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What is going on? Is there a global push to get everyone to switch to heat pumps. It seems that there is heat pump content everywhere. Clearly there is a pus

What is going on? Is there a global push to get everyone to switch to heat pumps. It seems that there is heat pump content everywhere. Clearly there is a push. I understand that its for climate benefits but it feels very coordinated. edit: didn't realize the attention I would get. Let me add someone answered my question -- a good product market fit and people talking is probably where the push came from. That said HVAC installers / heat pump manufacturers and governments are all pushing this hard right now. I believe in the benefit for most people and the climate benefits are great. I am always concerned on when there is large consensus on a hard push - worth looking at who the winners are and what the trade offs are.

nicoburns 4y ago
> Is there a global push to get everyone to switch to heat pumps. I mean, yes. They're much more energy efficient than the alternatives and will play a key part of removing our dependence on fossil fuels. > I understand that its for climate benefits but it feels very coordinated. That seems like a good thing?
- nashashmi 4y ago
  They are not more energy efficient than burning gas. Edit: since i am getting downvoted to oblivion, let me fight back here. I genuinely wished heat pumps would be more efficient and in theory they can be. I would love to not generate heat and just use the outside heat energy and compress it down into a smaller location. But compressing and decompressing is not an energy efficient task. It takes a lot of work. Mechanical inefficiencies are a huge energy consumption. Gas is simply burning fuel. Yes, we should save gas for rainy days. But I hate to say that it is more efficient and cheap. There is no comparison.
  - pjerem 4y ago
    Yes they are. You get more heating from an heat pump running from electricity coming from gas plants than what you get by just burning the gas. Including losses on the grid.
    - nashashmi 4y ago
      I cannot imagine this in anyway. Heat pumps work like ACs do. They do compress a medium till it heats up, and then spread that heat around. And then they decompress until it cools down and dump that cold until outside heat brings up the temperature again. Those compressions and decompressions take up immense amounts of energy. They are less efficient than simply burning gas. On the flip side, could we not create electricity generation and heating from Natural gas?
      - baxuz 4y ago
        That's the whole point. For most modern systems you get >4x of the energy in heat exchange compared to the energy you put in. You don't produce heat, you exchange it. https://www.wolf.eu/en-de/advisor/cop-heat-pumps https://www.wolf.eu/en-de/advisor/cop-heat-pumps
      - elil17 4y ago
        I think you are misunderstand where most of that energy comes from. Say I have some refrigerant in liquid form at a low pressure. That refrigerant will have a boiling point of say, -20 degrees F. I use the ambient air, which is say 0 degrees F, to boil the refrigerant into a gas. The internal energy of the refrigerant goes up significantly, but it's temperature does not change. Then, I compress the gas so that it goes up in temperature. This change in temperature does not correspond to a large change in the internal energy of the gas. The same energy is pushed closer together, resulting in a higher temperature[1]. Then, I condense the gas at it's new boiling point, say 100 F, into a liquid. Then you decompress the resulting liquid and the cycle repeats. Most of the energy is coming from the ambient air, only a small amount of electricity is used to change what temperature that energy is available at. [1] A very simple mental model you can use to understand the difference between temperature and energy for a gas is that temperature is the number of times the gas molecules bump into each other in a second, while energy is how fast the gas molecules are moving. So if you have a very low pressure gas, even all of those molecules have a ton of energy in the form of motion, the temperature of the gas will be quite low because the gas molecules won't interact often. But compress that gas down to a small volume, and the molecules will bump into each other all the time even though they don't have much more energy.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    Well of course when talking about efficiency you have to specify what you are being efficient with respect to: what's most energy efficient might be different to what's most cost efficient which might be different to what's most carbon efficient. Cost is going to vary greatly on the electricity and gas prices in your area, so it's hard to give a definitive answer there. With regards to energy efficiency, my understanding is that heat pumps can be up to 400% (300% typical), which is naively much better than gas which is at most 90% efficient (70-80% typical). This doesn't take into account the extra innefficiency of generating the electricity in the first place, but a quick google tells me coal plants are typically 33% efficient, with combined cycle gas plants being typically being 50% efficient. Even at those levels, heat pumps still look to be coming out ahead to me. And that's not even taking into the possibility of green energy generation through renewables or nuclear.
    - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
      There is also up to 10% loss from transmission/distribution. So that makes the two closer though heat pumps still win.
    - elil17 4y ago
      Yes, heat pumps do win. They win even more when you consider that the energy mix is not 100% fossil fuels. Globally something like 15% of energy comes from renewables or nuclear, plus 20-ish % from natural gas which is, as you said, 50-ish % efficient in turbine power plants.
  - gabrielhidasy 4y ago
    They literally are more efficient than burning gas, a good heat pump can do over 300% efficiency (KWs of heat in your house vs KWs of electricity used) while a furnace can only hope to get 100%. Even if the heat pump is fed from gas power plants (which burn gas with about 50-60% efficiency, more if the waste heat is reused), they are still using less gas for the same amount of heat than directly burning it.
    - nashashmi 4y ago
      400% efficiency? Is that even possible? (Did AI write this?)
      - thehappypm 4y ago
        Yes, you might want to do some research on it. The core idea is that you aren’t using 1 unit of electrical energy to create 1 new unit of heat energy. You are using 1 unit of electrical energy to capture several units of pre-existing heat energy from the environment and pump it indoors.
      - sbradford26 4y ago
        So the term efficiency with heat pumps typically refers to COP Coefficient of Performance. It a measure of how many watts of heat you are able to pump per given watt of electricity used. So 400% would be a COP of 4.0 which is definitely possible with air source heat pumps in milder weather and ground source heat pumps in pretty much any weather.
      - Nihilartikel 4y ago
        If I can spend 1 joule to transfer two joules of enthalpy from outside to inside, then that is 200% efficiency. Burning 1 joule of gas would give you 1 joule of heat in a perfect world. That is what a non pump does.
        vikingerik 4y ago
        Where exactly does that first spent joule go, thermodynamically speaking? Is it also converted to heat within the electromechanicals of the heat pump?
  - SigmundA 4y ago
    They can be, natural gas is about 1000 BTU per cubic foot. An expensive high efficiency gas furnace might be 95% efficient (most normal furnaces are in the 80's) 1000 x 0.95 = 950 BTU/cuft A high efficiency natural gas power plant is 60% efficient and a modern high efficiency low temp heat pump can have a COP up to around 2.7 at 17F 1000 x 0.6 x 2.7 = 1620 BTU/cuft A 40% power pant is still more efficient than a 95% furnace with a 2.7 COP heat pump. There is obviously more to this, there are some grid losses to account for but has to be compared to piping losses, there is also cost factors and also how much renewable is mixed into your grid supply, but generally once that heat pump is above around 2.5 COP it starts to make sense, this is a no brainer in milder climates which is why I have a heat pump and no gas furnace here in FL even though I have gas to the house for other uses.
    - snuxoll 4y ago
      > this is a no brainer in milder climates which is why I have a heat pump and no gas furnace here in FL even though I have gas to the house for other uses. They're a no-brainer in every climate. Newer heat pumps can handle fairly cold temperatures (-13°F) pretty easily, there may be a loss in efficiency but in the majority of the world it doesn't stay that cold. A few days of lower than normal efficiency, and at worst plugging in a few space heaters if it gets extremely cold for a day or two, does not change the overall math of heat pumps being a better solution. Hell, that's just me talking about air source heat pumps. No reason for new construction to not use ground source and get better efficiency and not worry about ambient outdoor temperatures.
      - nashashmi 4y ago
        Ok! I am genuinely interested in how heat pumps are more efficient. My online search led me to calling heat pumps more efficient when compared to electric heaters. And better in other ways compared to gas burners. But lord's sake, they were all upselling marketing sites for heat pumps. I am looking for genuine research, and not from paid mouth pieces. Majority of the comments here seem like agents of heat pump industry. And HN rules forbid me from calling them that.
  - Nihilartikel 4y ago
    The new order world government will have to pry my wood burning lightbulbs from my cold dead guns!
  - SigmundA 4y ago
