5 ms·

I 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 appl

I 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 ago
The “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
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- WithinReason 4y ago
  > $500 in what home? The "up to" part means it's the absolutely largest home you can possibly imagine
- pbourke 4y ago
  Presumably 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 ago
You 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.
- nfin 4y ago
  it might work. But there exist sooo many prototyping breaktroughs. Those who follow press releases for many years know that just a tiny fraction can transfer this in real world products that actually work (so many more challenges to overcome compared to prototype situations!! I don’t even know where to begin… every ground is different, average person doing the manual work is not as skilled and has less support engineers, the guys setting/defining the dimensions of various recipients/pumps/conduits are often undeskilled and the efficiency often lacks tremendously for that reason…)
  - linsomniac 4y ago
    My thinking on it is: It'd better work, they're just trying to catch up to the state of the art. The bigger news would be if Lennox CAN'T make a COP 2 at 5F heat pump. :-
otter-rock 4y ago
I agree with the general sentiment, but the article explains that this "breakthrough" is a product prototype that meets a government spec. It's hyperbolic wording, but they're trying to warm people up to the idea of eventually getting a heat pump to alleviate some energy issues.
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SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

The “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
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WithinReason 4y ago
> $500 in what home? The "up to" part means it's the absolutely largest home you can possibly imagine
pbourke 4y ago
Presumably 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 ago

You 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.

nfin 4y ago
it might work. But there exist sooo many prototyping breaktroughs. Those who follow press releases for many years know that just a tiny fraction can transfer this in real world products that actually work (so many more challenges to overcome compared to prototype situations!! I don’t even know where to begin… every ground is different, average person doing the manual work is not as skilled and has less support engineers, the guys setting/defining the dimensions of various recipients/pumps/conduits are often undeskilled and the efficiency often lacks tremendously for that reason…)
- linsomniac 4y ago
  My thinking on it is: It'd better work, they're just trying to catch up to the state of the art. The bigger news would be if Lennox CAN'T make a COP 2 at 5F heat pump. :-

otter-rock 4y ago

I agree with the general sentiment, but the article explains that this "breakthrough" is a product prototype that meets a government spec. It's hyperbolic wording, but they're trying to warm people up to the idea of eventually getting a heat pump to alleviate some energy issues.

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