconditioners' but they're just heat pumps.
and they're incredibly popular. sure, UK is colder than most of Australia but HPs can be (and are) designed to work at -10 ºC or more. And for industrial use they can generate heat up to 250 ºC+ these days. there's a lot of myths around HPs and I'm not sure Sabine has done a good job dispelling them, so she can sell her "GAME CHANGING!" new HP conduit headline.
And we have been using them here in the UK tooin construction site offices.
Pumping “cold” is just as valid as positive holes in a semiconductor or current flow in electrical circuits going from + to -… love your videos
@@56paullacually thats a really good analogy, especially for engineers. I like holes... (they are positively electrifying)
My house here in Austria (the one without Kangaroos) has an air source heat pump. My heating bill is "naff all", even with the recent price hikes I pay 110€/month for all my utilities. And we keep our house at about 24⁰C year round. When it gets down to -10⁰C, it runs about 50% duty cycle at 3kW heat output or 800W electric (the lowest it can go). It's a 10kW unit...
My sister has an older, poorly insulated house in Victoria, B.C. (admittedly a mild climate). She replaced her old oil-fired hot air furnace with an air to air heat pump system, with a resistive electric heat element to add extra heat in the winter. Her heating bills dropped precipitously and the system paid for itself in just a few years. However, electricity in BC is relatively cheap as it is mostly hydro electric.
We installed a LG minisplit in our house several years ago. It is an air sourced system and the inside units circulate air. We live in a semi-rural area and also heat with cordwood, at least until I get too decrepit to harvest/split/stack the wood. So far we have been very happy with the system.
At the tail end of the video you touched on a big problem improving residential energy efficiency - rental housing. In general the owner of the building is responsible for the equipment while the tenant pays the energy bill.
This is where government needs to get involved to encourage heat pump installation A combination of carrot and stick.
@@rogerphelps9939 Government involvement has a long and illustrious tradition of completely messing everything up.
Had a nasty landlord who included the heat in the lease. Left the windows open a lot during the winter.😂
LG is renowned for cheating refrigerator buyers. Never buy anything from LG.
Except that people who own homes that are reasonably insulated have the EXACT same problems with heat pumps when the outside temperature gets too cold.
Funnily enough, Technology Connections released a video on this topic very recently. Also worth a watch whether it's the hour long version or the abridged version.
He releases a new video on this topic on the average once every 6 months. XD But he's not wrong. Curiously, Sabine offers different arguments than Alec for why people hesitate to install them. It would be interesting to hear Alec's thoughts on the matter.
Very recently? Like a year or so ago? ;-) Yeah, I think something's "recent" if it happened in the last decade, but I thought that was just me!
The absolute snark in that video is something that Sabine will appreciate 😅
Never has a 1 hour video gone so fast though. It was great
@@macsnafuit was yesterday, and it was great. Dude about burned his house down determining his required heat load hahahaha
@@CaedenV So, it must be a new video about heat pumps, because he's done some in the past.
You failed to make clear one important point (somebody else has commented but as a reply). For every 1kW of electrical energy used by the pump you get 3 to 4 kW of heat output. That is why heat pumps are effective and cost comparative with a gas or oil heating system, but with no harmful outputs. Combined with battery and solar technology they make huge sense.
This is a gross misrepresentation of reality. The thermodynamic cycle efficiency is not the same as the coefficient of performance. All machines have losses and the btu's delivered to the house are not all utilized. Consider that the temperature of the inside coils is higher than is actually transferred to the air flowing through them. Idiots who believe in free lunch have no problems buying into heat pumps because they are being lied to through the misrepresentation of COP which is a comparative measure of efficiency between different heat pumps. Your electric bills will go up and you will pay, pay, and pay some more to those who own the electricity supply in the near future. Climate is probably not the real reason you are being herded into an all electric dependency. Governments will likely own or at least totally control the electricity supply.
I would say it depends. The production of electricity still has harmful outputs. And the battery wont help you in heating a house. In winter there is just not enough sun-time and the sun has a low course. But yes, there are sone nice concepts with about 70 to 80% self-sufficiency. I recommend Timo Leukefeld, bit that‘s just in german.
@@discostu8724 Well you are missing more points here, HP come with large ceramic insulatet buffer tanks that contain 200-1000 liters of water for heating. This means that one can use eletricity at night where it is cheap and in abundants from renewable power sources like hydro and wind which are big in Northen Europe. Even the battery can charged at night with cheap electricity and then used later during the day. Also a reason why heat pumps are very popular in the nordics is because you get at .94 of kr rebate on every kwh you use above 4000kwh in a year. This means you basically get 45% rebate on all the power your HP use.
This depends on local price structure. For me, running a deep-borehole HP with 4x+ efficiency still costs at least two times more than what I'd pay for natural gas fuel. Probably more than 2x. But the initial cost of the HP was a meager
Where do you live and how big is your house?
In New Zealand everyone has them. Typically small air to air units for heating the air in the house but hot water heat pumps are also getting popular. It’s doesn’t get extremely hot or cold here so they’re usually very efficient.
All newbuild houses here in NZ seem to have heat pumps. Almost no one uses gas to heat houses here as unless your in the deep south its not cold enough so heat pumps are becoming installed as fireplaces and older systems are quickly being replaced with heat pumps.
Temps do not go down _that_ much in NZ (the ocean moderates temps for the long but not wide islands). I guess it can hover around freezing point (at the North Island). So that is a sweet spot for heat pumps where they still have good efficiency. I had a laugh when a woman that married a German talked about the differences (in a video) She said that many homes in NZ are not well insulated. So it is uncomfortable in the winter, people will dress warmly, etc. But it is not that cold that people or the homes suffer damage.
When her mother heard that she was going to move to Germany with her fiance she worried for her daughter's wellbeing. She knew that Germany is a country where they have snow (well more than on the North island, that is). Not really true because only Bavaria can be seen as a cold winter region, they partake in the Alpes. Germany has continental climate for the most part, so the temps may be a bit lower on average (in winter) and the extremes can be certainly lower.
Her mother got her the good merino underwear. When the daughter moved to Germany she found out that the German homes are on average MUCH better insulated and cozier. You see in NZ one can get away with not insulating a home, but in Germany severe cold snaps can happen.. Plus energy costs are traditionally high. So building codes ensured higher standards.
Heat pumps are popular where I live -- the southeastern United States -- and growing more popular every year. Because it doesn't ever get *that* cold during the winter, and in the rural areas you can't get a connection to the natural gas main anyway, it just makes sense to install a heat-pump instead of a separate furnace and air conditioner. In the past 30 years, heat pumps have gotten so much better, and as a result, are becoming more and more popular with every passing year.
We might have, oh, two weeks or so where the outside temperature drops below the point where the heat pump can keep up with the temperature difference between inside and outside. So there are resistive "heat strips" inside the blower unit that act as supplemental heat when it's needed. They use a *LOT* of electricity, but, like I said, it's only about 10 to 14 days a year where you need to run them. And the thermostat kicks them on automatically, so you don't even know they're on. Until you get that months' electric bill of course. 😂
My heat-pump is 18 years old almost, so it's nearing the end of its life. When I replace it in a couple of years, I expect to get one that's efficient enough not to need heat-strips. I hear modern ones can operate easily down to 5 degrees F (-15 C). It might get that cold here one or two days every 4 or 5 years. Worst case, I can supplement my heat pump with a couple of space heaters if I had to.
" Because it doesn't ever get that cold during the winter"
Many places in the Southeast see temps in the single digits or lower, and gas heating is much less expensive than electric below freezing with forced air systems. Duel source systems tend to yield the least expensive heating bills for forced air systems.
"I expect to get one that's efficient enough not to need heat-strips."
You'll still want that heat strip. Even the inverter units get less and less efficient well below freezing, and they take a lot longer to heat up a home.
Heat strips are also a backup in the event that your main unit fails and needs a replacement part days away.
The heat pumps in Texas did not work too well that Valentines Day when the power went out. Heat pumps there are primarily configured for summer air conditioning, so less efficient at heating anyways. The reduced efficiency at low temperatures - disproportionately increasing demand when supply is stretched - contributed to the fragility of the grid. Total dependence on electricity for survival is risky. People died.
@@paulcampbell840 Gas furnaces do reduce the stress on the grid. Unfortunately, they too stop when the power goes.
That's why I tend to avoid getting gas waterheaters that require power. Sort of defeats the purpose of a gas water heater.
To be fair, I own two gas wells that run almost everything on my property. So free gas impacts my preferences.
You might want to crunch some numbers. You may find that your operating costs will drop significantly.
Use Mitsubishi Nordik - they still work at -32°C.
It does make total sense to talk about pumping cold the same way we talk about voltages in a circuit or "holes" in semiconductor technology. It works because all this are meta statements, we are not really talking about material quantities but about the flow of those quantities, and thus we get to chose the frame of reference that helps us the most.
Sabine touched on the issue of damp briefly. This is an important part of the equation
Where we live (Celtic Atlantic Coast), humidity is mostly 80% plus. It rains almost constantly except for the summer.
All our buildings are stone built and most are heritage buildings so they cannot simply be demolished.
The key engineering problem is 'cold bridging' where stonework on the inside "drags in cold" and where this meets warm air inside, there are huge problems with damp, condensation and mould.
It is possible to build a house within a house to eliminate cold bridging but this is usually financially costly or practically impossible.
This is why heat pumps usually don't work or have such long payback periods as to be pointless. So, a three year payback for a wooden house in Norway compares with a 30 year payback here (except electricity prices have been so high that they will never pay back!)
There you have it. Locality matters, and what works in region A doesn't work in region B.
We need a solution, but it isn't the current type of heat pump. Maybe propane heat pumps will fair better.
So lack of insulation means you need a lot of heat. -and when needing a lot of heat, using an inefficient boiler to burn fossil fuel is somehow a better solution than an efficient heatpump ? .... the logic completely escapes me.
3 years ago, we installed a Japanese Daikin heatpump.
I have never been so comfortable in my life.
Problem: so steadily comfortable that I don't see the seasons pass by.
Sounds like a first world problem. I don't mind at all suffering from the same issue
How do you power it?
@@piotrd.4850 Electricity I presume
Daikin's building factory in Texas is the 3rd largest factory in the US - only Tesla's GigaTexas, and the factory Boeing build for 747s in Everett are larger.
I've had one of those for years and it's great.
I installed our wall mounted, air source heat pump/ air conditioner 18 months ago. Its refrigerant is R290 (propane). It is very effective and reasonably quiet. Luckily, our bungalow is well insulated.
Reasonably quiet? Is that the outside fan or the 24/7 inside pump thrumming away continuously?
@@sirjohng1The unit is mounted on an inside wall with only 2 vents through the brickwork- no external fans. The interior noise level is 58dB(A) on maximum output, although we normally run it on a lower setting. Not intrusive and far better than most hotel units. Manufacturer- electriQ.
glad i'm pushing hungary away from last place. i replaced an old gas kessel, and literally installed pc fans (arctic p12 max) at about 25cm intervals onto the bottom of classic radiators. these run on 5volt quality phone chargers, with simple radio switched 230v power plugs connected to the thermostat. forward water temp is 35celsius, and everything worked this winter really great. the fans are sturdy due to the ring (blade doesnt brake if anything touches), also meant for continuous operation, barely audible. could go even lower with the voltage, despite it's drawing much more air than the old passive system at 55 or so celsius. hope this helps. it's a 60 years old house, but since insulated as well as possible. most heat escapes upwards, and insulating there is easiest. obviously, worked in the summer just as well with 19c water, just above dew point.