    Just to counter your edit: >But compressing and decompressing is not an energy efficient task. It takes a lot of work. Mechanical inefficiencies are a huge energy consumption. Gas is simply burning fuel. Yes, we should save gas for rainy days. But I hate to say that it is more efficient and cheap. There is no comparison. You are very mistaken, the energy required to compress refrigerant is less than the energy captured and delivered if COP > 1, which is the point of a heat pump. At COP 1 it is basically heat of compression and equal to a resistive heater at COP greater than 2 the heat pump captured more heat from the environment than used to compress the refrigerant. I am not sure if you are arguing in good faith, if so here are some of the simplest resources I can find to explain how a heat pump can exceed a furnace in efficiency even when taking power plant and transmission losses into account, with easy to understand graphics: https://greenbusinesswatch.co.uk/cop-vs-spf https://greenbusinesswatch.co.uk/cop-vs-spf https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coefficient_of_performance https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coefficient_of_perfo... http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatpump.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatpump.h... This should really be taught and drilled in lower education, the difference between heat and temperature and relationship to power, how heat engines work, etc. This stuff basically makes modern society possible and we will never progress in decoupling our power sources from use of the power which is what electrification allows which allows us to transition away from throwing carbon up in the air for energy.
- vintermann 4y ago
  Yeah. If some people came together at Davos or whatever and decided "we need to promote heat pumps!", you can be sure they would mess it up. Consent can maybe be manufactured. Enthusiasm is organic, for good and bad.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    It's like you got to the endzone and fumbled with <5yds
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    Agreed that top-down programs aren't always very effective (although sometimes they can be), but would point out that "coordinated" doesn't imply top-down. It could just mean that lots of individual entities are working with each other to achieve a common goal.
mhb 4y ago
That and gas stoves bad.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  The 'gas stoves bad' movement isn't a push, it's a pull.
  - vintermann 4y ago
    I think the underlying reason for it is that lots of engineering types got air quality sensors during corona, and noticed PM levels spiking from cooking. Or just people getting more IAC-conscious in general. This technology connections YouTuber I've seen pop up in lots of discussions on these topics.
- MrMan 4y ago
  gas stoves are bad
  - endemic 4y ago
    I don't understand why this is contentious. You're burning gas inside your house.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      That's what is funny to me too -- they're basically phasing out all furnaces and hot water heaters that aren't direct vent (bringing in combustion air from outside) because it's so problematic to have gas-burning appliances in your home. Yet we just burn gas stoves -- some of which are massive without question... If you were to use all of the burners on this stove on their highest setting, it would consume more BTUs than a 6-ton Furnace! And it just vents into your indoor air: (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Cosmo-36-in-6-0-cu-ft-Commercial-Style-Gas-Range-with-Convection-Oven-in-Stainless-Steel-with-Storage-Drawer-COS-EPGR366/313785880 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Cosmo-36-in-6-0-cu-ft-Commercial...)
kzrdude 4y ago
Who do you imagine is pushing, and why? Don't you want to resist to turn to explanations like this, that require some invisible force to pull the strings? I think there are more realistic ways to imagine this happening. If for example a pop star is getting a lot of attention, in multiple countries, what is the mechanism behind that? And is it orchestrated?
- suoduandao2 4y ago
  Explanations like what? Op didn’t put forward much in the way of hypotheses. If you have a good explanation of the mechanism by which attention accumulates around topics that doesn’t require orchestration it would be interesting to hear, it seems like a poorly understood phenomenon.
  - rcme 4y ago
    It’s called: product market fit. When people like your products, they talk about them. I have heat pumps through a mini split system. I like them so much I’m redoing my entire HVAC to add ducts with heat pump powered heating and AC. They’re kind of a miracle: they produce great heat (way better than a gas-powered furnace), they’re ultra-efficient, and they’re whisper quiet.
  - kzrdude 4y ago
    The way I read it, Op was suggesting a flirt with conspiratorial thinking ("someone is doing this") and I wanted to turn to something more rational. I don't really know how trends and fashions form and haven't thought so much about it. Some aspect of it might look like research into the ising model and phase transitions - small changes in "temperature" everywhere in the mass of people might look like a phase transition in the overall mood.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
Wait till we have Heat Pumps built with Rust! But seriously i think it’s just that awareness hit a critical threshold so the hysteresis kicks in and articles proliferate. In both cases.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  There's really no question that Rust will undoubtedly take over most heat pumps, sooner or later.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    :)
nashashmi 4y ago
Heat pumps are the opposite of AC. AC industry is behind this for sure. It is like a paid PR campaign. It is not more economical then gas. So now gas is going to be punished for factors X,Y,Z. It is coordinated. I wish there is more investigative research into who and why they are doing this.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Ah yes, "big AC" is bullying the Oil and Gas industry with their subversive marketing. If only Exxon, BP, and Shell had some political clout they could expose this plot.
- jamiek88 4y ago
  In this thread you’ve gone form ‘compressors don’t work like that’ to ‘this is all a conspiracy by big A/C’. You are not engaging with any of the helpful, generous replies, in fact going as far as to say that you wish you could call it ‘coordinated’. Why are you even here if you think we are all lying shill for big air compressor?
- WatchdogReset 4y ago
  For the record, I am only trying to make my elearning website more known. There is plenty of other HVAC subject that I would like to share. It's just that Heat Pump where for me an interesting topics to get into the subject but you can have a look at other free courses.
practice9 4y ago
The reason is that suddenly everybody understood that Russia is an unreliable partner for their countries energy needs (at least in Europe). For consumers it's also became clear that being slightly more independent from centralized heating and/or energy infrastructure is a good thing
- manojlds 4y ago
  Suddenly, as in Crimea didn't happen?
  - roywiggins 4y ago
    Suddenly understood
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    There was a push towards renewables and heat pumps after Crimea too (and before, for general climate change reasons) There was also push to do the opppsite to neutralise that threat to fossil profits e.g. Bjorn Lomberg the skeptic saying that we didnt have any tech that could replace gas, so the only response to Crimea was to frack or invent totally new tech, not rolling out renewables and heat pumps faster. "Fracking Could Free Europe from Putin" https://www.forbes.com/sites/bjornlomborg/2014/06/23/fracking-could-free-europe-from-putins-gas-monopoly/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bjornlomborg/2014/06/23/frackin... > Still, many EU politicians talk mostly about expanding renewable energies as a way of making Europe independent of Russian energy. Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, said the Ukraine crisis should be a “wake-up call” for European countries to make the switch from Russian gas to clean, renewable sources of energy. > But this simply ignores reality. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe gets just 1.3 percent of its energy from renewables like solar and wind, whereas it gets about 75 percent from fossil fuels and most of the remainder from nuclear. Even an extremely optimistic scenario from the IEA suggests that by 2035, Europe will only be able to generate 8 percent of its energy from these renewables. Focusing on them is simply populism without realism. At that point, climate skepticism was strong enough politically to prevail. They tried to use this latest annexation to promote fracking etc. too but it seems to have largely failed.
dahfizz 4y ago
A more plausible explanation is that the we HN-ers are a bunch of nerds and heatpumps are excellent nerd-bait
micromacrofoot 4y ago
It's a great way to lessen the demand on fossil fuels and the power grid. Manufacturers are obviously pushing, but many utility companies and municipalities are too. Basically the electric car or solar panels of HVAC. It's one of those things where there are a lot of incentives for everyone involved all the way down the line.
hexmiles 4y ago
I don't know if it applies everywhere, but two factor come to mind: the (somewhat recent) change in energy and gas price did make heat pump a lot more competitive with more traditional heating solutions, and recently there are a lot of economic incentives (at least, here in Europe) to renovate house for energy efficiency, which make solar panel and heat pump very attractive.
- masklinn 4y ago
  > and recently there are a lot of economic incentives (at least, here in Europe) to renovate house for energy efficiency, which make solar panel and heat pump very attractive. Economic but also legal and geopolitical: fuel oil furnaces are getting restricted or banned, and the combination of climate change, air quality standards, and russian instability makes gas look at lot worse than it did 10 or 20 years back.
wongarsu 4y ago
