26 ms·
DOE announces breakthrough in residential cold climate heat pump technology
- fithisux 4y agoI'll believe it when I see it marketed. Even if it works I doubt it will be within financial reach for most people.
- kennywinker 4y agoGreat, now if someone can crack the engineering challenge of installing a name-brand heat pump for less than $18,000 (CAD) that'd be great.
- com2kid 4y agoLots of do it yourself videos on YouTube showing installs for well under 5k. Labor is expensive right now. :(
- b112 4y agoName brands tend to be unbuyable by the consumer in Canada, and if you import one, or buy via grey market, the threat is that you have no warranty.
- kennywinker 4y agoAll the quotes I got were for a day of install. I assume it'd be one tech, but let's be generous... 2 techs x 8 hours x $150/hour = $2400 for labour. So that means either the pump itself costs $15k, or somethings wrong in this market.
- kennywinker 4y agoOr my alternate hot-take (or cold-take?): Great, now if someone can crack the engineering challenge of an air-to-water heat pump water heater that doesn't turn your basement into a walk-in refrigerator, that'd be great.
- metadat 4y agoAdd a server rack and things will warm up down there.
- kennywinker 4y agoMake it a liquid-cooled server rack and we can cut out the hot water heater entirely
- thrill 4y agoRun it on solar power and pull the water out of the atmosphere and we can save a bundle on running power and water.
- ulrikrasmussen 4y agoWhy would it do that? The heat exchanger is placed outside.
- chrislund 4y agoDepending on your market, Sanden and Mitsubishi make air-source DHW heat pumps where the evaporator/heat source source is remote (i.e., outdoor) rather than integrated with the tank. I can't speak to Mitsubishi's line but IIRC Sanden has the DHW go straight to the outdoor unit, but then you may need freeze protection, which I think Sanden provides via heat trace. When my current water heater bites the dust, I plan on getting a Sanden, and looking in to the feasibility of making a glycol loop between the outdoor unit and an indoor "indirect" tank to eliminate the need for freeze protection.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- stormbrew 4y agoI recently installed a (quite large) heat pump for less than that, though it came close. A lot of the cost came from a few things: - the Canada premium: these sorts of things are just more expensive here. The base price was just higher than I could find in the US, but obviously importing is too expensive. I think the reason for this is there's almost no stock. - adapting my house: the house I live in was built to have central air added to it, but even so the pipes going from the furnace room to the outside had to be insulated both directions instead of only one for an AC. Ripping up our basement ceiling to do this added a lot to the cost. An unfinished basement would help a lot here. - HVAC company confusion: I had to go through like five HVAC companies before I found one that would believe me that I really wanted it. The one I got is a commercial outfit, so their prices were just higher. Even they were skeptical but they were willing to work with us, and by the end they talked about doing more installs so that was nice. I think the cost for the install and unit itself was $12k for a top of line carrier unit capable of working down to pretty low temperatures. But we already had a compatible carrier furnace and exchanger. Was another couple thousand for ripping up the basement, which we had other contractors do. This was also literally during the heat dome last year. They had to ship the unit across the country.
- nawitus 4y agoWhy is it so expensive? It's like $1k in Finland.
- euroderf 4y agoUnits are somewhere over a thou and (simple, not multiduct) installation is somewhere under a thou.
- kennywinker 4y agoI have no idea. You can definitely do it for cheaper. There are $1000-$3000 single-head units available online for self-install, and you could hire an HVAC person to come out and do the high pressure line part of it (or all of it) for a similar range. It just gets expensive with the name-brand ones. For some reason that $2k-6k turns into 10k-20k when you switch to a name brand (e.g. mitsubishi). They're only available through specific installers, and using a non-authorized installer means your warranty is void.
- magicalhippo 4y agoMaybe we're talking about different things? I'm in Norway and we got a Mitsubishi Kaiteki[1] for $1800 total, including installation and 25% VAT. Of course, a multi-room install would probably get expensive quickly here too. [1]: https://kaiteki.no/ https://kaiteki.no/
- zo1 4y ago36k BTU multi room split unit installs are like 4-5K USD here in South Africa, including installation from the rough prices I've seen.
- disantlor 4y agohmm as someone about to purchase a heat pump system for heat in a northern climate I am not sure if I should wait... is this an announcement of a breakthrough or a challenge to find a breakthrough?
- zip1234 4y agoThere are already heat pumps that work at very low temps. Mitsubishi has models that are still heating at -13f
- boulos 4y agoFTA, they already measured it and will deploy in 2024: > The prototype delivers 100% heating at 5°F at double the efficiency, and 70% to 80% heating at -5°F and -10°F. DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory validated the performance and efficiency of Lennox’s prototype. > Lennox is one of nine manufacturers competing in the CCHP Technology Challenge. Its product and others that meet the CCHP Technology Challenge will undergo trials in cold climate regions over the next two years to demonstrate performance, efficiency, and comfort when applied in the field throughout a winter. Deployment and commercialization are planned for 2024.
