'Germans Have Seen the Future, and It's a Heat Pump' - Slashdot
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'Germans Have Seen the Future, and It's a Heat Pump'
'Germans Have Seen the Future, and It's a Heat Pump' (nytimes.com) 85
Posted by EditorDavid
on Sunday December 04, 2022 @02:43PM from the house-warming dept.Facing higher prices for natural gas, Germans are now embracing climate-friendly heat pumps, reports the New York Times. "So much so that heat pumps are often sold out, and the wait for a qualified installer can last months."
The German government is among the fans. "This is the technology of the future," Robert Habeck, the minister for the economy, told reporters last month while announcing a government plan to promote heat pumps. "To achieve our goals, we want to get to six million customers by 2030," Mr. Habeck said.... The cost for the electricity needed to power a heat pump is about 35 percent cheaper than natural gas, according to Verivox, a company that compares energy prices for German consumers. The savings are even greater for those who can run their heat pumps off solar panels.... Sales of heat pumps in Germany have more than doubled in the past two years, especially as the price of gas has soared.... To encourage people to make the change, the government is offering subsidies that can cover up to a quarter of the upfront price of a unit, along with subsidies for other energy-efficiency improvements up to a total of €60,000. Germany lags far behind its European neighbors, where imported natural gas was not as affordable or abundant. Residents of Finland and Norway, which rely more on electricity, have 10 times the number of heat pumps as do Germans, according to Agora Energiewende, a policy institute in Berlin. Even the Netherlands, which sits on its own wealth of natural gas but made a push for the more climate-friendly machines several years ago, has double the number of the units that Germany has.
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Get yourself a backhoe or a drillin' rig, and a compactor, and put in your own ground loop. Pay someone to come along and do the rest of it, and go into business together. It's going to be a growth industry going forwards with increasingly chaotic weather.
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You're losing it.
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I'm going to have to do some redecorating if I'm going to move into your head. At least the rent is cheap.
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in northern Montana it's too damn cold for them to work on the days when you need them the most
You sure about that? There are pumps commercially available [templari.com] That can give you 2.4x boost even in weather as cold as -20 degree Celsius.
And with heat pumps you can harvest heat during daytime when the weather is warmer, and save it in water tanks to use during night.
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I'd love one, but up in Edmonton it's not uncommon to get stretches well into the -20s or even -30s, especially with the polar vortex expanding more often [ucdavis.edu]. I've heard they're improving but I think a gas furnace backup is still a good idea.
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For sure, heat pumps fall into that same rhetorical trap that EVs do. Some people argue the concept doesn't work because it can't meet all people's needs everywhere all at once.
For large portions of Canada? Gas will still rule for some time, it's just too cold, life threatening cold at times. For the lower 50% of the USA though heat pumps can entirely replace gas and resistive heaters. Almost all systems will still carry resistive emergency heaters for those 1% freak occurrences.
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I have zero issues with Heat Pumps as a concept, I'd love to get one and only have my furnace kick in at -20. If nothing else I need some form of AC but I'm not sure if the cost justifies it on AC alone.
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Sorry didn't mean to imply you did, speaking in generalities.
And for sure, I was gonna ask if having central AC was as common in parts of Canada. Swapping an old AC for a new one that has a heat pump makes sense. Installing AC into a house that wasn't built for it is a whole different animal. Could still make sense but is a whole different calculus
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Any place with a forced air gas or oil furnace can swap in a heat pump. They will need electrical work though.
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Traditionally no. The houses are insulted well enough that they're usually fine in the hot weather if you keep the curtains closed. But it's changing since in the last couple years we've had a couple brutal heat waves of sustained 30+. I actually had to move to my parent's house (which has AC) since mine was so hot.
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Yeah, it'd help if we got a "geothermal heat pump boring system" that was as much cheaper to operate as SpaceX rockets are over "old space" companies.
I looked into what geothermal would cost for my house, and I was quoted $100k. I think that was a "We don't want to bother, go away" quote though.
I hate that contractors aren't willing to give me a ballpark, "Okay, I'll call you up when I have the finances for it for an exact quote" rough estimate. I don't need paperwork, but is this going to be ~$10k, $50k,
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heat pumps are cheap now days.