For a long time the main problem of heat pumps was that while they are more efficient, a kilowatthour of gas or oil is much cheaper than a kilowatthour of electricity. But in the last two years natural gas prizes have gone crazy, removing that price disadvantage. Of course heat pumps emitting no particulates and being able to run on renewables are also good reasons, especially as the health impact of living in cities with high PM2.5 values becomes clearer. But I don't think those are the primary drivers.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  Heat pump technology has also improved significantly. You can now buy heat pumps that remain efficient down to very low temperatures, which makes them appropriate for a larger range of climates now. Many models are in very high demand. Some of the units I looked at recently were back ordered so far that I was told to pick something else if I expected to have it within the year. The demand is very high because the technology is good. It’s not a campaign or conspiracy.
  - bmicraft 4y ago
    Yeah it almost makes the opposite of sense. If manufacturers are already backordered a year in advance why would they still throw money at marketing
    - bluGill 4y ago
      The war in Ukraine has resulted in a real push to get off of oil/gas based heating, on top of global warming concerns that have already been doing that. There are lots of different groups looking to push heat pumps for the above reasons. Governments are concerned about both war and global warming. Ukraine supporters are concerned about Russia getting more money (to wage more war). Green activists are concerned about global warming. All have their own reasons to push heat pumps on everyone.
- mytailorisrich 4y ago
  It's not directly related to the recent spike in prices, especially considering that a heat pump installation is very expensive in itself and potentially disruptive. Rather, it's a combination wanting to get to net zero, so no emissions, with the big problem of generating enough green electricity. A heat pump system has no emissions and consumes much less electricity than an electric boiler/electric heater.
atoav 4y ago
My father has solar and a heat pump. His cummulative heating and electrical cost is practically zero over the year. On many days the solor panels produce more than he can use so he gets money for feeding it into the grid. If the roof of your house produces enough electricity for the people living it and the heating (and cooling) of all rooms, it is a no brainer to switch to a form of heating that relies on electricity.
helen___keller 4y ago
I’ve been independently interested in heat pumps because I need to replace my old end-of-life system and I’ve been interested if a modern cold-weather mini split system is a better investment. There’s lots of conflicting info I’ve found on if heat pumps perform in freezing weather and at what kind of efficiency. I’m sure there’s others in my position.
- fullstop 4y ago
  Where do you live geographically? I'm in eastern Pennsylvania and have lived with a heat pump for 20+ years.
  - helen___keller 4y ago
    Massachusetts
    - fullstop 4y ago
      A bit colder, on average, than where I live. You might want to look at ground-loop HPs or ccASHPs.
- sbradford26 4y ago
  So largely I think the confusion stems from there being two major different "types" of heat pumps and they perform very differently. The first is your conventional type system, this is usually what AC units are in the US. They run at maybe 1 or 2 speeds. These type of heat pumps are common in the southern parts of the US but also will be found paired with a gas furnace in the northern US. Since they don't adjust their output dynamically they tend to start losing capacity/efficiency significantly around 25-30F. The second is an inverter driven heat pump. You usually find these in mini splits but they can also be found in a standard air handler form factor that would replace a furnace. The inverter allows the compressor to adjust based on demand and exterior temperature to maximize efficiency. This allow these units to operate efficiently down to -13F depending on the unit. Now there will still be some capacity loss at those temps so during the design of the system this has to be taken into account. For detailed information on the efficiency of heat pumps I would check out NEEPs website. It is a great resource, it will show you capacity and efficiency (COP) of tons of different units across their operating temperatures. https://ashp.neep.org/ https://ashp.neep.org/
mr_mitm 4y ago
You should expect this impression to become more intense. How else will you heat your home without emitting greenhouse gasses? Electric space heaters are vastly inferior for obvious reasons. Everything else is out because we eventually need to achieve (net) zero emissions. And since there are a lot of gas and oil heaters to be replaced, heat pumps will only increase in demand.
Maxburn 4y ago
YES. There is a massive electrification push right now because electric items can be fed from "sustainable" things like wind/dam/solar and don't emit CO or CO2 in operation. Heat pumps are also inexpensive on initial cost and less expensive than straight AC with gas heat. They are also low maintenance in comparison to straight AC with gas heat. Very popular units in southern US.
- bcrosby95 4y ago
  This hasn't been my experience. I can get an AC unit and gas furnace installed for something like 7k. But a heat pump unit that heats and cools is something like 13k installed. I obviously went with the former.
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    The install price is only the start. The total cost of ownership over expected lifetime is the important number for many. That initial 7K installation cost is only a fraction of what you’re going to pay in gas and electricity over the next decade.
    - Maxburn 4y ago
      Very true. Simply having gas available to use results in a base bill for service, even if your usage is zero. And yet what I see time and again is that initial purchase price is the only focus for construction costs, even rehab work. Those budgets are a separate bucket from utility bills so lower priced projects get approval even if utility bills will be higher.
  - Maxburn 4y ago
    That's fascinating and I believe you were subject to some weird market conditions there. Look at the complexity of gas burners vs a reversing valve and electric heat strips and I think you will see what I mean.
    - Thlom 4y ago
notdarkyet 4y ago
I see this as well and it looks to be multiple people buying in to the campaign, especially here on HN. Having lived in a new, high end apartment that had a heat pump for both heating and cooling for 3 years, I am very unimpressed with the tech. Running nonstop, couldn't heat/cool above/below a certain threshold. Electric bill very high. Clogged and broke a lot. If the general radiant heat and cooling from being in large building didn't exist, I couldn't see this working halfway decent in any place in the midwest. This might work for areas with less variable temperature ranges but for the midwest USA, not seeing it.
- fullstop 4y ago
  Your high end apartment must have had a low end heat pump installed. In the midwest a geothermal heat pump would work wonderfully. Also, they are designed to run constantly in order to maintain the set temperature -- it's not like a natural gas fired furnace where it quickly reaches the set point.
  - prottog 4y ago
    > Also, they are designed to run constantly in order to maintain the set temperature Not all heat pumps are variable-speed like you describe. My own home, built in 2000, has a single-speed heat pump that kicks on 100% or off, like a regular old AC unit.
    - fullstop 4y ago
      Right, what I'm trying to say is that it is normal for it to be on 100% of the time when it is cold out. If you are used to gas heat which can turn on for 15 minutes, overshoot the set point, and then be off for the next 45 minutes, a heat pump will seem strange. Mine is a variable speed unit, but that's not the function that I'm talking about.
  - slfnflctd 4y ago
    What's the payback time on something like that for a modest home in a place which can get significantly under 20 degrees (F) or over 95 degrees for weeks or longer? How effective is it at those extreme temperatures when it matters the most, and how does this affect maintenance costs? Additionally, there are multiple types of restrictions on where geothermal pumps can be installed, and navigating this can add to costs. I don't see it as a one size fits all solution, there are far too many people for whom the household/company math doesn't add up. However, I agree we should be doing fair comparison against other renewable-friendly options for all new construction. I'm sure heat pumps could win out in a great many situations, and we should use them where they do.
Lutger 4y ago
Just the hivemind I guess, doesn't feel coordinated to me but rather obvious. In my country the waiting time for heat pumps is now over a year. People can't stop talking about energy, the war and their utility bills. Heat pumps are very on topic. Any reasons to change my mind?
rhussmann 4y ago
At least in NYC, new installations of gas and oil boilers for building and water heating will be regulated away in favor of electric-heating means (like heat pumps) by 2025: https://www.silive.com/news/2022/12/new-yorks-new-roadmap-to-climate-change-goals-heres-what-it-says-about-heating-your-home.html https://www.silive.com/news/2022/12/new-yorks-new-roadmap-to... This is, of course, the regulation as it stands today; things can always change. Additionally NYC alone likely doesn't account for the attention. But, other metros and municipalities could have similar legislation.
redeeman 4y ago
topic of discussion: is anyone else concerned that all the new things being clearly pushed hard, regardless of reasons(good or bad), has the common theme of centralizing. In a world where if your heatpump stops working, you die from cold, it would be an awfully sad thing if social credit scores dictated a very low kilowatthour limit. Much more sad than a world where you obtain firewood from some local vendor
- kevstev 4y ago