- Jgrubb 4y agoI just bought a Mitsubishi mini split system to replace our oil furnace and bring A/C to our house here in New Jersey for the first time. Their high end outdoor units heat down to -13 F, which is colder than I've ever seen here. It arrives in august. Gree has a system that claims to have full heat down to -31, so I'd say just keep researching and you'll probably be fine.
- throw0101a 4y ago> Gree has a system that claims to have full heat down to -31, so I'd say just keep researching and you'll probably be fine. Doing a quick search, they're using 'standard' R410A refrigerant (PDF): * https://www.greecomfort.com/assets/our-products/multi-plus-ultra/documents/multi-plus-ultra-service-parts-catalog-d.pdf https://www.greecomfort.com/assets/our-products/multi-plus-u... the same as everyone else. It seems just that they though it worth the engineering effort to push a little further than most other companies. See anything with the label "For Extreme Conditions": * https://www.greecomfort.com/our-products/ https://www.greecomfort.com/our-products/
- impostervt 4y agoThat's great news. I have a heat pump in my house, but still need to use the gas furnace when the temp drops below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. A repair person goofed the settings last January, and I didn't notice the furnace wasn't kicking in until the end of February. My electric bill went from $150-ish for Feb 2021 to $450-ish for Feb 2022.
- philips 4y agoWhat heat pump do you have?
- danans 4y agoThat's pretty poor performance. Most modern heat pumps on the market will work well below 32F, even at > 1 COP.
- happyopossum 4y agoIt’s not about ‘working’, it’s about the cost of electricity when it gets colder and the efficiency drops. Gas is pretty cheap for heating in most of the US…
- beepy 4y ago“Lennox International… developed the first prototype that achieved the Technology Challenge’s standards about a year ahead of schedule. The prototype delivers 100% heating at 5°F at double the efficiency, and 70% to 80% heating at -5°F and -10°F.” The release goes on to say they expect commercialization and deployment in 2024.
- tempestn 4y agoPerhaps I missed it skimming the article, but my question is, double the efficiency compared to what? To the current state of the art cold climate hear pump? Or to a resistive heater?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoHeat pumps have efficiency > 100%
- lupire 4y agoEfficiency is a misleading word for heating, because the units don't match; they are both energy, but different "type". The denominator is fuel energy lost, but the numerator is thermal energy change within an area of interest. A heat pump moves thermal energy from outside, changing unimportant thermal energy into good thermal energy. "Coefficient of performance" is a better term. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance
- boardwaalk 4y ago> The prototype delivers 100% heating at 5°F at double the efficiency, and 70% to 80% heating at -5°F and -10°F So, 2 EER (2x of resistive heat) at 5F, 1.8 at -5F and 1.6 at -10F? Is that right? Seems awkwardly worded.
- mlyle 4y ago> So, 2 EER (2x of resistive heat) at 5F Yes (or double of previous model as another commentator points out-- hard to say). > 1.8 at -5F and 1.6 at -10F? They've not told us the efficiency-- just that it provides 70-80% of nameplate amount of heating at those temperatures.
- boardwaalk 4y agoAh, I see. I figured they'd keep the input energy constant because otherwise you're not saying much at all (you could figure that the efficiency plummets and you'd be better off with a space heater).
- mlyle 4y agoIt's possible. Also possible it's barely outperforming the space heater at the lower temperature and input power has increased. They've not told us enough.
- coryrc 4y agoThe energy input goes down because it physically can't run a differential high enough to get full heating output. They could choose the lowest temperature, find it's power input, then fix it at that amount. But at low temperatures the concern is usually less "efficiency" and more "am I going to freeze to death", because in most of the cold areas temperatures aren't usually that cold for that long (though in others it definitely is, and if you're running at 1.6 COP for a significant amount of time, you're better off with more insulation than a heat pump).
- hedora 4y agoIt says "double" the efficiency, so I assume they mean 2x the COP of the previous model at 5F, and 1.7-1.8x the old COP at -5 and -10F. A COP of 2 @ 5F isn't a "breakthrough" vs. the first commercially available model I could find numbers for, and a COP of 1.5 at -10F seems implausible: https://www.nordicghp.com/2017/01/heat-pump-effective-temperature-range/ https://www.nordicghp.com/2017/01/heat-pump-effective-temper... Honestly though, this press release is so poorly written, I wouldn't trust the numbers match up to anything.
- ocdtrekkie 4y agoWith natural gas hitting four times it's cost last year, couldn't come at a better time. Next winter, heat will cost more than rent in Chicago.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoDon’t worry, the rent will go up too.