I live in Chicago and love our heat pump. During the coldest days of the winter the heat pump kept the house nicely warm. And it’s also our air con
Here in sweden heat pumps are designed to be able to take electricity to heat if needed. So if it becomes way to cold to use the electricity kicks in.
it defeats the purpose of using a heat pump really since it is 1/3 efficient. Emergency electric heat has been in heat pumps even in the 1970s, nothing new.
@@hiddenbunny7205 It does not. There are not many days that cold and in the end only SCOP matter, meaning the efficiency for all season.
Same here in New York State. The problem is, the electricity to heat in that manner is incredibly expensive.
@@acmhfmggru I didn’t say it doesn’t work. I get it, you don’t understand the technology and you hate it. A car is also less efficient in cold weather. Some engines don’t even start. They need special fuel, especially diesel. Heat pumps work well in Nordic countries. The only thing that prevented them to be more common in other countries is the price for gas, usually more than 4 times cheaper than electricity.
@@acmhfmggruYou are kind of stupid. If you can save energy for most of the winter there's an obvious point of doing so. Basically you're saying I shouldn't own a bike because it's too cold outside to pedal for part of the year? In that idiotic logic no one should own a beach chair, or anything used seasonally.
One simply can't stress enough how important insulation is. With proper insulation any type of modern (made in the last 20 years) temperature control system will be fairly efficient. But with bad insulation it doesn't really matter what you install, it will be a waste anyway.
(PS > Similarly, the reason why most fridges are so inefficient at bigger temp differentials is because the insulation used in them tends to be cheap and insufficient, in order to save both production costs and space. Since most people wouldn't like fridges with thicker walls or paying more for more efficient insulation.)
150 year old house, Cold climate, Air source heat pumps do not and cannot work,
Not all residences are able to be insulated feasibly.
You would be surprised. Many old houses in the UK with solid stone uninsulated walls have been successfully fitted with heat pumps. The key is proper design and insulation.@@dogwalker666
Well no one wants a fridge with walls that are 6 inches thick on either side these days, so it's understandable. That said, your fridge heats your home too.
That's right. With good insulation of the house, you barely need heating or cooling.
Sabine, wenn working on heat transfer equipment we always talk about taking heat and putting it somewhere whilst making more heat that may or may not need removing too.
So cooling to -92C is the result of removing the heat by a condenser from a given spot in a unit and transferring it on to another unit (or the atmosphere, our favourite dump).
When I lived in North West New Jersey back in the early 80s, my oil burner crapped out. There were no gas lines and I did not want to continue with oil because the oil dealer kept failing to deliver because of miscalculation. Besides the oil stunk.
I had a heat pump installed. I had two extra stage of resistive heat. If the heat pump couldn't keep up, resistive electric heat would kick in to assist. That area of the state is the coldest part of the state. Anyway, it worked very well for heating and cooling.
That was 44 years ago, so I would imagine the heat pumps work much better now.
We are currently happy with our gas heat for now in in this central NJ location. Close to the ocean moderates the temperature.
PS: We got rid of our gas stove and replaced it with an induction stove.
We installed solar panels and a geothermal heat pump last summer. Here in US we got a 30% tax break for the year. We replaced an oil burning furnace and a standard AC unit. Because of a very cloudy January we imported a lot of electricity that month but it was still less than what we would have spent on heating oil. Our unit is very quiet compared to our previous system. Yes, it is expensive to install but we feel pretty good about not burning the oil and adding CO2 to the environment.
How is your local electricity generated ?
If it is a coal plant it did not help the earth , the solar panels did of course on your own property .
@@josephpadula2283Coal is only 18% of US electricity generation, it's been going down significantly year over year. Even if it was powered by coal, it takes a lot less energy to move heat than to make it for the majority of the winter so it's likely still less emissions overall.
@@josephpadula2283 "If it is a coal plant it did not help the earth" This is false.
Coal power plants produce on average 0.82 kg of CO2 per kWh. Using 1 kWh to run a geothermal heat pump with a COP of 4 provides 13,648 BTU of heat. Providing the same heat with heating oil at 85% efficiency produces 1.19 kg of C02. So even if 100% of your electricity comes from coal, a heat pump still comes out ahead.
A heat pump, even when it is run on electricity solely from coal produces less CO2 per kwh of heat than burning gas directly. In practice nowhere generates all its electricity from coal so heat pumps are even better and wwill only get better as gas is ditched in favour of renewables.@@josephpadula2283
@@josephpadula2283This silly argument has been repeated a gazillion times. co2 emissions can only be cut if we *all* do our parts. We *all* need to stop burning stuff and stop the whataboutism. BOTH oil furnaces *AND* fossil fuel power plans need to go. The order is not important but they *BOTH* need to go.
I want the director's cut with you standing and thinking for an hour.
I would think you can speak of moving an "epicenter" of thermodynamic equilibriation" in the same simplified way we use "center of mass." Both are dramatic oversimplification. The EoTE might always require three or more vectors to continue to make sense of the same system within the same bounds since no single influence of the same scale can "act on it." Perhaps one vector could be forthcoming heat transfer, the second could be the "pull" of the anticipated colder state relative to the highest among local heat sources, and the third vector would essentially need to track the next-most-influential EoTE system-wide. The more detailed, in theory, the less spontaneous "breaking/retargetting" of the third vector.
Most people I know who have installed heat pumps regret it. They work well in the spring and fall, but when winter temperatures come, they require another heat source. The end effect is that they need two heating systems and are still burning fuel along with the higher electric costs from the heat pump.
I'm done here in Germany with the government's constant change of mind regarding how we heat our homes. I once had a perfectly good wood heated house. One single wood stove heated the whole house. It was cheap and easy to to use. But then the town council stepped in and demanded I burn oil or gas. That cost me 15 000 euros and is far more expensive to run. Now I'm told I need to either connect the house to the local community heating or change to a heat pump. The first option has even higher monthly costs and obscure accounting. The second option costs 25 000 euros and the company isn't sure it will be enough to heat the house.
I've come to a decision, the government can piss off, I'm going back to my good old wood stove, cheap, ecological and easy to to use.
We have a heat pump water heater as well as a heat pump to cool our house.
Our water heater is located in a pantry with a refrigerator and a freezer. The neat part is that the heat pump exhaust cools the room and the refrigerator and freezer exhaust warm the room. They make the other more efficient.
Interesting - I have installed heat pumps now for over 10 years - mostly to heat up swimming pools - I personally have made a number of calculations regarding the efficacy - and I am glad that people with swimming pools don't tend to think much about saving money - heat pumps a complete solution is in some countries absolute nonsense - either you have too much heat or you don't have enough heat so in the end over a year average you have paid a lot of money to get a system installed, and the energy gain is under performing - you pay 30% more for the system and then you are buying energy to make it work with what is costs you can heat a house for decades with minor changes to isolation and using standard heat options
@@wolfsonn4061 Interesting. I live in Georgia USA...relatively warm climate. We get some below freezing weather in the winter. Our heat pump shorted. The emergency system worked and kept the house warm. We were not aware until we got the electric bill. It was about 3x what it was with the heat pump. We do supplement when below 40 with wood heat.
Our house was built in 1937 and renovated down to the studs in 1978. It would be very expensive to improve the insulation.
I have a geothermal heat pump. The pump makes no noise and there's basically a pipe that goes down 150 meters in the ground to extract heat
Oh it also cools
How much did it cost to drill that hole?
@@fritz46we have a similar system and our 200 m drill hole costed about 3500 Euro. We use it to heat the house in the winter and cool it down in the summer (cooling is for free because the heat pump is not operating for this, only circulating the alcohol through the hole). The cost of the heat pump was about 9000 Euro. Have a heat factor of 5.4 (getting 5.4 kW from 1 kW electricity).
Hmmm... that's less than I would have guessed.
@@fritz46 The cost varies widely depending on your exact soil composition. It's also cheaper when you are building from scratch since you don't need to drill a well, you can then just lay tubing below the frost line on a widish area. It was around 10k$US to drill where I live in Montreal, so we decided to go for air-air instead.
We had a GSHP (ground source heat pump) installed in 2008. Temperature range where we live 100 F in the summer to 10 F sometimes in the winter. It works really well. Our ground loop is a vertical system. Not sure about an air heat pump. Mini splits are becoming popular however, I don’t know how well they work during sub freezing temps.
Pretty well on the sea in Nova Scotia. We get temperatures below 0 Fahrenheit in winter - then our 10 year-old system struggles, but we don't freeze. With crazy global heating, our mild summers now approach 100F in summer. Mini splits have made that heat/humidity tolerable.
I Put in a new HE heat pump in Illinois. We get -20F bursts here during winter. Our use went down and our electricity use was reduced over one year by 48%. We intentionally put in a unit that was 1.5 times larger than we needed. After all the world is melting and we live in a slightly warming zone. But the unit is adjustable down to almost what we "should have" according to a professional salesman.
We are happy mostly. The problem we run into is very dry winters inside the house so we have to humidify the house to keep the air moist enough so we aren't in misery. When you get a very efficient system both inside and out, the air becomes cleaner than outside air. But moisture coalesces and drains off of the central air handler and so we have to add it back in. We have an ultrasonic cold water vaporizer. We literally had a zero bump in electricity use from it. We are adding a 5" filter system to our air handler which collects more dust etc. It will make the system even more efficient, perhaps another 2% roughly. That means as of the end of this year we will have reduced our overall electric use by half or more. We have 4 main computers with large and double monitors, two laptops, 3 phones, three network switches, two routers and a modem, led lights in every room, LED flood lights outside. We thought for sure those were the culprits of huge bills so we turned everything off, noted the times and usage on the meter. Then we realized our original cooling system was using 2/3 of our electricity. By the end of this year the new system will have paid for itself. That's three years and we installed it ourselves. $4600 total parts and shipping. Two days of labor and I had to learn how to cut and form sheet metal to build custom ducting from nothing. If you are good with measuring for construction of anything, you can measure sheet metal.
Anyway I said way too much and I know no one will ever read this. So I will digress happily. This will get deleted so it doesn't matter.
We're actually doomed as a species. we can't consume our way out of this. We can only make it tolerable in rich nations while the end consumes our world. No amount of consumerism will fix this. There is no magic bullet to pull the excess particulates and gasses out of the air. So even if we manage to make power cheap and stop burning things to make power and heat, The ocean is over heating and can't handle the excess heat we generate. It can't absorb anymore carbon and harmful chemicals. We would have to filter every single liter of ocean water to get the junk out. We could do it if we were a positive, reasonable society - which we aren't.
We could in fact build massive filtering systems the size of cities to clean the air and ocean only at those locations. But we won't. Unless of course as global citizens we see this way of living we are in right now as a threat and refuse to participate in global domination. But we won't. People don't think about it according to most I speak with. Stupid people then really if that is true. Stupid mules. Are you a stupid mule? Only you can answer that as I don't know you and you don't know me.
So I eat less, make my house as sealed off and efficient as possible, reduce what I personally use so that others may - what, live too I guess.