  I am not sure the case you are making here- most people who would be switching to a heat pump for heat are almost certainly using oil, natural gas, or propane to heat their homes, all of which require a good deal of centralization. Those that have the ability to use firewood to heat their homes today can continue doing so if they need to- its not a requirement to close up your chimney permanently to use one. FWIW I am considering switching to a heat pump, but would still have natural gas fireplaces as a backup.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > has the common theme of centralizing. In a world where if your heatpump stops working, you die from cold, Using machinery for heating isn’t new. Virtually nobody in the modern world uses firewood from a local vendor to heat their homes. These conspiracy theorist angles are baffling. Heat pumps are just another variation of AC, which is already ubiquitous. If people don’t use heat pumps, they won’t use firewood. They’ll use a regular furnace or electric heat.
- pjc50 4y ago
  > Much more sad than a world where you obtain firewood from some local vendor A while ago I ran the numbers, and to meet UK electricity demand from wood would consume every single tree in the country in three months. Limiting that to heating and giving up on industry would stretch that a bit, but the country is fundamentally dependent on imports to stay alive. We can't not be global.
- micromacrofoot 4y ago
  They could also just shut off your gas, heat pumps introduce no newfound ability to be authoritarian that isn't already there.
mschuster91 4y ago
> Clearly there is a push. Yeah, tl;dr: fuel price scares and the French nuclear power plant disaster, as well as government regulations. To expand: most homes traditionally are heated by either burning something fossil (oil, gas, coal), somewhat half-ish renewable (wood pellets, straight chopped wood), by straight electricity (resistive heating) or by heat pumps (air-to-air, ground-to-air, deep-well-to-air aka geothermal). Some homes particularly in urban areas or in close proximity to a large power plant can also be heated by district heating using one of the aforementioned heat sources. And all of these classes of heaters have their issues: - Electricity is the easiest of the bunch from a technical point of view, but you're out of luck when the grid fails for whatever reason, you're tied to grid price hikes in some contract models (as people learned the hard way in Texas' last winter spike), there will be fuel burned as part of the generation and frankly resistive heating is wasteful. - Wood pellet has the problem that the amount of waste (=sawdust) is finite, which means you're chopping down wood that could be used for construction and burning it instead. That is a waste of money and valuable resources when wood is scarce, fine particulate matter causes smell and health issues, and a lot of wood is unethically sourced. - Solid-wood or coal heaters are difficult to properly fire up - most people fire it wrong (not enough oxygen / too much fuel load), resulting in higher consumption of wood, higher emissions and a danger of soot buildup which is a fire risk. Additionally, many home fires are started by people disposing not-completely-cooled ash or placing flammable objects too close to the oven or exhaust, and still a lot of people die because of carbon monoxide emissions caused by improper handling. - Oil stinks to hell and beyond, the boilers need an insane amount of maintenance so they don't clog up, you need to ship tanker trucks to homes, there are risks of spillage and contamination, and the same emissions issues of wood apply (plus, oil generates more CO2 than gas per kWh of heat). Also, it's not renewable at all. - Gas is relatively easy to ship around when there is a gas distribution network in place, it burns relatively clean, but carries an explosion risk and is fossil in origin (at least for the next decades that it will take to build up power-to-gas infrastructure). In contrast, heat pumps are pretty awesome: - all they need is a bit of electricity - a good heat pump can achieve up to 4x ratio, meaning it generates 4 kWh of available heat in the home by using 1 kWh of electricity. That also makes off-grid or local generator fallback solutions more feasible - a 20 kW heat-pump boiler needs a 5 kW generator which can be had for a couple hundred dollars instead of a massive generator unit. - their heat sources (or rather, cold sinks) are renewable - air, local ground loops or deep wells are virtually infinite. That means, as long as your electricity supply is renewable, your heat generation also is renewable. - Most heat pumps run at 40-ish degrees. That in turn prohibits the use of old-school convection radiators, so most installations with heat pumps tend to use floor heating which needs less energy to achieve a temperature comfortable for humans (our feet are the most sensitive part, but as heat from a convection radiator rises to the top of the room, it needs a lot of energy for a comfortably warm floor). - they are, particularly when compared to oil heating, extremely small and don't cause emissions - they don't need much maintenance effort to keep running, and no need for chimney sweepers either - they don't pose an imminent risk of carbon monoxide poisoning or outright fire Basically, the only issue heat pumps have is you need specially trained people to install them and they are short in supply at the moment since everyone and their dog got shocked to heaven in the last year of that goddamn war and heat pumps are the objectively best way to heat a home.
scythe 4y ago
I'm just annoyed that I was talking about heat pumps for the last five years or so and nobody is giving me any credit for running an international conspiracy. But seriously, it's just the next fish to fry after electric vehicles became a solved problem. Heating buildings is somewhere around 10-25% of total emissions and probably the largest remaining single factor not directly addressed by switching the electric grid to renewables, so many people concerned about climate change have converged on it.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
achenatx 4y ago
my friend is building his house and is putting in 4 heat pumps (big house). The problem is we just lost power for 4 days and 2 years ago we lost power for 5 days. He is discovering that electric heat uses massive amounts of electricity and there is no way to get a residential generator big enough to power them all. He might not even be able to power one (they can use in excess of 20kw). I would never get electrical water heater, stove, and heater for that reason.
- boringg 4y ago
  So this is one of my big concerns - I live in a cold weather country currently. We have power outages once every couple of years. If I don't have back up power my pipes freeze and then i'm out probably > $50k. I was thinking the solution for me is to put in a heat pump and then run a backup gas generator. But that solution feels like a significant amount of overbuild. I have 3 minisplits already but they aren't valuable in the winter -- where you install your AC units isn't where you would install your heating units .. I.e. the top of my house for AC, the bottom of the house for heat. Having multiple energy sources to defray risk is helpful.
  - bluGill 4y ago
    Heat pumps are great when things are mildly cold. While do work down to -20C or so, efficiency drops off, so you need bigger and bigger units. It often makes sense to have a smaller heat pump that will only work down to -5C (random temperature, a real analysis of your house is required to give a better answer), and then a gas furnace backup for those really cold days. Once you have the gas furnace backup you can run that off of a small generator on the few days you are without power.
- thekingshorses 4y ago
  If there is a power outage, you can't run your natural gas heater either. It needs fan to run.
  - triceratops 4y ago
    But you can run a furnace fan off a diesel generator.
Silverback_VII 4y ago
preparations for nuclear winter.
bilsbie 4y ago
Easier to turn off people’s electric than gas when they don’t follow the social rules.
- timbit42 4y ago
  Not when they have solar.
burkaman 4y ago
Yes, there is currently a coordinated push by the entire world to prevent excessive climate change.
kavalg 4y ago
I am a happy user of a DYI air source heat pump, that I've been using for 8+ years, mostly for heating in a residential building. First, it must be told that an off the shelf AC unit is technically speaking also a heat pump. There has been this distinction (and confusion) between AC units and (mostly) ground source heat pumps because, you know the latter actually have a water 'pump' to circulate fluid in the ground piping. Ground source heat pumps are far more expensive that AC units and are nearly impossible to retrofit in existing buildings. Hence, companies came up with a 'middle ground' solution, called air source heat pumps. In these devices the outdoor unit is much like an outdoor unit of a split type AC, but the indoor unit is basically a refrigerant/water heat exchanger with a water pump and some sensors around it. There is also a monoblock type of air source heat pump, where all components are in the outer block and you only connect the piping. IMHO, the reason air source heat pumps are becoming popular now is because their price went down considerably during the last 5 years, whereas the price of fossil fuel heat sources has gone up. Back then when I had to choose between a gas boiler and a heat pump, the boiler was around EUR 2, off the shelf heat pump (24000 btu) was around EUR 7k and for the DIY option I paid a total of EUR 2.3k. The reason for this was that the market for air source heat pumps was underdeveloped and companies (e.g. Mitsubishi, Daikin, Fujitsu) were charging a lot more in this market segment (rich people with new houses). At some point in time, people started realizing the benefits of a heat pump over a normal AC (less units, no noise, nor air currents, better efficiency, can produce hot water, heating is decoupled from the source and more sources, such as solar can be seamlessly plugged in). Manufacturers albeit slowly responded to this demand. Now with solar power gaining more traction, they are becoming a very obvious choice.
elil17 4y ago