- formvoltron 4y agoAnyone know how this compares to a geothermal system?
- thinkcontext 4y agoHeat pumps for geothermal applications don't need to be optimized for less than 0C.
- danans 4y agoIt doesn't really compare since ground-source/geothermal systems are designed to work with a smaller temperature difference (since the earth stays about 50F most of the year a few feet down). Business wise, if this really works at 2COP at 5F, this might take over most of the market served by ground source heat pumps though.
- overeater 4y agoDoes anyone know why there has never been any breakthroughs in air conditioning for 50 years? Windows air conditioners have been incredibly heavy, loud, expensive, and resource-intensive for so long. Even a small room needs one that is back-breaking to install. And pretty much everyone in the world (except those with central air) needs a couple of air conditioners now. Sure the "efficiency" is improving but it's mainly tricks for turning it on/off at better times. I know there are some U-shaped ones now, but it's just a slightly different styling. Edit: two commenters pointed out examples of air conditioners which are 77 lbs and 56 lbs. As a comparison, the OSHA recommended lifting weight is 50 lbs. I would love to see someone apply Apple's obsession with thinner, lighter, "revolutionary new design" to ACs.
- bushbaba 4y agoIdk this "toshiba" AC has a built in heat pump and operates at super quiet levels. Would I call it a "breakthrough", likely not. But it is a meaningful improvement over an AC released decades ago. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Toshiba-14-000-BTU-12-000-BTU-DOE-115-Volt-Inverter-Wi-Fi-Quiet-42-dB-Portable-Air-Conditioner-w-Heat-upto-550-sq-ft-White-RAC-PT1412HVWRU/318747168 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Toshiba-14-000-BTU-12-000-BTU-DO...
- JaimeThompson 4y agoCheck out the inverter type ones such as this one [1] It isn't light but it is quiet and adjusts the amount of power it uses depending on cooling needs much better than a typical window unit making it more efficient. [1] https://www.midea.com/us/air-conditioners/window-air-conditioners/8000-btu-u-shaped-air-conditioner-maw08v1qwt https://www.midea.com/us/air-conditioners/window-air-conditi...
- daydream 4y agoThe Midea U window AC units are a really good product. I am easily cooling a roughy 1,200 square feet space with only one of the 12k BTU units and a few ceiling fans, and it typically gets into the 90’s F here in the summer with significant humidity. No affiliation to Midea just a satisfied customer.
- bradleyjg 4y agoI don’t believe in breakthroughs anymore until I see a shipping product. I don’t care if you are a scientist, company, government agency, or NGO same thing applies. Tell me you’ve made an incremental improvement and I’ll believe you, tell me you’ve made a breakthrough and either you’re lying or something will prevent it from being realized before commercial availability. This is what decades of press releases and articles that might as well be press releases have taught me.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y agoThe “save up to $500” in the presser is just so obviously fluff. $500 in what home? And I suspect the magic here is also an air tight new construction home with a layout designed around this, not leaky everything with an old water heater tucked under the stairs, a 30 year old furnace, and R19 insulated walls.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WithinReason 4y ago> $500 in what home? The "up to" part means it's the absolutely largest home you can possibly imagine
- pbourke 4y agoPresumably the 30 year old furnace is replaced or supplemented with a new heat pump. I have realized an approximately $500 yearly savings by replacing an older electric tank water heater with a hybrid electric (heat pump) water heater so I can believe that claim.
- linsomniac 4y agoYou are right to be skeptical, but in this case the lie is not in the performance but that it is a breakthrough. The announcement is basically: A US company (Lenox) has a prototype heat pump that matches performance of Mitsubishi and LG heat pumps. The DOE is running a competition to get US companies to improve performance of their heat pumps.
- dukeofdoom 4y agoSo 10k+ outlay to save under $500/year. That would take only 20+ years to pay off. The wall units are kind of flimsy. Expect at least one to break. And that $500 in savings is probably $300/year in reality. Its still a great option for some places, just not really to switch over from a gas furnace.
- prirun 4y agoSeems more reasonable to compare the typical initial cost vs the increased initial cost for the higher efficiency unit that saves $500/yr. My house was built in 2000 with a regular AC unit for the main floor and heat pump for the 2nd floor, both Payne, a builder grade of Carrier. The inside coil went first, at the 9-yr mark with a 10-yr warranty, so I did get a new coil at no expense but it cost $600 to install it. A couple years later, the outside heat pump went out, and because of the system's age (about 11 years), they recommended replacing the furnace and heat pump. A couple year later, the main floor furnace exhaust gas blower mechanism went out, and again, the outside unit was replaced because it was 14 years old. In contrast, my previous house had an American Standard AC and furnace that was installed in 1970 when the house was built. I had to replace the furnace blower motor one year - about $500 I think - but the original AC and furnace were working like a champ when I sold the house in 2003. In summary, you aren't getting 20 years out of any modern, shitty system anymore. They're designed to fail after 10 years. You might get lucky and have something fail after 9 years; then you'll only have to pay for labor. But because there are 2 major independent components, the outside compressor and inside furnace, it's unlikely they'll both fail within the warranty. My AC guy told me the main reason they fail is because the new coils are made of very thin aluminum and so fail sooner than the old systems. If a coil fails, either in the furnace or the outside condenser, you're screwed. They can sometimes fix them, but good luck with that. Most HVAC dealers don't want to bother doing that; they just want to sell a new system.