At home here we grow every weird plant that filters, feeds, and recycles. They die, we grow new ones after turning those under as food for the next year. We suck at it but there you go. Many of the ones we leave in the soil come back on their own and surprise us with food and flowers the next season. Did you know that if you let them, most garden plants will just keep coming back after going to seed? Lettuce just comes back if you let some stay out there and you only pick leaves off of it in the morning. We found out by accident.
You know how massive farmers must keep replanting right? That's because they want more money and roi, so they keep turning their limited crops under only to destroy them with pesticides and weeding products. Whoops. They harvest everything then go buy seed. Then they plant in the destroyed ground, add more chemicals and modify the plants so they can grow in the mess of chemical bath they put in their own soil. Morons.
There is so much more but it doesn't matter. We are Humans. We suck. It doesn't matter who you are or what you believe. It doesn't matter your color, or system of war. It won't matter where you live, eventually the heated globe will consume you. We will not do anything to stop it.
Eat the rich, make a better world might work. But we won't. We are Human. We suck. Most don't even recognize something they should be terrified of anymore. Fools all.
When the end of humanity comes as it should, we won't know - and the earth won't know it's name. On the plus side, the new plants and animals will get on without any of us farming them into oblivion for no other reason than to make more money. If it didn't make those psychos money to farm masses of animals they wouldn't farm animals.
They farm us you know. We are farmed from the time we are born. Just think - about how you think - about anything. And then question it. We are being farmed from birth till death. We are a commodity within commodities making other commodities so the richest in the world can be. Children born into sex and working bondage. People imprisoned and forced to work of their "Debt to society". But we - you and I - are not society. The rich and their ilk and swine are.
Have you ever seen a pig or a chicken or a cow slaughtered? Humane my ass-witz. Pop Pop ZIP ZIP go the saws. With blank humanity staring down their innards as they unzip them. Innards and guts and blood and stink of death and coagulating blood from the sheer magnitude of the amount of death that comes from farming animals the way we do.
Guess where the blood goes? Guess.
Meh. Ya we're doomed. We all agreed to be a long time ago. I dare you to own up and fix it. Go ahead i double dare ya. You won't.
I didn't correct this outside of spell correcting system, and it was a stream of consciousness.
It's just shocking. Twice as many people half the starvation. You're about one percent as likely to die from the weather as you were a hundred years ago. And it can only get worse!
I have had heat pump for years. They are adequate for home heating. Work very well. And for cooling too.
My old oil burner made more noise than my geothermal heatpump. No problem in January with -30 C and this is an old house! Same experience everywhere in Finland.
Noise is probably the biggest complaint I hear about ground source heat pumps here in Western Canada. New installations are typically placed in vehicle garages outside of the house envelope. That utility installation also makes for the simple addition of electrical vehicle chargers in the future. It's much colder here for much longer than northern Europe. But current projections suggest electric vehicles will become feasible in 40-50 years when our climate has warmed up to something closer to yours.
@@joewiddup9753 I have a Nibe F1255-6, which has a variable speed Mitsubishi compressor. It's really quiet, but this is also Nibe's smallest 6 kW unit. Enough for my small 140 m² house. The borehole is 170 m. Last year the heatpump used 4700 kWh electrical energy to produce 17500 kWh heat energy and warm water.
The problem is the lifetime of your pump. If your house is not properly insulated you're doomed to sink money into pump maintenance
@@brodude7194 Running maintenance free for 5 years now. I expect it to run almost as long as the oil boiler. I don't get what insulation has to do with pump maintenance. If you had worse insulation, you would just have to dimension the system for more power. Less insulation --> higher power unit. You can't adjust that with any form of maintenance!
Yeah, I had no power for 4 days once in the middle of winter. Heating dependent on electricity is non starter here. I like my children not frozen to death, thank you very much. Gas pipe hooked directly to fireplace and not depending on electricity is a requirement as emergency bavkup.
I live in UK and am super happy with my ASHP. First year cavity wall insulation was equivalent to none and we use 3300kWh for our 5 bed detached house. Then got new cavity insulation fitted and now used about 2500kWh. So house was nice and warm before and same after. We run 24 hours a day at 18c and 16c overnight. it is a gentle heat rather than an aggressive heat from an oil boiler.
Also the humidity can be an issue so a dehumidifier is in use.
Regarding Sabine's question at 1:30, I think it is abstractly valid and useful to talk about moving cold from one place to another, as it is the same as talking about holes moving in wires or semiconductors as ions or atoms missing electrons that have a positive charge moving.
Our house in Stockholm uses the heat of the air that is evacuated by the ventilation so instead of taking low heat outside air through the heat pump ours uses warm indoors air. The ventilation air is about -12C when leaving the building. And the floor heating works very well too. Plus, any heat source indoors, like candles, cooking, watching RUclips or a cozy fire, is recycled by the heat pump and turned into hot water and floor heat automatically. No more waste heat.
Sounds very interesting. A sort of 'assisted regenerative heat-exchanger'. So you get well-ventilated air-exchange to limit 'indoor pollution' and heating at the same time.
Any heat recovering ventilation system will recover the heat from ventilated air. No need for a heat pump.
@@johnwalker1471 Any "heat recovering ventilation system" is a heat pump. Your refrigerator/freezer is a heat pump, too. Any air conditioning system is a heat pump. They all are just different types of heat pumps.
Heat Recovery ventilators are required by code in the US.
@@johnwalker1471Misconception. Most ventilation systems have a passive heat exchanger that have about 70-80% efficiency. Heatpumps have an efficiency of several hundred percent, i.e. they recover much more energy than they use. That's the whole point of heatpumps!
The innovation of heat pumps is accelerating. Here in the Netherlands are companies that have designed heat pumps that don't use an outside ventilator. They designed a passive system with only inside a pump that pumps the fluid. This noise is easily suppressed.These system use the entire surface of the roof to exchange the heat/cold. They can be installed under the solar panels and as a secundary advantage the system cools the solar panels so their efficiency drops less on hot summer days. I don't think we have seen the end of innovation yet.
You don't heat your house during a hot summer day.
@@aaxxsed You can heat your hot water using the system though, which you will still need in the summer.
Agreed.
That's really smart, you're effectively reclaiming some of the heat lost through the roof, and even in winter solar panels are a large dark area that will heat up more than if you just used the ambient air.
@@filonin2 Solar water heating isn't innovative. It has been around a long time. It is silly to use now adays though because those panels cost more then PV panels for the same amount of power.
We installed a R290 heatpump last year and we couldn't be happier. It nullifies all common complaints:
1: It's capable of heating water to 70°C, so you don't need floor heating or even new radiators.
2: It's remarkably quiet. On a very cold winter day it produces white noise at 50dB. Today at 5°C outside it's barely noticeable standing next to it.
3: There are versions capable of 20kW heating power. That's enough for an entire apartment block. There are no excuses anymore.
Good thing is too increase the size of your current radiators on the walls, only on the lowest floor (living room-kitchen etc.) as heat rises. Like replace a 90h x 50w radiator to a 90h x 70w or make it thicker. That way you don't need to build in floorheating. For sure when you have a nice tiled floor already. My bad old 70s house gets temperature needed now under 50 degrees that way. Where before I needed 60 degrees.
TRUE
I fix refrigerated kitchen equipment for a living. I started working on 290 machines around 2015. It was amazing to see the difference in the amount of charge between the 2. Old days would be like 15 ounces of 134 and now it's like 3 ounces of 290. The down side is the old days you would see a side by side refrigerator run by one deck but with the 290 it is now 2 decks. Added cost of compressors and condensers as well as all the ancillary parts that go with it makes me wonder how much more it costs? On the plus side, pressures are low (especially compared to 410 A) which should mean a longer lived unit. Time will tell. 290 does seem to work much better but now you have to have all kind of safeties in place incase of a leak. I have seen a refrigerator burned up from a leak that was triggered by a spark. Also, service ports are a no-no as a potential leak source. And as to how an ice machine works, it removes heat from the water, not make the water cold.
I agree about the lower pressures. We have had nothing but trouble with reliability problems ever since we switched from R22 to R410a. Especially premature evaporator coil failures. R454b and R32 will still be running high pressures like R410a does. I predict better reliability with R290.
I'm in SoCal and switched my space and water heating from gas to heat pumps last year. Works great in my climate (doesn't require AUX heat at all), and I like how the heat pump water heater keeps the garage cooler in warm weather.
Technically cold is just a property of a thing with less heat then another thing. What I say is "It cools my house by pumping heat from the indoors and dumping it outdoors." The converse is, "It heats my house by drawing heat from outside to the inside".
In electronics, they talk about electrons flowing one way or, conversely, "holes" (open/electron free spots in an outer valence) flowing the opposite direction so I don't get too picky when someone talks about moving cold from one place to another. Some times it can be clearer to talk about cold moving then talking about heat moving in the opposite direction.
It also makes sense saying that cold moves if the cold condition is the target condition, i.e. when we want to make cold.
Electronics have long used term vacancy, which means: a lack of electron.
So if vacancies "flow" in one direction it is actually the electrons that flow in opposite direction plugging the holes and leaving new ones. But it kinda looks like vacancies are objects to humans, and it's easier to understand that way.
I think it's ok to use a quantifiable term coldness to describe the lack of heat if it helps in understanding heat pumping. Although I'm not sure it does help any.
It's just two extremes with a slider in between.
And now volume should be added to the equation. You have one scenario of moving heat from a small area and dumping it outside and the other is trying to extract heat from a very large area during a time when heat is in shorter supply in said reservoir. Generally speaking most heat pumps that are in colder environments typically have to be paired with another source to operate in the winter such as (but not limited to) geothermal.
Cold doesn’t exist it’s only the absence or heat/energy effecting particles
When we bought our home in 2019, it had a new furnace & central air unit. Getting some 3-ply windows was our first purchase because the house is on a main road, and the old leaky windows were letting in summer heat & humidity as well. We had them in before the first winter, totally worth it. Glad we did as many as we could, because when we got 8 more done in 2022, the cost was much higher! I'm glad to hear about this new refrigerant. Any new build I do will definitely include a heat pump!
Had new triple pane argon filled vinyl windows installed in my 1970's home. Energy savings more than made the monthly stroke paying for them. House always remained comfy, summer and winter. (Had a reverse cycle heat pump)
Bought a geothermal heat pump and wondered if it would work as well as they said. It was wonderful-really cheap heating, really comfortable, and very quiet.
Propane is actually pretty similar to freon parameters wise, IIRC some people used it to replace freon that they couldn't get any more for their classic cars that still had freon-based installation
Almost identical to R22, and with some tweaks on the expansion valve even on R11 or R12.
@@MrOpenGL Makes you wonder why industry just didn't replace freon with it after the ban. I guess they really wanted something non-flammable
@@xani666That, and probably missed the profits of selling refrigerant gases.
@@MrOpenGL That's actually a very good point I haven't thought of.
But we could have way better working AC for decades now....
The revolution of the hydrocarbon refrigerants was brought by the Chinese. They didn't want to license R134a, so they innovated with the isobutane (R600a) minifridges, then they moved on to larger units with R290 for small air conditioners.
The flammability thing... I don't really believe it's important, because people use 50kg propane canisters with god knows how many hose connections, so it's not the 1-2kg more for your heat pump that will make the house more or less safe...