Well of course it is being pushed, though I would not necessarily call it coordinated. Companies that sell heat pumps are advertising hard. It's an easy sell for them with rising gas prices. The US government is "pushing them" by offering tax credits for heat pump systems. This is part of a plan to reduce pollution, improve energy independence/energy security, and save citizens money on their heating bills. No secret there - politicians and public servants are excited about this and they are talking about it. They are also offering tax credits for other high efficiency heating systems, but not that many people are looking at those tax credits because buying a new high efficiency gas furnace doesn't make that much sense when you could buy a more efficient heat pump instead. Many individual people are also talking about them because they are a great way to help the environment and save money at the same time. And I think a lot of people just think they are cool technology as well.
- boringg 4y ago
  I think this is probably the right answer. It keeps popping up everywhere. I'm always a skeptic on when something gets super hyped. In this case it's more use-case specific that makes me skeptical - majority of people its 100% fit.
  - elil17 4y ago
    I also tend to be skeptical when I see something hyped, but I work in this space and I can say that this tech is really the best option for most residential applications. It's old tech, it's been around since the 1800s. The only thing that has changed is that heat pumps have gotten cheap and energy has gotten expensive. There are applications where heat pumps cannot replace boilers - in industrial processes where high temperatures are required or tremendous capacity is needed intermittently. However, unless your temperatures are routinely below about -20 F, a heat pump is the best choice (and even if temperatures occasionally drop below that, heat pumps are still an excellent choice because those extreme temperatures might only last for a handful of hours out of the year, during which insulation or a cheap electrical resistance heater can keep you warm).
billjings 4y ago
Here's a couple of reasons: 1. The American market has a lot of incorrect perceptions of heat pumps. Debunking these makes for great viral content! 2. The IRA introduced big incentives for various electrification expenses. The incentives are the big thing, but the public interest/controversy part is why some enhancements like heat pumps and kitchen electrification ("don't take away my gas stove!") are going more viral than, say, electric vehicles (technology connections guy has some good EV content, but it's not doing quite the same numbers)
- sophacles 4y ago
  What is IRA in this context? I don't think heat pumps have anything to do with retirement nor the political status of Norther Ireland.
  - tekla 4y ago
    Its a fairly easy to parse typo of IRS.
    - sophacles 4y ago
      Oh that makes some sense, I guess I wasn't thinking about them since they aren't the ones who change tax law.
  - aaronbrethorst 4y ago
    The inflation reduction act of 2022. https://www.hvac.com/resources/inflation-reduction-act-heat-pump-rebates/ https://www.hvac.com/resources/inflation-reduction-act-heat-...
    - billjings 4y ago
      Yep, the Inflation Reduction Act is what I meant. It came into effect this year.
      - sophacles 4y ago
heisenbit 4y ago
Continuous improvements in technology, growth spurt in electric motors, demand gap for automobile motor part suppliers having to seek out related industries, cheap summer electricity via solar panel meet kick in the behind by fossil fuel energy prices.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
> What is going on? Is there a global push to get everyone to switch to heat pumps. It seems that there is heat pump content everywhere. Clearly there is a push. Based on the lack of political dick swinging I don't think this is a "push". They're legitimately good technology for certain use cases, I'm sure the manufacturers are pushing them. They are also The New Hotness(TM) and they are billed as environmentally friendly. Both those attributes are valuable by themselves to some people. I think this is more a case of a grassroots-originated circle jerk within certain demographic bubbles. I get a lot of "air fryer" vibe from the whole thing. And I say this as someone who owns and really likes his air fryer.
peterhunt 4y ago
It is coordinated. In many states there are huge incentives [1] to disconnect your existing home from (and not connect new construction to) the natural gas infrastructure. This is great for the climate but air source heat pump technology simply doesn't work well in cold climates. Most heat pumps in the United States have 100% efficiency down to about 20 degrees F. Below that they "lose efficiency." What most people don't realize is that "lose efficiency" = blows cool or cold air. So if you live somewhere that routinely gets that low you are likely either going to be really cold, or have to engage aux heat (often natgas or oil-based heating or electric resistance heating). Additionally, even when operating at 100% efficiency they don't blow air as hot as traditional heating sources. So if you have a poorly insulated room, large space, or even just an unusually cold day, it will often have a hard time keeping up. I have found that I only use my air source heat pump a little bit during the fall in New England, and I have to run aux heat throughout basically all of winter. Talking to my friends in the region who have heat pumps, they all have similar experiences. I think we are all very eager to get off of fossil fuels but the technology just isn't there yet, and I am concerned that most people installing heat pumps today don't know the risks associated with them in extreme weather events. If your heat pump can't keep up and you didn't install aux heating you can't live in your house, your pipes will freeze, and you will generally have a bad time. If you did install and use aux heating, you may be surprised at how expensive and inefficient resistive electric heating is as it may need to run all the time. [1] Massachusetts will pay you $10k to install air source heat pumps and disconnect from natural gas https://www.masssave.com/en/residential/rebates-and-incentives/air-source-heat-pumps https://www.masssave.com/en/residential/rebates-and-incentiv...
- nicpottier 4y ago
  This is FUD. I live in climate zone 5 in a 100 year old house that has high heating demands and our air source heat pump has been awesome, even when it dipped into the negatives briefly this year. Our heat pump is over 100% efficient down to 0F.
  - peterhunt 4y ago
    What type of heat pump do you have out of curiosity?
kodt 4y ago
1. There was recently a statement released by a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission saying they were considering regulating indoor pollution from natural gas stoves. This lead to a bunch of outrage and claims that Natural Gas was going to be banned at a Federal level. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/11/gas-stoves-fossil-fuels-climate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/1... 2. Cites like NYC have implemented bans or limits on new gas installations, and it has been proposed at the state level as well. Other cities such as Chicago have had conversations regarding this issue, at least enough for it to get into the news and spark minor outrage. Because of these recent controversies there has been much talk about Heat Pumps and whether or not they are able to function efficiently or sufficiently in sub zero temperatures regularly seen in the upper Midwest or North East.
danans 4y ago
> worth looking at who the winners are and what the trade offs are. The winners are consumers, the effort to reduce GHG and particulate emissions, and the drive toward energy independence (whether at the national, local, or hyper-local level). The losers are fossil fuel extraction industries, because due to the high COP of heat pumps, far more heat is delivered per unit of energy consumed, even if that energy ultimately comes from burning natural gas at a power station. Also, the source of the energy itself gets disintermediated, since electricity can come from multiple sources, including renewables. The tradeoffs are (for now): Higher upfront installation cost (tempered by the IRA, and potentially lower operating costs), availability of the equipment (supply chain stuff), and long delays in installation due to lack of qualified installers (and resulting high costs).
guidoism 4y ago
It would be great if this was coordinated. Ideas that are good for people usually don't get a very intelligent effort promoting them compared to really bad ideas that make a few people really rich.
WatchdogReset 4y ago
My two cents, I just tried to show this free course on my site, because heat pumps are an interesting topic. There is also others courses like this : https://hvac-learning.com/courses/air-handling-units-technology-part-1/ https://hvac-learning.com/courses/air-handling-units-technol... Heat pump as every heating or cooling devices, have pro and cons. This is where HVAC knowledge is nice to have, in order to have the best solutions. For example, the maintenance / obsolescence are an under estimated point when it comes to environment and savings
rgmerk 4y ago
Governments are influenced by what other governments are doing in a variety of ways. At a basic level, governments are full of people who have an interest in public policy, and they read publications that cover public policy matters from around the world. If the EU brings in a policy that encourages an expansion in heat pump usage, it'll probably get written up in The Economist (and a bunch of more specialised publications), and, guess what, bureaucrats and political staffers in the UK, the US, Canada and so on will read it. There are also institutions specifically devoted to developing policy advice for national governments, and in the renewable energy space the big one is IRENA. And guess what, they're telling their member governments that, hey, if you want to screw over the Russians, meet your greenhouse targets, and save your citizens a bunch of money, heat pumps are the way to go. And as those things happen to be basically true, national governments are falling over themselves to implement policies to encourage it to happen.