- hgomersall 4y agoWhich is always the problem when you ignore the negative externalities. One would hope those externalities might start to be internalised to the cost of burning fossil fuels for heat, then heat pumps might become a better prospect. (Tbh, I recently did a high level analysis of a heat pump in a temperate climate, and in light of climbing fuel bills and the potential for low price electricity from renewables at low demand plus batteries, heat pumps start to make a lot of sense. You need to think about using them differently to gas though)
- rocqua 4y agoReminds me of this company: https://www.blueheartenergy.com/ https://www.blueheartenergy.com/ The claims are pretty amazing. High efficiency, efficient over a wide range of temperature difference, high temperature differences possible. The operating principle is totally different. It is based on acoustic waves. Not using phase-changes but just the ideal gas law (pressure and temperature are proportional). I tried to get my head around it, and I got it with a standing sound wave. But they use a traveling wave, for which I could not find explanations I understood. The general idea is "lower air pressure and move gas to cold side so the gas heats up" followed by "raise air pressure and move gas to warm side so the gas cools down". That means the low pressure needs to be low enough that the gas gets colder than the cold side, and the high pressure needs to be high enough that the gas gets hotter than the hot side. Luckily that is 'just' a matter of amplitude of the sound wave. I think this is how they achieve their wide range of efficient temperature deltas. That wide range is the main difference with a phase-change based unit. The phase change happens at a much more difficult to change temperature.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- lifty 4y agoReally curious what kind of COP this technique can achieve. Cool tech if real, since it doesn’t need any refrigerant. Wondering if there are other downsides.
- dr_dshiv 4y agoFascinating. I wish my physics courses had focused more on waves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoacoustics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoacoustics
- honksillet 4y agoWhen you get past freshman physics it is all waves! (Mostly)
- WJW 4y ago
- no-dr-onboard 4y agoDOE should probably be capitalized as it's unlikely that a doe (a deer, a female deer. . .) came through with a technological breakthrough ;)
- RicoElectrico 4y agoThe opaque HN automatic title mangler doing its job. I'd argue it does more harm than good.
- libria 4y agoWe can't argue that until we have data on the true positives. For all we know, HALF the titles had the submitters pet word in all caps.
- mh- 4y agoWe could flag those.
- RicoElectrico 4y agoHow do we know? I did not notice such thing in original submission titles (as in <title></title>).
- dpcx 4y agoI thought it was Doe-Anderson (a local ad agency) first... I am not a smart man without enough coffee.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- im3w1l 4y agoThis makes me idly wonder if we could use those rays of golden sun for heating more efficiently than we are. Pitch black panels facing the sun through which you pump some heat-transfer fluid? Hooked up to a heatpump?
- mrfusion 4y agoWhat’s the breakthrough on the tech old level? What did they discover?
- tootie 4y agoIt can operate efficiently at lower temps. Current air source heat pumps see degraded performance and below freezing temps and will not be able to effectively heat a home at the lowest temps that can occur in the northern hemisphere.
- mrfusion 4y agoThanks. But I’m trying to figure out how they do that.
- margalabargala 4y agoThe "secret sauce" of the increased efficiency is that they're using thermoacoustics, which previously had been a technology used in one-off applications with a large budget (e.g. the James Webb telescope uses it to stay cool). Prior to now there were no manufacturers providing the technology to be widely available at scale.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y agoNo idea how the Lennox units in TFA do it, but the Mitsubishi "hyper-heat" units do it by diverting a small amount of their output back into heating up the refrigerant at very cold temperatures. It starts to get a bit "slushy" at the low end of the performance range, which impacts the ability to move heat. By warming it back up to the bottom of its ideal operating range, the whole system functions more efficiently.
- mrfusion 4y agoCould this be useful in electric cars? I know they spend a lot on heating the cabin.
- hedora 4y agoYes; many EVs already use heat pumps, so if this has a higher coefficient of power (and is not much heavier), and it can be scaled down to automobiles, then it will be a win. (None of those details can be inferred from the press release.)
- borner791 4y agoClever Deers..