Cold is the absence of heat, til someone invents cold-rays.
Important topic. These are really good news, my gas fired heating (very old house) is nearly fourty years old, and I already waited for another perspective than burning LNG. Thanks for keeping us updated.❤
Look up laser cooling. (Not exactly what you meant, I guess)
Terry Pratchett's one "Science of Discworld" volumes has the anecdote about a "cold focuser" that uses ice and a 'reflector' to keep your microscope objective cooled so the slides don't degrade from the illumination source.
It was in a 'science catalog' so its design must be squirreled away somewhere!
Simple gas furnace is more cost effective. Yours is 40 years old. Heat pumps failure after 10 years is common.
@@simontistnot exactly, but fair point
You can use a heatpump + resistive backup and solar if you want to go renewable and electric.
Got old house, got heat pump, don't got noise, don't got problems. Funny how countries that have traditionally relied on coal have so many problems with heat pumps. Hmmmmmmmmm.
you have no idea. And the lives of people killed by gas explosions are like a tiny sacrifice to the oil God, so mighty and merciful to us. Crazy
We have an old wooden house near Seattle and switched from baseboard electric heat which was terrible in our mild winters (25F nights) and expensive. The first day I came home from work after the heat pump was installed was amazing. Instead of a cold house with little pockets of heat, we had even warm air. Heating costs dropped so we paid for the heat pump in four years, and we got air conditioning at the same time, which we now need with hotter summers. Strongly recommend a heat pump.
years ago in the UK, there was an attempt to reduce deaths from cold amongst the elderly.
The experts confidently advised that the important thing is to maintain the heat inside the home. The messaging ("propaganda") that emerged was "keep the heat in this winter!" or some such. This had *almost zero* effect on mortality, so the health authorities conducted a survey of actual old people, and discovered that they "knew" something else - you have to *stop draughts to keep the cold out* (i.e. another way of putting it). The following winter, the messaging campaign was changed to "keep the draughts out" (or some such) and because this matched the perceptions and understanding of the audience, it motivated a change in behavior -to attend to draughts that should be "kept out".
The mortality statistics fell with the new messaging.
That seems to be a continuing theme from activists.
They always focus their message on the wrong thing and expect actions taken to follow their message, will make a difference.
They want everyone to switch to electric everything without actually first, augmenting the electric grid so that it can support the higher electricity demands that the switch will cause.
Then they want people to use less electricity so that it won't harm the grid.
They do this all the while lying to the people, that electricity is a cleaner source of energy yet; 70+ % of electricity is still produced using carbon producing energy sources.
What they are campaigning for, is technologically incapable of working at this time.
As opposed to 100% from carbon producing heat? 70% from a source that's pretty clean, or 100% from a source that's definitely not. What's the choice?@@scotttovey
@@scotttovey That way you phrase that, it's as if activists have the power to augment the electric grid. Wtf are they supposed to do? No one is doing anything because no one will lift a finger unless they make money on it. More demand for electricity will cause private concerns to generate more electricity via supply and demand. There's a logic to it.
@@meganegan5992
"As opposed to 100% from carbon producing heat? 70% from a source that's pretty clean, or 100% from a source that's definitely not. What's the choice?"
Electric power is no cleaner than carbon based fuels as 90% of electricity is produced by using carbon based fuels.
Coal and oil are used to produce the electricity to mine the material needed to build solar panels and turbines.
It's not even close to be relatively clean.
The relatively cleanness of it, is a lie.
The technology is not mature enough to provide the amount of electricity that is in current demand, it will be less so in the future when the demand for electricity doubles because the idiots in charge got rid of oil, gas, coal and all other forms of CO2 producing energy.
It's not possible to transfer from carbon energy to carbon-less energy in a short period of time, and that without a plan.
Give it another 100 to 200 years with an implemented plan that transitions the energy sector to clean energy, and you may have a chance of getting it done. It's only a chance because there is bound to be a group of corrupt, greedy politicians, that will throw a monkey wrench into the well implemented plan to cause it to break. Unless you make such actions a criminal act subject to a charge of treason and punished by death with no alternative punishments.
It's a war, and your life is on the line. The side you are on, is the side of those that want you and your children, if you have any, dead.
Unfortunately, you choose to be blind rather than think on things with real world facts in hand and plan accordingly.
@@MiltonRoe
"That way you phrase that, it's as if activists have the power to augment the electric grid. Wtf are they supposed to do?"
Experts say that we have to double the capacity of the electric grid for it to be able to handle the demands of a full electric fleet of automobiles.
I disagree with their knowledgeable position. I say we have to triple it. Keep something in mind. It is not possible to trible or double the capacity of the electric grid in the short time that activists demand that we be transitioned to full what is not truly green energy.completely
"No one is doing anything because no one will lift a finger unless they make money on it. More demand for electricity will cause private concerns to generate more electricity via supply and demand. There's a logic to it."
This is actually false. Just because there is a higher demand, does not mean there will be a higher supply. In fact, by shutting down coal and natural gas powered electricity plants prematurely, it is impossible for private concerns to generate more electricity.
Under capitalist system, the rich test and implement new technologies over time. They have the discretionary cash flow to do so.
If a person has the money to pay for a $500,000, you have the liberty to choose to do so. The only people that have a problem with that individual, spending their money like that are the envious and greedy cohorts that refuse to find a legal way to earn that kind of money.
When it comes to the so called green energy, the only people that are able to afford the cost of the equipment are those that can pay $500,000 for an automobile. However, rather than spending their own money to purchase that equipment, they get tax write offs and rebates for doing so. That means that the people who cannot afford to purchase that equipment, even with those tax write offs and rebates, are being forced to give their tax dollars to those that do not need those subsidies and can afford that equipment even without those subsidies.
A proper plan does not allow such things to happen. A proper plan takes into consideration the fact that the majority of money spent on solar and wind, goes into China's bank accounts and benefits the CPC, but does not benefit the United States.
The Constitution does not allow these policies to exist constitutionally, because policies that benefit the enemies of the United States above the United States, falls under the second definition of treason in the Constitution which is; Adhering to the enemies of the United States, giving them aid and comfort.
The whole environmental activist movement, is levying war against the United States. This is evident by the fact that even though the United States has reduced it's carbon foot print below the levels that would have been expected under the Paris accords, the activists are demanding that the United States reduce its' carbon footprint even more all the while ignoring the fact that both India and China, are reportedly adding a coal burning plant on line every single day to provide for their electrical power needs.
The United States does not have any more capacity in the form of carbon reduction, that it is able to reduce. What is being demanded, is that the American people commit economic and national suicide and destroy themselves to save a world that does not give a damn about the environment.
America is not the greatest polluters on earth, India and China are.
Moving cold is a bit like moving "electron holes" :D Except, I guess it really isn't.
Yes, ha, is what I was thinking too!
i was thinking the same thing
Or "negative pressure"
In the American South, we know nothing BUT heat pumps.
Immediately what I compared it to
My girlfriend got a new AC unit for her house last year. It can be used as a heat pump in the winter with a little tweak but around here, natural gas is so inexpensive that it's cheaper to use natural gas for heating in the winter.
I'm Canadian. I had a York heat pump that kept me in the poor house. The heating tech was on my speed dial as he and I were on a first name basis. I sent it to the recycler two years ago and have never been happier.
You had idiots for installers and service. Im in canada and my clients love them.
Yeah, you should have got something Japanese or European installed. My Mitsubishi Electric (air to air) and Sanden (hot water) heat pumps are amazing and super reliable.
Virtually all heat pumps have a ~10% lemon rate. Manufacturers rely on servicers to fix them up. It's easier than quality testing them. If you get a good one off the line, it can go 30 years without issue though.
@@anthonylosego My heat pump became buried overnight in a snow storm. While it tried to unmelt itself, it could not deal with the volume of snow and froze into a giant block of ice. It turned itself off and stayed that way until spring when the weather improved and the technician could come. Lucky for me I still had my dependable furnace to keep me warm.
@@Mascotal you might invest in a snow fence or some stilts. Or both. Lol. Heck even a snow shovel might work. :-) There are always ways. Depends on your motivation I guess. I don't shame fossil fuel heater users. But heat pump will be the way to go eventually.
I used to spend on heating in 2 months the same amount I do now for 2 heat pumps running 24/7 for a full year. The ones I bought were the best at the time, still working after almost 15 years. I turned them on when I bought them and I've never turned them off.
Well, they do turn off and on periodically. The thermostat handles that without your input once you set it to the temperature you desire in your living space.
Moving cold is like talking about a vacuum. It's a convenient term for the lack of something.
that's also how heat pumps work, with vacuums :)
Or talking about holes vs electrons in semiconductors.
Yes although sometimes it refers to cold air or refrigerant instead of just being a useful approximation.
@@georgebush6002 Cold air is air with a lack of heat.
@Sabine Ho you asked (facetiously I assume) about "moving heat or moving cold?" Talking about "moving cold" with a heat pump is like "turning on a dark bulb" when it's time for bed. Cold is just the absence of heat, like dark is the absence of light.
1:40 Since absolute zero is the absence of energy/heat, I'd say that cold and heat aren't negatives/opposites. Cold is the reduction of or lack of (in the case of absolute zero) energy/heat. So heat is a positive and cold is a measure from 0 (nothing).
The heat pump works by drawing what residual heat that it can draw from the outside and pumping that heat into the house. Because it's drawing the heat from the outside, it's making the outside even colder (a reduction in positive).
I have air source heat pumps here in the UK and there is one major draw back with them in UK winters they will ice up. This is due to the rather damp conditions we have here in the UK, even when it is very cold it is still comparatively damp/humid. This humidity condenses onto the condenser coils and forms ice stopping air flowing through the coils. If anyone wants to claim otherwise I have pictures of iced up coils.
With Heat Pumps, we are moving packages of heat (BTU’s) from one place to another, taking advantage of the large transfers of energy that take place when we change the state of the refrigerant from liquid to gas and back again. You are right about older homes not being ideal for heat pumps. The hydronic radiant heat you referenced is the most comfortable kind of heat, and the type this video shows that is in the floor also has the advantage of “putting the heat on the feet” making one feel warmer at lower room temperatures. So, it saves energy in two ways; we can use lower water temperatures in our loops, and keep the thermostat set lower and still achieve the desired level of comfort. R290 is not allowed for use in residential HVAC in the USA due to the flammability issue. Too many technicians are still brazing instead of pressing.
Not ideal. But we can't change the fact that our 1884 house is old. And Frunkin' big! But 23 Mitsu Mini Spits are doing the job - for 1/5th what we paid with an oil furnace (natural gas is not available in Nova Scotia).
We live in Manitoba, Canada, and to reduce our carbon footprint, we upgraded our natural gas furnace with an air-source heat pump. Since cold-temperature heat pumps are able to warm the interior down to about -29C outdoors, we still need a secondary furnace for colder winter days, which was offset by government incentives. Nevertheless, global warming means that most of our winter heat is provided by the heat pump, which also supplies cooling in the prairie summer. Since 98% of electricity in Manitoba is from hydro dams, electricity is both cheap and green. My only real complaint is the general lack of understanding when we were searching for low carbon options, with most contractors and the general public still wedded to 30 year old myths about the effectiveness of heat pumps in cold climates, neglecting completely the Nordic experience, where 70% of homes are now heated by heat pumps. Like Finland and Norway, the incentive program here in Canada has been remarkably effective at transforming public opinion in just a few years, which gives me more hope than I've had in a long time. Clearly, education and incentives work.