nicoburns 4y ago

> Is there a global push to get everyone to switch to heat pumps. I mean, yes. They're much more energy efficient than the alternatives and will play a key part of removing our dependence on fossil fuels. > I understand that its for climate benefits but it feels very coordinated. That seems like a good thing?

nashashmi 4y ago
They are not more energy efficient than burning gas. Edit: since i am getting downvoted to oblivion, let me fight back here. I genuinely wished heat pumps would be more efficient and in theory they can be. I would love to not generate heat and just use the outside heat energy and compress it down into a smaller location. But compressing and decompressing is not an energy efficient task. It takes a lot of work. Mechanical inefficiencies are a huge energy consumption. Gas is simply burning fuel. Yes, we should save gas for rainy days. But I hate to say that it is more efficient and cheap. There is no comparison.
- pjerem 4y ago
  Yes they are. You get more heating from an heat pump running from electricity coming from gas plants than what you get by just burning the gas. Including losses on the grid.
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    I cannot imagine this in anyway. Heat pumps work like ACs do. They do compress a medium till it heats up, and then spread that heat around. And then they decompress until it cools down and dump that cold until outside heat brings up the temperature again. Those compressions and decompressions take up immense amounts of energy. They are less efficient than simply burning gas. On the flip side, could we not create electricity generation and heating from Natural gas?
    - baxuz 4y ago
      That's the whole point. For most modern systems you get >4x of the energy in heat exchange compared to the energy you put in. You don't produce heat, you exchange it. https://www.wolf.eu/en-de/advisor/cop-heat-pumps https://www.wolf.eu/en-de/advisor/cop-heat-pumps
    - elil17 4y ago
      I think you are misunderstand where most of that energy comes from. Say I have some refrigerant in liquid form at a low pressure. That refrigerant will have a boiling point of say, -20 degrees F. I use the ambient air, which is say 0 degrees F, to boil the refrigerant into a gas. The internal energy of the refrigerant goes up significantly, but it's temperature does not change. Then, I compress the gas so that it goes up in temperature. This change in temperature does not correspond to a large change in the internal energy of the gas. The same energy is pushed closer together, resulting in a higher temperature[1]. Then, I condense the gas at it's new boiling point, say 100 F, into a liquid. Then you decompress the resulting liquid and the cycle repeats. Most of the energy is coming from the ambient air, only a small amount of electricity is used to change what temperature that energy is available at. [1] A very simple mental model you can use to understand the difference between temperature and energy for a gas is that temperature is the number of times the gas molecules bump into each other in a second, while energy is how fast the gas molecules are moving. So if you have a very low pressure gas, even all of those molecules have a ton of energy in the form of motion, the temperature of the gas will be quite low because the gas molecules won't interact often. But compress that gas down to a small volume, and the molecules will bump into each other all the time even though they don't have much more energy.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Well of course when talking about efficiency you have to specify what you are being efficient with respect to: what's most energy efficient might be different to what's most cost efficient which might be different to what's most carbon efficient. Cost is going to vary greatly on the electricity and gas prices in your area, so it's hard to give a definitive answer there. With regards to energy efficiency, my understanding is that heat pumps can be up to 400% (300% typical), which is naively much better than gas which is at most 90% efficient (70-80% typical). This doesn't take into account the extra innefficiency of generating the electricity in the first place, but a quick google tells me coal plants are typically 33% efficient, with combined cycle gas plants being typically being 50% efficient. Even at those levels, heat pumps still look to be coming out ahead to me. And that's not even taking into the possibility of green energy generation through renewables or nuclear.
  - zeroonetwothree 4y ago
    There is also up to 10% loss from transmission/distribution. So that makes the two closer though heat pumps still win.
  - elil17 4y ago
    Yes, heat pumps do win. They win even more when you consider that the energy mix is not 100% fossil fuels. Globally something like 15% of energy comes from renewables or nuclear, plus 20-ish % from natural gas which is, as you said, 50-ish % efficient in turbine power plants.
- gabrielhidasy 4y ago
  They literally are more efficient than burning gas, a good heat pump can do over 300% efficiency (KWs of heat in your house vs KWs of electricity used) while a furnace can only hope to get 100%. Even if the heat pump is fed from gas power plants (which burn gas with about 50-60% efficiency, more if the waste heat is reused), they are still using less gas for the same amount of heat than directly burning it.
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    400% efficiency? Is that even possible? (Did AI write this?)
    - thehappypm 4y ago
      Yes, you might want to do some research on it. The core idea is that you aren’t using 1 unit of electrical energy to create 1 new unit of heat energy. You are using 1 unit of electrical energy to capture several units of pre-existing heat energy from the environment and pump it indoors.
    - sbradford26 4y ago
      So the term efficiency with heat pumps typically refers to COP Coefficient of Performance. It a measure of how many watts of heat you are able to pump per given watt of electricity used. So 400% would be a COP of 4.0 which is definitely possible with air source heat pumps in milder weather and ground source heat pumps in pretty much any weather.
    - Nihilartikel 4y ago
      If I can spend 1 joule to transfer two joules of enthalpy from outside to inside, then that is 200% efficiency. Burning 1 joule of gas would give you 1 joule of heat in a perfect world. That is what a non pump does.
      - vikingerik 4y ago
        Where exactly does that first spent joule go, thermodynamically speaking? Is it also converted to heat within the electromechanicals of the heat pump?
- SigmundA 4y ago
  They can be, natural gas is about 1000 BTU per cubic foot. An expensive high efficiency gas furnace might be 95% efficient (most normal furnaces are in the 80's) 1000 x 0.95 = 950 BTU/cuft A high efficiency natural gas power plant is 60% efficient and a modern high efficiency low temp heat pump can have a COP up to around 2.7 at 17F 1000 x 0.6 x 2.7 = 1620 BTU/cuft A 40% power pant is still more efficient than a 95% furnace with a 2.7 COP heat pump. There is obviously more to this, there are some grid losses to account for but has to be compared to piping losses, there is also cost factors and also how much renewable is mixed into your grid supply, but generally once that heat pump is above around 2.5 COP it starts to make sense, this is a no brainer in milder climates which is why I have a heat pump and no gas furnace here in FL even though I have gas to the house for other uses.