- lucb1e 4y agoFor anyone else confused, this refers to a previous title version as per https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31791942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31791942 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31792348 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31792348 (the comment I'm replying to was far above those others for me, so I was quite confused)
- euroderf 4y agoP.R. with zero tech details is indistinguishable from 100% balonie.
- hedora 4y agoBut it delivers 100% words at 5°F at double the efficiency, and 70% to 80% words at -5°F and -10°F. DOE validated the performance and efficiency of the press release.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- markvdb 4y agoSo much air in this statement, but almost zero raw numbers. In the mean time, there are good quality air/water heat pumps on the market in Europe. Look at the Nibe F2120 for example. It blows this thing out of the water. It has a COP of 2.5 at -25C...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gorbypark 4y agoAny sources of info on good heat pumps in the European market? I just moved to Spain and am casually looking at options.
- endisneigh 4y agoCheapest thing to do is remove all exterior drywall, spray foam everything and call it a day.
- mh- 4y agoWhere do homes have "exterior drywall"?
- jeffbee 4y agoI guess they meant demolish the interior finishes of exterior walls, spray foam the wall cavities. That's certainly a way to retrofit an older building, but you still need a heat pump.
- mh- 4y agoAh, thanks. I get what they mean now. It doesn't sound like a good idea, but I get what they mean. :)
- endisneigh 4y agoYou really don’t. I’ve been in a house in Maine with spray foam in 20 degrees with no heat turned on and interior temp was around 65. It was pretty amazing actually. A heat pump isn’t cost effective compared to Reno with spray foam. An average heat pump probably takes a decade minimum to pay off.
- t3rabytes 4y agodrywall on the interior of exterior-facing walls
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- amluto 4y agoSpray foam is expensive. It’s considerably cheaper to install mineral wool or blown cellulose or fiberglass. And you can blow in insulation without removing the drywall.
- visviva 4y agoSince DOE is an initialism and not an acronym, the capitalization in the title is incorrect. It should be "DOE".
- dang 4y agoFixed now. Thanks!
- avidphantasm 4y agoThis doesn’t sound any better than the efficiency of Mitsubishi/Trane “hyper heat” heat pumps, which are already on the market.
- joenathanone 4y agoDomestic is the key here.
- tzs 4y agoIt depends on what they mean by this: > The prototype delivers 100% heating at 5°F at double the efficiency, and 70% to 80% heating at -5°F and -10°F. DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory validated the performance and efficiency of Lennox’s prototype. Usually when people talk about efficiency of heat pumps they are comparing to electrical resistance heating (which is 100% efficient). If that's what they mean then they are saying 200% efficient at 5℉, which is not as good as Mitsubishi, which is better than 200% at 0℉. But in the first paragraph they say: > The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced that American heat pump manufacturer Lennox International became the first partner in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge to develop a next-generation electric heat pump that can more effectively heat homes in northern climates relative to today’s models. It could be that they are stating efficiency compared to current heat pumps, not compared to resistance heating, in which case they would be claiming quite a bit higher efficiency than Mitsubishi, which would certainly justify calling it a breakthrough. Another possibility is that what they could be claiming as the breakthrough is the 100% heating at 5℉ part. The Mitsubishi cold weather heat pumps start losing capacity below 23℉, falling from 100% at 23℉ to 76% at -13℉. I don't think that would be as big a breakthrough as double the efficiency of current heat pumps, because it wouldn't make it so heat pumps are feasible in climates too cold for Mitsubishi. But it would make it so that in places you can use a heat pump you might not need as big of a heat pump with the new technology as you would need with a Mitsubishi. That could lower up front cost making converting from something else to a heat pump more feasible for many.
- adrianmonk 4y agoMitsubishi's products seem to be mini-split systems[1]. --> EDIT: Or maybe not... they seem to offer forced-air too. <-- The DOE challenge is for ducted systems. Their site[2] says: > The Challenge is currently focused on residential, centrally ducted, electric-only HPs. The DOE challenge also has other requirements[3] that I don't know if the Mitsubishi systems satisfy. It requires certain levels of efficiency and "grid interactivity" (meaning Energy Star "demand response"[4] where your utility can temporarily tweak your thermostat settings). --- [1] https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/residential/new-products https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/residential/new-products [2] https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/cchp-technology-challenge-specifications https://www.energy.gov/eere/buildings/cchp-technology-challe... [3] https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-10/bto-cchp-tech-challenge-spec-102521.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2021-10/bto-cchp-... [4] https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/ENERGY%20STAR%20Version%206.0%20Central%20Air%20Conditioner%20and%20Heat%20Pump%20Final%20Specification%20and%20Partner%20Commitments.pdf https://www.energystar.gov/sites/default/files/ENERGY%20STAR...
- asdfman123 4y ago“Tapping into the emerging clean energy market is a huge economic opportunity that will bring a bolstered manufacturing sector, good paying jobs, and a brighter, cleaner future to Texas and communities across America.” If anyone else is confused by this, it's because Lennox is headquartered in Texas.