Exactly, then those whining about carbon tax (which isn't even a real tax) can actually do something and pay less of it and get an increase on net return from the carbon tax.
@@djayjp Exactly. As an early adopter, we were actually selected by Manitoba Hydro for a detailed energy audit, which provided a day-by-day accounting of our heating needs in the first year of operation. Even in an exceptionally cold year in our arctic climate (Winnipeg is affectionately known as "Winterpeg"), our carbon footprint and heating costs were substantially reduced, and the government incentives meant our installation costs were no more than they would have been had we simply replaced our aging gas furnace. This winter was warmer, and the secondary furnace was rarely needed to supplement the heat pump.
If you don't use the gas network as the main source of heat the cost of that network will not be covered by normal use of the gas. What it means is that the backup source of gas will need to be extremely expensive to cover it's cost. I mean you got yours and so long as everyone can't take advantage you will be carried by other users that can't stop using gas. In the end if everyone got heat pumps but still needed a backup the gas network might need to be removed from homes and switch to local tanks that will store a few days of gas that get filled over the year by delivery trucks. Or you will need you electrical grid able to support the extra demand for energy with both the switch to heat pumps away from gas, and when it great really cold and the heat pumps stop working and need to become resistive electric heaters.
Just like solar panels people that can afford them get to have lower bills from the collection during the day then, get a shared rate during peak demand after the sun has set.
@@xoso599 Since our public utility, Manitoba Hydro, is responsible for both the gas and electricity grids, this is in fact the reason why we were selected for a detailed energy audit, with data loggers attached to both the primary and secondary heat sources and exterior temperature probes. They need the data so they can plan for the development of both grids to support the major changes that are coming in the next few decades. When coupled with changes in electric vehicle uptake, extensive upgrades to the energy grids will clearly be necessary, which will also impact our ability to export green electricity to the US. But I have confidence that Manitoba Hydro will plan appropriately, particularly since they are mandated by their act of incorporation to manage both grids in the public interest.
To be fair, almost all older heat pumps drew heat from the air flowing through the outdoor evaporator. Which is very little when it's cold. Now people draw heat from underground. Costs a lot more to install, but it works a lot better when the air is really cold.
as a hvac (cooling and heating) technician... yes it makes more sense to talk about moving the cold around than heat even if what you actually do is moving around heat in day to day work and communication with the clients
I have used propane as a refrigerant for decades, love it. I think the only reason it is not being marketed in a big way is because the big chemical companies can't make much money on it. Systems can be designed so that they are safe, saying its dangerous because it is flammable is a silly excuse
R-290 is very much the equivalent of R-22
As a HVAC-R technician, I can assure you that r290 isn't much more efficient than the past few generations of refrigerants, neither does it hurt the ozone layer any less than R410 which has been standard since the late 90s. R290 has been around for quite a while already and I have worked with it a bit. It is much more complicated to service and thus takes much longer than past generations of refrigerants, thus making maintenance and service more costly overall for customers. Also the biggest problem of heating using heatpumps isn't the heat not going high enough, but rather how low it can get at the evaporator which in that case is outside the house. Heating power is what you want, not the actual temp of the air supply, but rather how much mass of air gets heated by how much.
So a question for you. there is good chance my heat pump is low on R410. Can I add up a bit of R290 so it can easily mixt with the r410 without causing damage to the compressor or the whole system. Thanks
@@danlavigueur2648 Short answer is no. Long answer is that doing so would change the characteristics of the refrigerant, at the very least making your heat pump inefficient. The oil used would be the same so no problem on that front. But there's also the fact that if your system is lacking refrigerant it has a leak, meaning you'd be leaking propane somewhere either in your attic, outside or in your room. FYI even if it is propane gas, it has no odor added to it, so noticing it would require a combustion event or a hydrocarbon detector. It is also illegal to charge any R290 or R600 in any system you can't prove is airtight, at least over here. The compressor is not built to be explosion proof, which could end up being a problem since the pressure at which 410 operate would make the R290 extra easy to light up. Compressor is also made for 410, meaning even if you somehow managed to switch refrigerants and had your (probably) EEV do it's job properly for the newly added R290, it most likely wouldn't work properly.
@@metadominnion Hey thanks for this great answer metadominnion
Anecdote form sweden. Experienced heat pumps in both old and badlu insulated houses and they work very well so i think germans and brits dont really have any excuse except the electricity price...
Same there in Finland.
Even €500 euro 24K BTU can pump 5KW of energy even at 0C.
Do you heat the water with a heat pump though? I think the issue in the UK is that they heat their houses by pumping warm water around them with radiators in each room. So the heat pump for many in the UK doesn't do anything except heat water.
@@notverygoodguy In Nordic countries, it's mostly underfloor radiant heating - so warm water in the floor.
@@notverygoodguy it is possible but its a more expensive installation. So if you have an old brickhouse it might be harder. It is still possible to use the boiler for warm water and reduce the gas consumption. But electricity in Sweden is a 3rd of the price compared to gb and Germany
I live in Germany in an over 100 year old house and have a heat pump for 11 years. I bought it when there was no subsidies by the state at all yet. It saved me a lot of money over the years. Am I satisfied? Well. The problem is not the winter. Then it gets pretty warm inside. A problem are the times when the temperature difference between the ground and the air is not so large, i.e. in spring and autumn. Then 20°C will be barely reached within. Nevertheless it has some advantages. Many people are used to overheat their rooms. They will suffer from flues and cold more often. In my house the air humidity will never be so low as in most heated houses in winter. Thus the mucous membranes will not dry out and this is another reason to get less ill as it is harder for bacteria to enter the body. The floor heating may give you a feeling of warmth as the floor is warm and the feet feel warm this way.
Perhaps I could deliver some additional arguements in respect of heat pumps.
While watching this RUclips popped up a popup asking the quality of the captioning. The quality of captions in your videos is good, and appreciated. Cheers!
I've lived in a couple different houses which used heat pumps here in the US. They're usually equipped with an electric auxiliary heat system. With a smart thermostat, you can limit the use of the auxiliary heat to situations where the target temperature hasn't been met by 1 or 2 degrees. My current house doesn't have central heating or air. It only has electric wall heaters. I do have 3 "portable" heat pumps (which use R290). They produce plenty of heating/cooling for the entire house, and seem to be very efficient. I'm not sure why they're referred to as portable, since they need an exhaust hose sticking out of a window to work. But, they use significantly less power than the wall heaters, with the tradeoff that they are noisy.
Note, single hose exhaust portable Air-Con or Heat Pump are not exactly efficient. You can't just push air out of a building, it must come in somewhere... outside air enters through cracks and gaps in the walls and insulation, or via a makeup vent on a ducted furnace. A proper portable unit has both inlet and exhaust tubes that are insulated, to keep humidity from entering the building in the summer, and leaving in the winter. These two tubes need to be some distance away from each other so that the outdoor inlet does not suck the exhaust air back in again.
We’ve had a heat pump in Ottawa through winters with temperatures below -30 C and it keeps the house nice and warm. When outdoor temperatures fall below about -25 it needs a little boost from an electric resistance coil but that’s only for a few hours a few days a year. It’s ludicrous to suggest that it wouldn’t work in Germany or the UK. I hear a lot of blithe and poorly informed opinion here I expected better from this channel.
Numerous people in the UK have spent a fortune on heat pump systems, only to find them inadequate. What works in real life depends on a lot more than what is theoretically possible. It's great that North Americans and Scandinavians seem to be mostly satisfied with their heat pump systems. It's a different world here...
That means the installers didn't know what they were doing. And probably didn't care to learn. I've seen videos of (seemingly) competent installers in the UK which have complained about this since it makes their work harder. As their incompetent rivals are essentially badmouthing them.
But yeah, this tech behaves differently from a gas burner. You need to understand how it works to get the most out of it. And typically it's more efficient to burns the gas in a power plant and user the generated electricity to drive a heat pump in the house. But gas subsidies may not work that well.
That the house is poorly isolated is irrelevant. That just means you need to heat more regardless of technology.
It works in the UK if you have the right kind of house. But to retrofit a 19th century house is prohibitively expensive, and many terraced houses do not have enough yard space to legally install the outdoor unit.
In the UK it can be cold at times but it is also very damp most of the time. It is common for British people to leave windows open in cold weather (to 'air' the rooms) because sealing up the house can lead to problems of damp. Older houses were built with that mindset and it can be very expensive to adapt them to standards of high insulation AND high damp protection. I looked into converting to a heat pump for my house and the modifications necessary would mean that my family and I (along with most of our furniture) would have to move out whilst the whole of the house was adapted. This would include taking up all the downstairs floorings and drilling up the underlying cement screed to lay underfloor heating.
You don’t have to have underfloor heating but you will need sufficient radiator output. The problem is you could need more rads or bigger/ higher capacity rads. This is the problem with every “green” initiative some of the solutions are not suitable replacements for every use case. Take EVs fantastic for some use cases and 100% unusable for others.
No one would be complaining about heat pumps if the price of electricity and gas were reversed, but as gas is less than a third of the price of electricity then heat pumps have a harder time of being a good replacement. They will always “work” but may not always be cheaper to run anything under a scop of 3 and your on a sticky wicket.
Personally I think we should be subsidising aerogel insulation and MVHR systems for retro fit.
Would be a much better RoI of government money. Gas boilers efficiency dosnt change with outside temperature if we had better modulation and insulated the total cost would be lower. That is of course ignoring the emissions and possible fines the UK will be hit with because of the idiots in charge signing up to the various treaties that punish us and not places like India and China.
We live on the sea in Nova Scotia. You contractor is lying to you... Is he a Tory?
My greatest exposure to heat pumps was an early 90s apartment complex, gas heated units ran 80-150 a month and electric 500-600 to heat. This was near the great lakes and in dollars, no idea what that would convert to now. All were water-water in ground and failed the heat part when daytime highs stayed below freezing and went to resistance heating as a backup.
From L.I., NY: Similar reports here from 80s/90s. Only adequately sized units in very well sealed/insulated locations
were successful....
@@user-xq1wz3tp5z I think they've revamped the ground part of the installs half a dozen times since then, many are reporting them working out well even in NY and Minnesota.
Heat pump works as such. Temperature of the outside coil is dropped 10-20degrees below outside temperature so the coil can absorb the heat from outside(yes there is plenty of heat even at zero degrees) which is then transferred to the inside coil to be released. Main problem is that the size of the coil outside and inside only works for a given difference. Thats why here in America the sizing of heap pumps in the north and south are so different. You have to choose a bias of cooling or heating. Basically, the outside coil up north must be much bigger than the inside coil to be able to absorb enough heat when its really cold.
Well of course madam Hossenfelder, just like electron-flow vs hole-flow in semiconductors, we can equivalently call heat-flow vs cold-flow :-))
There is a much stronger movement towards heat pumps in the UK these days. There just aren't enough trained heating engineers to install them. People are queuing for months on waiting lists. That said only 50,000 were installed last year but now that grants of £7500 are available the take up is rising. The R290 machines produce a higher heat output but I don't think the COP is enhanced. The sweet spot is still a 35 degree flow temperature hence if you go with R290 you will have higher bills to pay.