  - snuxoll 4y ago
    > this is a no brainer in milder climates which is why I have a heat pump and no gas furnace here in FL even though I have gas to the house for other uses. They're a no-brainer in every climate. Newer heat pumps can handle fairly cold temperatures (-13°F) pretty easily, there may be a loss in efficiency but in the majority of the world it doesn't stay that cold. A few days of lower than normal efficiency, and at worst plugging in a few space heaters if it gets extremely cold for a day or two, does not change the overall math of heat pumps being a better solution. Hell, that's just me talking about air source heat pumps. No reason for new construction to not use ground source and get better efficiency and not worry about ambient outdoor temperatures.
    - nashashmi 4y ago
      Ok! I am genuinely interested in how heat pumps are more efficient. My online search led me to calling heat pumps more efficient when compared to electric heaters. And better in other ways compared to gas burners. But lord's sake, they were all upselling marketing sites for heat pumps. I am looking for genuine research, and not from paid mouth pieces. Majority of the comments here seem like agents of heat pump industry. And HN rules forbid me from calling them that.
- Nihilartikel 4y ago
  The new order world government will have to pry my wood burning lightbulbs from my cold dead guns!
- SigmundA 4y ago
  Just to counter your edit: >But compressing and decompressing is not an energy efficient task. It takes a lot of work. Mechanical inefficiencies are a huge energy consumption. Gas is simply burning fuel. Yes, we should save gas for rainy days. But I hate to say that it is more efficient and cheap. There is no comparison. You are very mistaken, the energy required to compress refrigerant is less than the energy captured and delivered if COP > 1, which is the point of a heat pump. At COP 1 it is basically heat of compression and equal to a resistive heater at COP greater than 2 the heat pump captured more heat from the environment than used to compress the refrigerant. I am not sure if you are arguing in good faith, if so here are some of the simplest resources I can find to explain how a heat pump can exceed a furnace in efficiency even when taking power plant and transmission losses into account, with easy to understand graphics: https://greenbusinesswatch.co.uk/cop-vs-spf https://greenbusinesswatch.co.uk/cop-vs-spf https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coefficient_of_performance https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Coefficient_of_perfo... http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatpump.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/heatpump.h... This should really be taught and drilled in lower education, the difference between heat and temperature and relationship to power, how heat engines work, etc. This stuff basically makes modern society possible and we will never progress in decoupling our power sources from use of the power which is what electrification allows which allows us to transition away from throwing carbon up in the air for energy.
vintermann 4y ago
Yeah. If some people came together at Davos or whatever and decided "we need to promote heat pumps!", you can be sure they would mess it up. Consent can maybe be manufactured. Enthusiasm is organic, for good and bad.
- aliqot 4y ago
  It's like you got to the endzone and fumbled with <5yds
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Agreed that top-down programs aren't always very effective (although sometimes they can be), but would point out that "coordinated" doesn't imply top-down. It could just mean that lots of individual entities are working with each other to achieve a common goal.

mhb 4y ago

That and gas stoves bad.

rootusrootus 4y ago
The 'gas stoves bad' movement isn't a push, it's a pull.
- vintermann 4y ago
  I think the underlying reason for it is that lots of engineering types got air quality sensors during corona, and noticed PM levels spiking from cooking. Or just people getting more IAC-conscious in general. This technology connections YouTuber I've seen pop up in lots of discussions on these topics.
MrMan 4y ago
gas stoves are bad
- endemic 4y ago
  I don't understand why this is contentious. You're burning gas inside your house.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    That's what is funny to me too -- they're basically phasing out all furnaces and hot water heaters that aren't direct vent (bringing in combustion air from outside) because it's so problematic to have gas-burning appliances in your home. Yet we just burn gas stoves -- some of which are massive without question... If you were to use all of the burners on this stove on their highest setting, it would consume more BTUs than a 6-ton Furnace! And it just vents into your indoor air: (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Cosmo-36-in-6-0-cu-ft-Commercial-Style-Gas-Range-with-Convection-Oven-in-Stainless-Steel-with-Storage-Drawer-COS-EPGR366/313785880 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Cosmo-36-in-6-0-cu-ft-Commercial...)

kzrdude 4y ago

Who do you imagine is pushing, and why? Don't you want to resist to turn to explanations like this, that require some invisible force to pull the strings? I think there are more realistic ways to imagine this happening. If for example a pop star is getting a lot of attention, in multiple countries, what is the mechanism behind that? And is it orchestrated?

suoduandao2 4y ago
Explanations like what? Op didn’t put forward much in the way of hypotheses. If you have a good explanation of the mechanism by which attention accumulates around topics that doesn’t require orchestration it would be interesting to hear, it seems like a poorly understood phenomenon.
- rcme 4y ago
  It’s called: product market fit. When people like your products, they talk about them. I have heat pumps through a mini split system. I like them so much I’m redoing my entire HVAC to add ducts with heat pump powered heating and AC. They’re kind of a miracle: they produce great heat (way better than a gas-powered furnace), they’re ultra-efficient, and they’re whisper quiet.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  The way I read it, Op was suggesting a flirt with conspiratorial thinking ("someone is doing this") and I wanted to turn to something more rational. I don't really know how trends and fashions form and haven't thought so much about it. Some aspect of it might look like research into the ising model and phase transitions - small changes in "temperature" everywhere in the mass of people might look like a phase transition in the overall mood.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