- davidro80 4y agoYou are confused by this? It’s a straightforward statement.
- InsomniacL 4y agowhat's not straight forward is understanding why the statement lists a single state and everyone else falls under 'communities across America' which the comment above clears up.
- davidro80 4y ago
- londons_explore 4y agoLab vs typical observed performance differs quite widely for many home heating systems. Thats because typically each appliance is tested at optimal conditions (eg. water flow rates). Then, in a real deployment, every parameter differs a little from optimal (eg. the water may circulate slower than expected because you have longer pipes around your home than the lab ones, and your hot water tank is hotter than expected because you like it set hot, and your airflow is less than expected because the filter is a bit blocked, etc.). Each knocks a few percentage points off the efficiency, but the overall impact can be dramatic. We really need 'smarter' heating systems which can detect and correct for such things. For example, water and air pumps which measure temperatures and flow rates of air/water, and adjust speeds up and down to maintain the optimal efficiency point.
- pfdietz 4y agoI wonder if the ideas used here can make low temperature geothermal systems more efficient. An example is the 760 kW system at Chena Hot Springs, 50 miles east of Fairbanks, Alaska. The system there uses hot water from said springs to generate power using repurposed refrigeration technology.
- fghorow 4y agoChena Hot Springs geothermal is a heat pump. It's an absorption chiller used partially (primarily?) to keep an ice house chilled as a tourist attraction. It works for such relatively low geothermal temperatures because the average Carnot Delta T is pretty good (because Alaska). As to whether or not thermo-acoustic technology could work, that's a good question.
- pfdietz 4y agoIt's not an absorption chiller. It's an ORC (Organic Rankine Cycle) system using R134a as the working fluid. Perhaps you were thinking of the absorption chiller that keeps the Ice Museum at the resort cold. That's a separate system.
- mikewarot 4y agoAt some point, it would be great to use a natural gas powered engine to run a heat pump. You could then use the exhaust gas as a heat source for the heat pump, possibly eliminating the need for a pre-heater. Cooling the output should increase the Carnot efficiency of the motor. Heating the outside air intake with that heat should be sufficient to avoid the need for an electrical resistance pre-heater. This combination could also run on propane, ethanol, gasified wood, etc. Anything that gets burned now could be used to create far more heat output than straight up combustion. There's got to be a flaw in this idea, math/physics wise.
- cmarschner 4y agoWhy would you create new technology with natural gas these days. It seems such an energy source of the past. Europe is jus suffering from the dependency on it and seeks to get away from it as soon as possible.
- Someone1234 4y agoAgreed. Just electrify everything in the home, then while we still have natural gas then just use it for electricity generation. Natural gas's only benefit is that it is currently cheap, when that stops being true, then it is just worse than electricity across the board. The great thing about electricity is that it scales REALLY well with new generation and distribution technologies.
- petesergeant 4y agoI’d rather cook on a gas hob than an electric one at the moment
- threeseed 4y agoYou may change your mind when it becomes orders of magnitude more expensive.
- 4y ago
- pengaru 4y agoWhat a misleading clickbait headline. This isn't a technology breakthrough, this is a DOE policy/partnership/funding "breakthrough".
- bitexploder 4y agoRight? We have Fujitsu units that maintain their COP down to 0F and still are 80% efficient below there down to like -15
- fortran77 4y agoThe Technology Connections guy is going to be vindicated!
- pkulak 4y agoSomeone Tweet this at him, pronto!
- kmax12 4y agoInteresting to see heat pumps come up more and more these days. As a lot of comments here point out, heat pump technology is already pretty good, even in cold climates. It seems to me a lot of the barriers to adoption in the US are lack of awareness from consumers and widespread support from installers. The equipment for a heat pump shouldn’t be much more expensive then an air conditioner since they share so many parts, but that isn’t the case in practice. I think government regulations that encourage heat pumps manufacturing and installation are part of the solution. For examples, Biden administration recently issued orders to use the Defense Production Act to produce heat pumps [0] or NYC banning new natural gas hook ups for heating [1]. The other part of heat pumps adoption is making them exciting for consumers. It feels like if you get the right combo of all of that, heat pumps could be the next electric vehicle. I only recently learned about heat pumps and found it difficult to understand how they worked and potential benefits. Towards that end, I started hacking on this tool for others to get that info: https://www.heatpumpswork.com https://www.heatpumpswork.com [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2022/06/06/memorandum-on-presidential-determination-pursuant-to-section-303-of-the-defense-production-act-of-1950-as-amended-on-electric-heat-pumps/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action... [1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/15/22837799/new-york-city-bans-gas-hookups-new-buildings https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/15/22837799/new-york-city-b...