The greatest benefit of the heat pump is the fact that it can cool you during summer.
And provide carefree heating during spring and fall but, requires some, or sometimes a lot of, support during winter.
I think the perfect combination at some point would be:
Heatpump powered with PV during summer, and powered with butane fuel cells during winter
or:
PV powering heatpump during the summer and storing heat in long-standing heat battery (like the Cellcius one).
Both supported with coal/nuclear/water/geothermal plants when demand would be extremely high.
My house, here in Sweden, is heated through geothermals (water-water heat pump), with my recording studio being a separate building that is heated by an air-air heat pump.
My previous house had district heating from the waste heat of a large paper factory. That was good and cheap, as well.
I'm overall starting to see more and more air heatpumps on houses. But lots of houses around here use geothermal, like we do.
There are a few things to say about air-air heat pumps, though:
1. Ironically, as you pointed out in the video, they get less efficient as it becomes colder outside. So, when you need them the most, they are the least efficient, sometimes even less efficient than normal resistive heating.
2. They aren't cheap. I paid about $3'000 for mine, and when I asked, they said they last about 6 years.
3. A good thing: Apart from heating the air, they can also typically cool the air when needed (hot summers), and they also circulate the air and can clean it from particles and reduce smells using a plasma filter. So, they improve the air quality.
4. While they can be incredibly quiet, they do make sounds, which many other heating systems do not.
Easy in Scandinavia, the ice ages only left the naked rocks there. Here in northern Germany we suffer from all your garbage that the ice transported from you to us, a non heat conductive material that reaches easily 50 to 100m thickness. So while you dig a 40m hole, we need several of 100m (the allowed maximum here) to get the same effect. It would cost me around SKR 300.000 (30.000€) to drill these holes. Not really a valid option, though. Sigh.
@@Herr_Bone But you also took all of our fertile soil. ;)
@@Herr_Bone Sorry to hear that. We had 5 meters of mudd before the Granit rock started, We drilled a total of 190 meter but only one hole
Cost 7000Euro
Then you drop the 70mm hose total 190+190meter , into to hole and fill the hose with a Mixture of Alcohol/Water. You connect it to your Ground source Heat pump in a closed loop
We have NIBE that can produce around 10KW output and up to 55C water for Radiators
Cost 9000Euro
It Heats a 210Sq meter house and produces all warm Water
I have NOT used any added Heat Electricity
It IS a very well Insulated House, but I also have an old (1980) Air/AIR exhange system installed , Otherwise you would get mould
The heat in the rock comes from groundwater that flows in cracks in the rock. The groundwater transports the cooled water away and warm water fills the cracks again
@@antiHUMANDesigns well… the ice took it, and we all were still Neandertaler at that time, but you are right. We still find many egg-shaped small to big granite stones on the fields, that all come from Skandinavia. We call them „Findlinge“, obviously because you can find them everywhere here.
@@Herr_Bone No, we were never neanderthals, they were a separate species.
Yeah, we have large fields of "rolling stones", called "kullersten". Smooth, round rocks that have been polished under moving ice.
In the US, about 5 years ago, replaced my oil furnace + old heat pump combo with a Mitsubishi inverter heat pump only. No furnace needed because unlike old styled pumps, it works below freezing. In moderate temps, you get about 300-400% "efficiency" and when it is very cold, you still get 100% efficiency, which just means it heats the same per watt as electric heating coils would. So basically it costs more than oil when it's freezing, but less than oil in the warmer months, so it evens out. Hot air from the vents is about 100-110f. System for 3,000sq ft. house cost $14,000 to install. No furnace, so barely any maintenance costs. Not the cheapest option if you have long cold winters and not so cheap electricity though.
Where in the US? Alaska requires other heating than Florida 🙂 Anyways, there are now "arctic" heat pumps, which are designed for efficiency at minus (Celsius) temperatures, usually with a two-stage design. Next time, watch out for efficiency at -10°C/14°F.
Thank you thank you for this comment! I had been trying to understand some peoples' comments for quite some time now, and what it is that people keep referring to by 400% efficiency. What they mean is more efficient than resistive heat. Phase change heat is more efficient than resistive heat, (but not more efficient than burning fuels in a closed environment). Another channel (Technology Connections) has a video regarding heat pumps and their efficiency and the host claims that heat pumps are more efficient than gas heat. This is wrong. He doesn't know what he's talking about (with regard to this specific matter) and people in the comments section there argued with me for a long time about it.
@@melissachartres3219 Heat pumps are always more efficient than any burning-something furnance. Even worst case they have 100% efficiency, in 99% it's avove 100%, typically 300%-500%. Territory furnances can never reach.
@@traumflug I don't understand how people can think that. Could you point me to a website or something? A plain gas furnace is about 95% efficient with the gas. A heat pump is less than that. It's electrically powered and that electricity has to come from somewhere.... which means that it has to be GENERATED in the first place. That process is only 40% efficient to begin with. This whole heat pump thing makes no sense. It's DEFINITELY more efficient than resistive heat, but phase change heat is not more efficient than burning something in a closed environment.
@@melissachartres3219 Well, if 95% is more than 400%, then a gas furnance is more efficient.
Generally it's safe to assume than when millions use a heat pump, most governments recommend a heat pump, scientists recommend a heat pump, then 95% is smaller than 400%, making a heat pump advantageous.
Sabine missed alot point HP one particular is HP often come with large ceramic insulatet buffer tanks that contain 200-1000 liters of water for heating. This means that one can use eletricity at night where it is cheap and in abundant from renewable power sources like hydro and wind which are big in Northen Europe, to heat this water up and then use the stored heat during the day to varm your house, basically a large heating battery. Also a reason why heat pumps are very popular in the nordics is because you get at .94 of kr rebate on every kwh you use above 4000kwh in a year. This means you basically get 45% rebate on all the power your HP use.
In early 2023, I had to completely replace the A/C system in my house. Climate zone is medium cold midwest USA.
The pandemic years caused HVAC prices to increase dramatically due to both supply chain issues, and government regulatory requirements for refrigerants and equipment ratings. I did extensive work trying to understand the costs and benefits of different HVAC options, as well as any rebates that may have been available. ("Inflation Reduction Act" rebates were not yet available, because it takes the government 2 years to stand up a new program, which could be done in the private sector in 4 weeks...)
Here are prices for some of the options, for a 2.5 ton system, including replacement of all the attic ducts:
1. Ground Source Heat Pump system: $42,000. (Extremely expensive due to insufficiently large property to accommodate underground pipes. Hence would have to drill 3 wells.)
2. Conventional Air-Air Heat Pump system: $20,000-$25,000.
3. Mini-split Heat Pumps with multiple heads throughout the house: $27,000. (More expensive even though no ducts required. Hmm...)
3. Air Conditioning only: $15,000. (I went with this...)
Notes:
1. Duct replacement represents ~$5,000 of these figures.
2. It was not possible to obtain a more efficient "two stage" system, because all the US manufacturers use Copeland compressors, and Copeland doesn't make a 2.5 ton "two stage".
3. I tried extensively to obtain an estimate of the payback period for a heat pump vs. A/C only, which is a very complex calculation involving: Your climate zone; your electricity and natural gas rates (or other backup heat); efficiency ratings of equipment, and cost of equipment. It turns out that a heat pump has identical hardware to an A/C of the same capacity, except for 3 additional parts - an accumulator, a reversing valve, and a temperature control (turns on the defrost cycle). This $500 set of parts mysteriously raises the cost of heat pumps by ~$3000-6000.
One surprisingly honest contractor clarified it for me with a very simple statement: "I'm not as big a fan of heat pumps as some. It's the same hardware as you note, but during the year it will cycle on/off twice as many months, and hence will wear out years sooner." So most or all of the energy savings will be wiped out when you have to replace the unit 5-8 years earlier than a comparable A/C + gas heat setup. (This considers the reality that my natural gas boiler will last for many decades with relatively little maintenance.) If you consider longevity and the energy cost to replace equipment, heat pumps are not nearly as "green" as Sabina-like academics imagine.
Yes, I think it's fine to talk about pumping cold. It's much like how we talk about hole charge carriers moving through semiconductors, or even just general circuit analysis current is going in the direction opposite of the direction electrons actually move.
Yes, but there is such a thing as Entropy. Heat is energy. It moves from high concentrations of energy to lower concentrations until equilibrium is achieved. Hole charge carriers is a made up concept to help electricians/ electronics engineers overcome the fact that the original theory of electricity moving from the positive terminal to the negative was incorrect. Just grow up and reverse the current flow in your circuits to reflect reality - don't start telling us mechanical engineers that we can ignore the laws of thermodynamics and have "cold flow" if we want.
@@nickwinn7812 Whoa there, next you'll be telling us that the USA holding onto an archaic measuring system "just because" in defiance of the rest of the planet, is ridiculous, unnecessary, and idiotic.
Make ice cubes in your freezer, then chuck them out the back door. Congrats, you just heated your house by pumping out the cold!
You anticipated my next comment!@@DMahalko
It's like referring to light bulbs as "dark suckers". Which makes sense because they stop working when they fill up with dark. You can tell because the bulb is dark in the centre when it "burns out"😅
Yeah. "Hey, waiter, please remove the air from my beer glass!".
Theres no such thing as “moving cold.” Its heat moving from one place to another.
This is how humans seem to forget there are only male and female genders. This kind of blasphemy.
What is the Speed of Dark? It is faster than light because no matter how fast the photons leave the Dark is there instantly.
The Fake-Green 'Eco-Bulbs' that contained concentrated toxic mercury compounds we were all forced to buy, like suckers, sure were darker than their incandescent filament forefathers, and after a year they were twice as dark. Useless, horrible things we were forced to buy by law by the EU, with Philips Electronics of Dutchland being the world's largest near monopoly at the time. Dark Suckers indeed!... Now don't get me started on 'Heat Pump' subsidies and fake-green mass forced, cold, dark, damp 'hot' sales scams!
95+% of new single-family homes in Estonia are heated either by air-to-water heat pumps or ground-to-water heat pumps and our climate is much colder than Germany's or the UK's. I don't understand the issue, really. Btw, ground source heat pumps don't need drilling, you can also place the loop around 1-1.5 m underground horizontally, that is quite a lot cheaper but does require more land.
In "sunny San Diego" we still get near freezing on winter nights. We do have really good insulation. We got rid of our propane and converted to all-electric a few years ago, which would be a bit more expensive, except for the fact that our 5 KW solar array produces all the energy we need. We do use a flash water heater which only runs maybe an hour per week,. Also, we only heat the rooms we are in, instead of the whole house. Long sleeves, electric blankets, and heating pads keep us quite comfortable. When it gets really hot during the summer, we air condition just the rooms we are in, and wear shorts. Grid-tied net metering = no electric bills ever. Heat pumps would be nice, but wouldn't save us any money.
If governments paid for installing heat pumps wherever possible, they could save a lot on building new power plants.
On April 8, 2024, Mexicans and Texans may have a chance to make history and scientifically prove the current atomic model wrong.
The so-called Allais Effect may be a real phenomenon, but in such a way that it does not always occur during a solar eclipse.