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A friend in Dallas replaced resistive heat with a heat pump. He said his calculated ROI was ~33%. No brainer!
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Clearly the market is mispricing the environmental costs... the correct thing for government to do would be enact a punitive double property tax on homes that use antique resistance heating systems.
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Inflation Reduction Act has a heat pump rebate/subsidy so there is forward momentum.
We're not close politically to getting a carbon tax and a double property tax probably ends up regressive so subsidies is the most viable path.
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Property taxes are local to the state with some counties getting a bit extra. There is no national property tax and trying to get one through Congress is impossible.
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So, what you are saying is that the state should be punishing the people who can't afford to update in the first place.
Or do you think people would choose resistive, or whatever other than an efficient heat pump, do so because they want to spend more $ and fuck the environment just for fun?
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Being a pauper doesn't give you a right to kill the planet.
They should be given a choice of "Lead or Silver." Subsidy to upgrade or crushing taxes if they don't.
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Clearly. I think the biggest problem is the rental market (about half of US housing) that disconnects capital investments from ongoing costs. A landlord I know dismissed that ROI with 'but I don't pay the bills' and apparently didn't think a more energy efficient rental could command higher rent. They might be correct as most renters don't check the utility costs before leasing.
One idea to remedy this disconnect would be to require landlords to publish the average monthly utility costs for the past yea
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Even most Canadians live in places where an air heat pump works fine. BC south coast never goes below -15, and southern Ontario very rarely gets too cold. That's over half the population just in those regions.
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And anyway, in the end, you do you.
But temperature statistics for Edmonton show average temperatures in winter of -15 degrees Celsius. While I accept that you can get stretches of down to -30, the question is not whether every one particular night is a total win, it's about the average. And typical air-water heat pumps can be augmented with gas or even electric "traditional" heating to get over stretches which they truly have no more capacity of withstanding.
Of course, if you can use ground heat pumps (i.e.
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It's only partially about the average. If the efficiency drop during stretches of -30 costs you more than savings at other times, or even worse, if the heat pump can't actually handle the temperature differential.
It still sounds doable [bchydro.com], but you still need a decent backup heat source.
Geothermal isn't really a practical solution for an existing structure. Same with a wood fireplace (also a fire risk, not to mention air pollution and some heat loss from the chimney).
I suspect gas is the most efficient augmenta
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I don't know who modded you up, but both them and you don't seem to understand how cold Montana gets, let alone Canada.
Across the upper Midwest US -20 C is a common overnight low in January and February. We'll get at least a week where overnight lows are -25C, and we touch -30C at least once a year. Every now and then we get slammed with colder temps than that.
And global warming isn't helping - the more hot air we push up to the north pole the more bitterly cold arctic air gets displaced and comes down to v
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Sounds like it will be better / less expensive to just insulate and weatherize your home more to help the secondary (gas/electric) source on your heat pump be used less / be more effective on those (relatively fewer) extremely cold days.
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Yup - improved insulation pays you back 24/7/365. I can heat my central european house on a few sticks of wood per day, since it has triple glazing and 200mm foam insulation. In spring and autumn it is mostly heated by the attached winter garden which acts as a giant solar collector. Gas heating really only kicks in in winter when we are away or too lazy/cranky to light a fire.
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Pro Tip: That works for your love-life too, not just your house.:-)
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Oh my goodness, yes. There is something to be said for borehole type installations over a large area garden installation. The borehole costs more but for maintenance you can pull the pipes up without destroying your whole garden all over again.
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If on coldest days you keep on heating however you do it right now, that doesn't prevent you from saving the rest of the time. But if the payback period stretches to 15 years.... yeah that's a problem, there are probably better ways for you to spend that money towards a more energy efficient home.
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I'm very happy that I installed geothermal in my home in Florida. In my case much better efficiency for AC and dehumidification (rather than heating) is the big benefit for me.
The proposed payback period was a bit long but that calculation ignores 2 things. First, I believe that energy costs are going to start rising at a rate that exceeds normal inflation and having a system that uses far less electricity will become better and better and shorten that period. Second, I live near (about 600 feet from) the
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