- starkd 4y agoOnce again the headline does not match the claim in the article. This is not a breakthrough in terms of technology. This is the announcement of a partnership. There was no "breakthrough". This is government advertising for a private sector company that frankly is beginning to resemble corporate fascism.
- dchichkov 4y agoThere is plenty of opportunity in being more efficient. To give an example, houses in the Bay Area has gray/black roofs. In the summer such roof receives about 10kW of energy and readily converts it into heat. Heat, which we are trying to evacuate from the house with our super-efficient heat pumps in the air-conditioning units. If only we'd painted these roofs with white reflective roof paint (~92% reflection). We would have removed ~8kW of heating from such roofs! And then, maybe, we wouldn't have to pump all that energy into air-conditioning. So the surrounding air would be cooler, less noise would be heard from air conditioning, less energy would be spent. And the cost? 4 gallons of white reflective paint and a couple of hours of work, painting the roof...
- mrfusion 4y agoBut that 10kw isn’t going directly into your house. The attic is designed to vent the air and let that hot air escape.
- cy_hauser 4y agoFor my house the problem is that the sun's energy is converted to radient heat which makes its way hours after the air has cooled. The HVAC people have said no amount of insulation or attic fans will help. They suggest radiant barrier roofing of varoius types. The simplest being reflective paint, which the HOA won't allow.
- MobileVet 4y agoBlack / dark tile roofs across the south are completely ridiculous. I doubt people understood this when shingles were first developed but we do now and we should adjust accordingly
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y agoPretty sure they were recently banned in Sydney, Australia.
- 4y ago
- jamisteven 4y ago"can save families as much as $500 a year on their utility bills".... ehhh, people affected by an extra 500 per year arent going to fork over 20k for a new system that will save only 500 per year.
- gehsty 4y agoOverall the cost may not be that much but the bigger shift is to electrification of heating instead of a gas burning boiler, as electrical systems can take advantage of power from offshore wind / solar etc. another way of looking at it is most people will replace their boilers in the next 20-30yrs, if they can get a electrical heat pump system they should (and the governments should make this economically advantageous to do so).
- hsbauauvhabzb 4y agoIs the cost on new homes comparable? Does the US subsidise this at all?
- joemazerino 4y agoBig news for us NorthEasters. Propane and oil are going up.
- osigurdson 4y ago>> The prototype delivers 100% heating at 5°F at double the efficiency, and 70% to 80% heating at -5°F and -10°F. Double the efficiency of what? All existing technology or something else? Do they simply mean the COP is 2.0?
- bitexploder 4y agoWe recently converted our house to 100% heat pumps. The models we have are efficient down to like 0F and continue to work down to -15F (lower than the record low here). So this tech is novel but already consumer available. We have Fujitsu Halcyon XLTH models and commercial units that are less common for residential.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoThey all “continue to work” at cold temperatures but the question is with what and how much you’re going to supplement their insufficient heat with when it gets that low.
- bitexploder 4y agoCOP is still decent at low temps. That is the point. They are 80% efficient at their lowest temp rating. And, at least where we live 99.9% of days will be 100% efficient.
- ComputerGuru 4y agoI guess 80% efficiency for a few days a year is OK. In The Midwest we can go below zero Fahrenheit for a month or more at a time and while I happily live with 80-90% furnace efficiency with natural gas as a fuel, I certainly would never want to do that with electricity as a power source (given the historic price difference between the two).
- bitexploder 4y agoColorado front range here. We also have a lot of solar panels and plenty of credits so that is part of it for us.
- dahfizz 4y agoHow does your hot water work?
- smileysteve 4y agoWhen I read the title, I wonder why air to water and air to ground heat pumps aren't more common in cold climates. Where it is 0°f on the surface, a few feet deep and you're back to 46°f. So we could have had efficiency 10 years ago instead of today?
- pbourke 4y agoGround source heat pumps are 2-3x the cost of air source, and require a decent sized piece of land for installing the ground loop. Vertical installations use less surface area but are even more expensive since you’re drilling holes 400’ deep for the loop. Water source heat pumps are easier installations but require houses sited near a specific type of fresh water source that does not fully ice over in the winter or dry up in the summer.
- hinkley 4y agoAny studies in what these things do to the frostline? Heat pump is better than burning fossil fuels, but we also stop needing to treat system after system like it’s a bottomless well. We did that with real wells, then rivers, then the sky, then the ocean, then carbon dioxide and next up will be ground heat. There was a house last year that I think people were complaining about on Reddit, giant house out I’m the woods, all glass walls and heat pumps, labeled as green. It’s not a green building if you are 2x as efficient as fossil fuels but your house needs four times the BTUs of a reasonable design and 6 times a green one. Twice as efficient and half the heat loss is green. Blowing the surplus is not.