It would be about how close to the center of the Earth the line between the center of the Sun and the center of the Moon intersects the center of the Earth.
That is, how close the alignment of the Sun, the Moon and the Moon’s shadow passes the center of the Earth.
The closer, the stronger the phenomenon.
If so, scientific experiments should always be done when a total solar eclipse occurs at noon and near the equator.
The April 8 solar eclipse is pretty much exactly at noon in Mexico, I believe, and the area is much closer to the equator than the North Pole.
Ok, there is a lot of pressure in the center of the Earth.
I assume that massive and dense particles originating from the center of the Earth are pushed out of the Earth all the time, and on April 8th they are pushed through the area shadowed by the Moon directly towards the Moon and the Sun.
They meet particles corresponding to the countersphere, which originate from the Sun and the Moon.
During straight alignment, these particles have time to push through the corresponding particles again and again.
During the pushing through of each opposing particle, there is a strong interaction and thus the energy in the particles is dispersed over a larger area and the probability of encountering the next one increases, etc.
Pushing through the moon also activates these particles. Inside the moon, this small-scale energy moves more densely and inside these particles, etc.
Pushing towards the moon, these particles already have time to activate more than normal, because they encounter particles that have already penetrated the moon and activated inside the moon.
Physicists are already planning a new particle accelerator at Cern. Its price is estimated at around 20 billion euros.
On April 8, anyone can do scientific experiments very cheaply.
For example, local tennis clubs could use devices that launch tennis balls.
First, the device is adjusted to fly the balls as far and accurately as possible.
So it’s not necessarily worth trying to make the balls fly just as far as possible, if you can’t make the balls fly quite precisely the same distance, you know.
Ok, when we find out how far the balls fly with a certain power on average normally, we wait for the Solar eclipse and when the Moon’s shadow starts to reach the area, we start sending tennis balls into the air and monitor how far the balls fly.
Perhaps a surprise will be experienced during the exam.
You should fly the balls in at least two different directions. From north to south and from south to north.
The more distinct groups, the better.
Everyone should also think about some other scientific experiments that can be done in connection with the so-called to gravitation.
Traditionally, experiments have been done with pendulums and gravity measuring devices. You should also use them.
If someone has ready these small rockets that don’t aim for orbit, but only test how high you can get, then maybe during the solar eclipse it would be interesting to try if you can maybe even get much higher than you could assume based on the calculation in advance.
Ps. If the solar eclipse occurs in June, then I assume that it is worth doing these experiments even if the eclipse is closer to one of the polar regions than the equator and even if it is late evening or early morning.
This is because then the Earth is in the area between the Sun and the supermassive object in the center of the galaxy.
Perhaps from the center of the galaxy there is also a kind of matter / energy that physicists do not yet understand.
At least that’s what I assume.
That is, these supermassive objects in the centers of galaxies may emit dark matter as separate condensations that are much denser than the separate condensations in the nuclei of the atoms of the observable matter.
The denser, the slower the internal motion / time and the less these dark matter particles would interact with observable matter.
In June, when the Earth is in the area between the Sun and the center of the galaxy, these dark matter particles inside the Earth would meet the energy from the Sun in the opposite sphere and thus their internal movement / time would speed up and the interaction with the Earth’s matter would intensify.
I assume that the Earth gets new matter in its center in June when these dark matter particles collide in the center of the Earth with the nuclei of the Earth’s atoms.
Could the Earth even get new water molecules in its center?
That is, would new solid matter, but also new water and gas molecules, be born in the center of the Earth?
If so, perhaps the researchers should observe that more water and gas molecules escape from the Earth than estimated.
Greetings to all Mexicans and Texans. Also for all those who have the opportunity to participate in scientific experiments on April 8.
April 8, 2024 may be a very significant day for humanity, but it may not be so without you🙂
❤️
Depends. That's only true if you are already heating with electricity.
Where I live natural gas is pumped into houses and we heat with gas directly. If we were to switch to electric heating, even from efficient heat pumps, we'd be putting more strain on our electric grid (which is mostly natural gas anyway since 'green' alternatives don't really work well in our climate). We had a left-leaning government recently who got rid of our coal power and replaced a lot of it with green energy and... it's been problematic and we very nearly went without power for days if it weren't for our neighbours bailing us out.
It's the other way around. You don't need a power plant to heat with gas. to use a heat pump you need electricity though.
Governments paid=people pay for it
Wouldn't the heat leaving the building count as heat emissions
Sabrina - you need to do what I did.. getting close to 2 decades ago. I built a hybrid heat pump that uses evacuated solartubes and and a ground source heat pump- my average winter temp is -17c . and i live at latitude 51.5 it has reduced my heating cost by about 80 to 90% ( winter dependant). the solartubes will maintain nearly 100% of my heating in fall and spring and do about 30% in the winter. then the heat pump does it job for about 3 months out of the year at about cop of 3... it reduced my heating energy needs( including DHW) by 80 to 90% - I went from $1200 per year a couple decades ago to around $120 per year.. and currently and kind of sad to say my vampire electrical usage is actually bigger then my heating costs.
Your solution makes sense. You use solartubes when the sun shines and you store heat in an underground reservoir for the winter periode using a heat pump ....
I'm using a reversible R290 powered multi room AC installation, and according to my smart meter it's doing pretty well as a heat source (AIR to AIR, approx 4kW heat for 1kW electric). I love using it during autumn or spring on those evenings I'm feeling a little frosty. Floor heating takes forever to kick in, by the time it gets cozy after work I often go to bed already.
Here in Denmark, we are comitting alot to heat pumps, but we are also comitting to district heating, which in many cases is a comparable solution environmentally speaking - all depending on the source. I recently installed an 12 kW R290 air to water heatpump where before i had an older unit 13kW that ran on some ozone depleting refrigirant. my house is from 1971 (184m²) and is pretty poorly insulated. i have a combination of floor heating and radiators which works completely fine in combination with a heat pump. my heating curve is set to heat the water to 46C at -10 outside temp and 28C at +20C. My electricity bill is significantly smaller than if i had heated my house on basic electric heating - by my estimations, 1/4 - 1/3 of the energy.
Gotta love the irony of using Propane, not as a heat source by burning it as I had to in my old home, but as the refrigerant in a heat pump
Yeah, who would ever think of propane as having anything to do with cooling rather than only heating?
Sweet lady propane never ceases to amaze
@@EleneDOM I once used propane to freeze a water pipe. I turned the bottle upside down and let the liquid propane evaporate from the pipe. Gets to about -50°C. You just have to have good ventilation so you don't blow your house up...
Heat pumps are a no-brainer if achievable SCOPs are higher than the price ratio between electricity and gas/oil per kWh.
If you mess up on energy policy as badly as our german greens, you shouldn’t be surprised if people grow hesitant or even hostile to your electrification efforts 🤷🏽
With an annual average energy use for heating of 15.000kWh of gas and gas prices at 7-8 cents per kWh, while electricity is at 30 cents per kWh, it would take a SCOP above either 3.75 or even 4.3 to see any kind of savings or payback period…
Even if I achieved a SCOP of 5 (unlikely) and the electricity:gas ratio was favorable at 3.75, a 30.000€ investment into a heat pump would take 100 years to get that money back.
And it would take a government grant (that I pay for in taxes anyway) of 27.000€ to push it to a sensible 10 years…
Just build reactivate our nuclear plants and make power cheap again at that point…
hey have the same stupid policies in Germany that they have here in the UK. The market is firmly rigged in favour of gas.
@@rogerphelps9939 Yup! That's one way to say it! That the market is rigged in favor of gas!
I even set up a whole 3d calculation tool for myself on desmos to play with different electricity/gas prices and SCOPs and the monthly savings just don't justify the installation cost. Not unless your gas heater breaks or you're building a new home.
And if, like here in Germany, electricity and gas drift just a few more cents apart, even new home builders will be stuck with a more expensive heating system...
Our last home had a few heat pumps. Daikin brand name. They worked well, but there was one mounted to a wall, instead of sitting on the ground. The different cycles the heat pump would go through would produce different noise through the wall. If buying heat pumps, have them installed on the ground with a stand to keep them up out of the snow.
I am disappointed to learn my freezer will never reach absolute zero. I have had it running for 10 years now and figured it must have been getting close
I'm a building engineer who has worked for over 15 years designing heat pump systems. The problem with heating your home with a heat pump, specifically an air-air heat pump, isn't the max indoor temperature they can achieve. That problem can be dealt with by simply installing bigger heat exchangers (radiators) in your home. No, the problem is with the outside unit. In order to be able to extract heat from the outdoor air the heat exchanger in the outdoor unit needs to have a temp difference of around 10 degrees with that outdoor air. So if the outdoor temperature is 10C the heat exchanger needs to be around 0C. And that leads to the main problem which is that the outdoor air will condensate on this heat exchanger since it is colder than the outside air, especially when humidity is high. And when the heat exchanger is at 0C or less that condensation freezes on the heat exchanger. Once enough ice has formed the system needs to melt that buildup of ice and goes into a so called defrost phase, during which time the system doesn't provide any heating. Because of this the system's efficiency drops significantly, which basically means that with outdoor temps of less than 5C the system's COP (Coefficient Of Performance) drops to around 1. That means that for every kW of energy you put in you get a kW of heating capacity, so you're then pretty much running 1 on 1. Heat pumps are great for cooling, which is when their COP is up to 4 or 5 but for heating they are much less effective. Having a different kind of refrigerant won't do a lot to improve that efficiency since the problem remains that the outside heat exchanger will always need that temp difference.
It's different when you have a water to air/water system but, as is being mentioned in this video, they are more expensive. In order to really solve this problem new heat pump technology is required, like magneto-caloric heat pumps.
About the sound that the outdoor unit produces; this is not produced by the compressor (pump) since these are usually pretty quiet and in an insulated part of the unit. The main culprit is the fan that blows air over the heat exchanger. About needing a well insulated house in order for a heat pump to be efficient; that is true and before getting a heat pump one needs to look into insulating their house, either on the inside or on the outside. To battle indoor humidity/dampness the installation of a heat recovery ventilation system is the best solution. These systems have efficiencies up to 95% which means they exchange 95% of the warmth extracted from the house with the incoming cold outdoor air, so you don't pump out all the air you've just warmed up with your heat pump. If you take a well built, well insulated and airtight house (a passive house) this can be heated with very little effort/energy (pretty much a hair dryer can be sufficient).
Would a water-water heatpump work on a houseboat? I'm trying to get some numbers. Is water to water more expensive only because of the well\ infrastructure? Because on a boat I could simply use outside water.
@@michielvanhYes, that would definitely work ...this is how most boats, from yachts to cruise ships, do it. You could go for a water-water heat pump either with in-floor heating/cooling (vloerverwarming) or with convectors which are similar to the indoor units you'd get with an air-air heat pump, the difference being that they use water instead of refrigerant or you could use radiators like you would with a conventional gas heating system (although they might have to be bigger because of the lower water temperature a heat pump provides).
The main cost for water-water heat pump installations does indeed come from the well (bron) that is needed. You need to either drill a deep vertical hole or you need to lay quite a bit of piping horizontally in the ground (if you have enough land) and both are quite expensive.