- jltsiren 4y agoGround source heat pumps have become popular in the past 10-20 years. Natural gas has historically been cheap enough that replacing it may not be cost-effective if your house is connected to a gas grid. When replacing other heating sources, a ground source heat pump typically pays itself back in 5-10 years.
- zdragnar 4y agoMost homes with natural gas don't have enough space for a horizontal system, and vertical systems are very cost prohibitive. When you do have land, your horizontal space now is also being used up by a septic system. It's great if you can do it, but on the whole I suspect ground source is always going to be an expensive and difficult proposition for most people.
- nickpeterson 4y agoOne thing I do t see many mentioning is the low temp heat pumps currently available are pretty expensive last I checked (think $15k), that’s simply not feasible for most people. We need something in the 4-8k range so the average joe can justify it. Perhaps this new set will be cheaper.
- Forge36 4y agoWhere does the cost increase come from over an air conditioner?
- jhallenworld 4y agoI just got a quote: $30K to upgrade a 1000 sq ft. apartment from oil fired steam (59% efficiency boiler from the 40s) and hot water to heat pumps near Boston. Includes removing oil tank, radiators and installing resistance electric hot water heater. Or I could upgrade from oil to gas for $14K (to an 82% efficiency boiler). I have a strong incentive to do this since the cost of heating with gas will be 1/3.5 compared with heating with oil. I think these are insane prices, but that's what contractors get around here. There is a $10K incentive for the heat pumps, but it requires a home inspection and probable upgrade of the insulation. IMHO, the incentive is not enough- it needs to make the heat pumps the cheapest option. As far as fuel costs, the gas would definitely be cheaper. The electricity comes from gas (especially in the middle of the winter). The price is more because you are paying someone to convert the gas to electricity. The efficiency of getting the heat from gas via electricity is only a little more with heat pumps (when accounting for generation and transmission loss and much higher heat pump efficiency). Maybe in the future the electric supply will be greener, but it isn't today. They are trying to build a HVDC line from Boston to Quebec for more hydropower, but Maine and NH are not allowing it due to NIMBY (a referendum in Maine, financed by gas companies, killed it).
- anonu 4y agoCan you use the same tech to cool a house? That would seem to be much more needed given the climate trends (warming) and demographic trends (moving to Southern US States).
- reacharavindh 4y agoI wish governments worldwide would boost this industry and get these heat pumps in the hands of people as fast as possible. I live in the Netherlands that has one of the highest use of rooftop solar and generally energy conscious government and people. I bought a house recently and while doing some changes before moving in, my top priority was to get rid of Gas for heating and replace it with an all electric solution and supplement the power by as many solar panels as possible. As good as my intent is, I literally have €25K in the bank waiting to be spent for this, and the government gives a subsidy for essentially halving the cost of a heat pump, I could not get one until day mid next year!!! It is such a disappointment. The intent is in the right place to encourage people to buy heat pumps, people are also willing. However, the chip shortage, and the insane labour crisis of qualified people who could install this is making the end result unattainable. My wish is for the European Union to use any emergency powers it has to subsidise/mandate/beg the companies to mass manufacture heat pumps and solve the installation problem- train more people on this trade for free? Make it tax free to earn money by working as a heat pump installer? Anything… Now, there is added incentive in the form of the need to get rid of Russian Gas. The time is now. Heat pumps already makes economic sense, it helps with climate goals, it boosts economy. I wish things happen sooner than later.
- orbital-decay 4y agoI'm actually surprised to see heat pumps gaining so little traction in Europe over time, perhaps excluding Baltics. I'm in Russia myself and I have a heat pump installed in my house for about a decade and a half already. In the long run, it was far cheaper than gas in my case. Not to mention it was faster to install; the gas pipeline bureaucracy alone would have taken several months. That said, there are environmental concerns about geothermals at scale (see the earthquake in Landau). Not sure how much of it carries over to residential heat pumps, though.
- porker 4y agoThe "In the long run" bit is the problem. Here in the UK people stay in a house for about 10 years before moving. It's impossible to get payback on many investments in that time, and when you sell your house the improvements aren't valued high enough to return the money you spent.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoTechnology Connections on Youtube has a great video series on how heat pumps work, why they're important environmentally and what kind of power cost savings they can bring. The second video is a longer guide for people who want to get a heat pump. https://youtu.be/MFEHFsO-XSI https://youtu.be/MFEHFsO-XSI https://youtu.be/43XKfuptnik https://youtu.be/43XKfuptnik
- excalibur 4y ago> Cold climate heat pumps (CCHPs) can provide high-efficiency heating in freezing temperatures without producing greenhouse gas emissions and can save families as much as $500 a year on their utility bills. That's like one month of heat for free. A welcome respite, but hardly revolutionary. Slashing emissions is awesome though.