In you case you could, like you say, use the outside water but not directly, you'd need an external heat exchanger that sits in the water (minimum about 40 cm under the surface an 40cm from the bottom). You need this heat exchanger because the water might be dirty/contain debris which could clog up or damage the heat exchanger of your heat pump. An external heat exchanger like this is usually made out of plastic piping and is a closed system which contains a mixture of water and glycol to prevent it from freezing. One thing to keep in mind is that you will probably need some kind of permit to install such a system.
If you have a search for aquathermie I'm sure you'll be able to find more information about pricing and permits.
I can turn the bottom of my boat into a big heat exchanger by welding pipes on the bottom. (On the inside). Wonder how big that needs to be..
@@michielvanhI don't think that would be very efficient and that you'd need a serious total length of piping in order to be able to transfer enough heat.
The contact area between the bottom of your boat and the pipes is going to be quite small, especially compared to a pipe fully surrounded by water, and it is through that contact area that the heat transfer will take place. It would be far more efficient to have an external heat exchanger that is fully submerged in the water you want to transfer heat with. That way you have the full surface area of those pipes in contact with the water which will greatly improve heat transfer.
Say you have a pipe with a diameter of 50mm and a length of 1 meter. That pipe has a surface area of about 0.16m2, which is all in contact with the surrounding water. Weld that same pipe inside to the bottom of your boat and the surface area in contact with that bottom will maximum be about 1/5, so 0.032m2. So you'd need roughly 5 times more piping in order to get the same heat exchange.
And that is disregarding the fact that with pipes on the inside the heat would not only have to be transferred through the wall of the pipes but also through the bottom of your boat, which means it will take longer to transfer that heat. That means your flow rate through the pipes will have to be slower which will further impact the efficiency.
You could contact Windex, a Dutch company in Hardinxveld-Giessendam, who do a lot of this kind of stuff and who might be able to give you some advice.
I would actually watch a video if you made one. You seem knowledgeable and make good points.
living in Canada, I've recent driven across the country.
i couldn't help notice in the last 2 years the amount of heat pumps has skyrocketed.
almost every single house I've seen, driven by, or been in has one now.
The UK also has an archaic system of planning restrictions which prevents air heat pumps being fitted to the front/principal elevation and within a minimum distance of other properties without it, thus disincentivising upgrades where terraced houses only have this option.
Thanks for this great video! Love your channel.
Heat is the abundance of energy. Cold is the absence of energy. To be accurate, we should always talk about moving heat.
Otherwise, we might as well refer to light sources as "dark suckers." :)
Minor linguistic note; while your English is near-impeccable, the propane refrigerant R-290 would commonly be called "R two-ninety"; not "R two hundred and ninety." Of course, that may be only in the United States; I'm unfamiliar with how refrigerants are referred to in the rest of the Anglosphere.
I'm beginning to be a huge fan of heat pumps. Over the next few years my wife and I are planning on installing a ground-source heat pump. While more expensive initially, they have the benefit of producing heat no matter what the weather is like outdoors. In some Northeastern states in the US, the air can get so cold in the winter that the air-sourced heat pumps lose efficiency and become unable to extract heat energy from the atmosphere at a high enough rate to keep up with a home's heat loss, leading to cold homes and even burst water pipes. If I understand correctly, it's a rare occurrence, but the damage that can occur and the inconvenience are bad enough to require redundant wood burning, electric, natural gas, oil, or propane systems.
Here in England , a company has installed industrial scale heat pumps into the abandoned flooded coal mines under the town of Gateshead , creating a peak output of 6.23MW . The average water temperature at the mines' deepest points is 40C , and 15C in the coolest shafts . 😊
Also in south Wales. It is true geothermal when the source is at 40C. Brilliant.
Yes but the system is not running at the property. You will die if they shut it down.
@@ilricettario silly augument it equaly applies to everythin apart from wood.
They are ground source which do work, Air source however have a little problem called thermodynamics, Especially in a cold damp windy place like Gateshead 2°C today with an icy wind.
"40C" That can be used directly for heating.
In our house we have 25C in the tubes.
Electricity unit prices here in the UK are almost 4x that of gas. Any efficiency gains in switching to a heat pump would be largely or completely eaten by that price difference. And that's ignoring the fact I, like many people, live in a poorly-insulated rented property and have more chance of convincing my landlord to let me live here rent-free than I do of convincing them to swap the aging gas boiler for a heat pump.
real-world heat pumps are around 500% efficient so you might be surprised
Yes. Since renewables are cheaper than gas and the efficiency of a gas fired combined cycle electricity generation plant is around 65% the price of electricity per kwh should not be much more than twice that of gas. Apparently the price of electricity in the UK is linked to that of gas which is another way of saying that it is rigged to be artificially high. Someone is ripping us off.
No reason why new builds are not 100% heat pump. That's the sensible way to roll them out.
@@iyziejane Eh 500% efficient on paper, in reality they could be much much lower, still greater than unity mind you but many will probably be hovering into the 250-300% range but again it largely depends on climate, system used, etc etc. For me electricity is about 6.5x more expensive than gas, and gas ain't all that cheap either. Now I do have solar panels, but that largely keeps me at zero electrical usage as it stands, if I started changing gas appliances to electrical, it definitely would swing the other way.
@@Mike__B Fair, the 500% real-world efficiency is what it is for my part of the US, where we have sub-freezing winter but it's not too bad. The on-paper theoretical efficiency, since this is a physics channel, is T_warm / (T_warm - T_cold) where the temperatures are in absolute scale, so on paper efficiency can be 1000%, which is why real-world performance can be 500%. The physics favors heat pumps enough that if they aren't favorable due to electricity prices, that suggests a messed up energy market efficiency to me.
Very timely, thank you, Smart Lady. Need a replacement for my 20 year old electric heater/ cooler, yes it is hard to stop a Trane, but was wary of hvac marketing bs....
Ms Hossenfelder, consider that the efficiency of a heat pump depends on the entire energy system by which the pump compressor runs. It is possible to run a compressor using a windmill, or gerbils in exercise wheels, or steam power from boiler. But let's focus on electrically powered pumps.
For electrically powered pumps, the energy system includes an electricity generator, a transmission line from the generator to the pump, the heat pump itself. Let's overlook the part of the system that makes the generator rotate, though that counts too.
The generator uses energy, much of which is dissipated as heat. Yes, anyone who runs the rotating electrical machines which are generators, knows they have to closely monitor the generator's rotor parts because heat is dissipated into them. If I remember my schooling correctly, the energy dissipated in the generator rotation is greater than the energy used by the rotation of the motor (in this case the heat pump).
When a heat pump is said to have, let's pick a number, 400 percent efficiency, it means the pump moves 4 times as much heat energy from one place to another, compared to the energy of the electrical power into the heat pump. But the energy dissipated by the generator is not represented in that comparison.
The ratio of the heat from the generator compared to the heat from the motor depends on the efficiency of both the generator and the motor. In an ideal scenario where both the generator and the motor are 100 % efficient, the heat from the generator would be equal to the heat from the motor. In reality, due to losses in energy conversion and transmission, the heat from the generator would be higher than the heat from the motor.
Commonly, the heat from the generator is 30 % higher than the heat from the motor. It is difficult to deliver much more than 40% of the electrical power into the heat pump motor. Which means, looking at the whole system, generator plus motor combination is only 160 percent efficient at pumping heat, not the 400 % advertised.
As you well know, theory has to be tested by real world experiment.
We don't need a large hadron collider to test this. What we do is look at two homes in the same neighborhood, and ask which home has the lower utility bill, regardless if that bill is for oil, propane, or electricity.
In Canada, we do use heat pumps for air-conditioning and refrigerators. But not for home heating. A home owner is free to use a heat pump for heat in winter, if he is willing to pay the higher utility bill. Most people realize, it is cheaper heat a home with carbon fuel, whether it be oil, propane, or even a wood-burning stove.
I am not current on the latest carbon fuel prices for home heating compared to electrical bill for running a heat pump for home heating. I leave that calculation as an exercise for the reader's of this comment.
Well, by the comments a lot of fellow Canadians disagree with your statements.
I live in an urban area in Québec, Canada. I have a heat pump that works with natural gas and electricity. Since the temperatures range from -30C in the winter to 34C in the summer, the heat pump acts as an A/C in the summer and a furnace in the winter. When the outside temperature goes below -15C, the gas part of the furnace kicks in since the heat pump is not efficient enough to extract the heat from outside. Is this common elsewhere?
The Technology Connections channel talks about heat pumps in the Chicago area, which has a roughly similar temperature range.
Areas in the American West will use two state systems where Propane heat is more expensive than electricity. You will have a similar price differential because Hydro Quebec is cheap. Here in Saskatchewan electricity is much more expensive and the climate much colder for longer. Dual Electric resistance and heat pump systems could make sense here if you don't have cheap gas.
@@joewiddup9753Interesting. Hydro Quebec charges about 0.10$/kWh for electricity. I don't how much it costs elsewhere but I do believe that's pretty cheap. Dual-energy system are a really good deal because your rate structure changes: the rate becomes 0.05$/kWh but if the temperature drops below -15C, the rate goes over 0.27$/hWh. That's when you use gas instead of a heat pump. This reduces the amount of electricity the province has to import when it's really cold.
@@bearcubdaycareThanks for the info!
In The Netherlands a hybrid solution like that will become a requirement for new gas furnaces in 2026. But the heatpump only needs to work to about +5C, so a small heatpump. For colder temperatures the older houses first need more insulation.
In Australia we are used to heat pumps because being generally a hot country there's no other way to cool down. So using the reverse cycle of the pump most households use it for heating as well. Since it rarely - by European standards - gets really cold here (apart from Alpine areas) the air to air heat pump is often sufficient, especially in capital cities.
I am one of those 2% of Dutch people who lives in a building with heat pumps. Both for heating and warm water. It's a brand new building (first stone laid in 2020), with really good insulation. Theres a central room with a couple massive heat pumps, with each apartment having just a delivery system (floor heating). Since warm water must be able to reach at least 60C by law, every apartment has a tiny electric boiler to make up for the difference, because the heat pump provides up to about 40C.
First the good news: it's almost impossible to reach sub-20C temperatures indoors. However, that is chiefly due to the insulation.
The bad news:
1) it's been quite unstable so far. The past 6 months it's been out of service on at least 5 different occasions, one of which lasted several days. Not fun, because it also means no warm water.
2) it's really really really expensive! This hasnt much to do with heatpumps themselves, but rather how the system for collective non-gas heating systems is set up in the Netherlands. The collective system is owned by a single company, and unlike gas, there is no option to switch providers. So its a monopoly and we all know what that does to price. The consequence is that I'm paying about twice as much for my ultra-insulated hyper-efficient heat pump system than what i did at my not-so-greatly insulated natural gas-fired old apartment.
Naturally, this is why these systems are not popular.
Lastly, there are some getting used to issues. The low-temperature floor heating system may indeed bring the air temperature up to comfortable levels, but there is no comfy standing directly next to the radiator after coming home on a cold day-type experience.
Here in the central part of Washington State, heat pumps are common. These heat pumps are used with forced air. They are, however, supplemented with electric grid 'emergency heat' so that when the heat pump cannot warm air up to the temperature needed it is essentially an electric furnace. That works here because we have very (very!) cheap electricity from hydroelectric dams on the Columbia river.