Wait till we have Heat Pumps built with Rust! But seriously i think it’s just that awareness hit a critical threshold so the hysteresis kicks in and articles proliferate. In both cases.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
There's really no question that Rust will undoubtedly take over most heat pumps, sooner or later.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  :)

nashashmi 4y ago

Heat pumps are the opposite of AC. AC industry is behind this for sure. It is like a paid PR campaign. It is not more economical then gas. So now gas is going to be punished for factors X,Y,Z. It is coordinated. I wish there is more investigative research into who and why they are doing this.

mikeyouse 4y ago
Ah yes, "big AC" is bullying the Oil and Gas industry with their subversive marketing. If only Exxon, BP, and Shell had some political clout they could expose this plot.
jamiek88 4y ago
In this thread you’ve gone form ‘compressors don’t work like that’ to ‘this is all a conspiracy by big A/C’. You are not engaging with any of the helpful, generous replies, in fact going as far as to say that you wish you could call it ‘coordinated’. Why are you even here if you think we are all lying shill for big air compressor?
WatchdogReset 4y ago
For the record, I am only trying to make my elearning website more known. There is plenty of other HVAC subject that I would like to share. It's just that Heat Pump where for me an interesting topics to get into the subject but you can have a look at other free courses.

practice9 4y ago

The reason is that suddenly everybody understood that Russia is an unreliable partner for their countries energy needs (at least in Europe). For consumers it's also became clear that being slightly more independent from centralized heating and/or energy infrastructure is a good thing

manojlds 4y ago
Suddenly, as in Crimea didn't happen?
- roywiggins 4y ago
  Suddenly understood
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  There was a push towards renewables and heat pumps after Crimea too (and before, for general climate change reasons) There was also push to do the opppsite to neutralise that threat to fossil profits e.g. Bjorn Lomberg the skeptic saying that we didnt have any tech that could replace gas, so the only response to Crimea was to frack or invent totally new tech, not rolling out renewables and heat pumps faster. "Fracking Could Free Europe from Putin" https://www.forbes.com/sites/bjornlomborg/2014/06/23/fracking-could-free-europe-from-putins-gas-monopoly/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bjornlomborg/2014/06/23/frackin... > Still, many EU politicians talk mostly about expanding renewable energies as a way of making Europe independent of Russian energy. Connie Hedegaard, the European Commissioner for Climate Action, said the Ukraine crisis should be a “wake-up call” for European countries to make the switch from Russian gas to clean, renewable sources of energy. > But this simply ignores reality. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), Europe gets just 1.3 percent of its energy from renewables like solar and wind, whereas it gets about 75 percent from fossil fuels and most of the remainder from nuclear. Even an extremely optimistic scenario from the IEA suggests that by 2035, Europe will only be able to generate 8 percent of its energy from these renewables. Focusing on them is simply populism without realism. At that point, climate skepticism was strong enough politically to prevail. They tried to use this latest annexation to promote fracking etc. too but it seems to have largely failed.

dahfizz 4y ago

A more plausible explanation is that the we HN-ers are a bunch of nerds and heatpumps are excellent nerd-bait

micromacrofoot 4y ago

It's a great way to lessen the demand on fossil fuels and the power grid. Manufacturers are obviously pushing, but many utility companies and municipalities are too. Basically the electric car or solar panels of HVAC. It's one of those things where there are a lot of incentives for everyone involved all the way down the line.

hexmiles 4y ago

I don't know if it applies everywhere, but two factor come to mind: the (somewhat recent) change in energy and gas price did make heat pump a lot more competitive with more traditional heating solutions, and recently there are a lot of economic incentives (at least, here in Europe) to renovate house for energy efficiency, which make solar panel and heat pump very attractive.

masklinn 4y ago
> and recently there are a lot of economic incentives (at least, here in Europe) to renovate house for energy efficiency, which make solar panel and heat pump very attractive. Economic but also legal and geopolitical: fuel oil furnaces are getting restricted or banned, and the combination of climate change, air quality standards, and russian instability makes gas look at lot worse than it did 10 or 20 years back.

wongarsu 4y ago

For a long time the main problem of heat pumps was that while they are more efficient, a kilowatthour of gas or oil is much cheaper than a kilowatthour of electricity. But in the last two years natural gas prizes have gone crazy, removing that price disadvantage. Of course heat pumps emitting no particulates and being able to run on renewables are also good reasons, especially as the health impact of living in cities with high PM2.5 values becomes clearer. But I don't think those are the primary drivers.

PragmaticPulp 4y ago
Heat pump technology has also improved significantly. You can now buy heat pumps that remain efficient down to very low temperatures, which makes them appropriate for a larger range of climates now. Many models are in very high demand. Some of the units I looked at recently were back ordered so far that I was told to pick something else if I expected to have it within the year. The demand is very high because the technology is good. It’s not a campaign or conspiracy.
- bmicraft 4y ago
  Yeah it almost makes the opposite of sense. If manufacturers are already backordered a year in advance why would they still throw money at marketing
  - bluGill 4y ago
    The war in Ukraine has resulted in a real push to get off of oil/gas based heating, on top of global warming concerns that have already been doing that. There are lots of different groups looking to push heat pumps for the above reasons. Governments are concerned about both war and global warming. Ukraine supporters are concerned about Russia getting more money (to wage more war). Green activists are concerned about global warming. All have their own reasons to push heat pumps on everyone.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
It's not directly related to the recent spike in prices, especially considering that a heat pump installation is very expensive in itself and potentially disruptive. Rather, it's a combination wanting to get to net zero, so no emissions, with the big problem of generating enough green electricity. A heat pump system has no emissions and consumes much less electricity than an electric boiler/electric heater.

atoav 4y ago

My father has solar and a heat pump. His cummulative heating and electrical cost is practically zero over the year. On many days the solor panels produce more than he can use so he gets money for feeding it into the grid. If the roof of your house produces enough electricity for the people living it and the heating (and cooling) of all rooms, it is a no brainer to switch to a form of heating that relies on electricity.

helen___keller 4y ago

I’ve been independently interested in heat pumps because I need to replace my old end-of-life system and I’ve been interested if a modern cold-weather mini split system is a better investment. There’s lots of conflicting info I’ve found on if heat pumps perform in freezing weather and at what kind of efficiency. I’m sure there’s others in my position.

fullstop 4y ago
Where do you live geographically? I'm in eastern Pennsylvania and have lived with a heat pump for 20+ years.
- helen___keller 4y ago
  Massachusetts
  - fullstop 4y ago
    A bit colder, on average, than where I live. You might want to look at ground-loop HPs or ccASHPs.
sbradford26 4y ago
So largely I think the confusion stems from there being two major different "types" of heat pumps and they perform very differently. The first is your conventional type system, this is usually what AC units are in the US. They run at maybe 1 or 2 speeds. These type of heat pumps are common in the southern parts of the US but also will be found paired with a gas furnace in the northern US. Since they don't adjust their output dynamically they tend to start losing capacity/efficiency significantly around 25-30F. The second is an inverter driven heat pump. You usually find these in mini splits but they can also be found in a standard air handler form factor that would replace a furnace. The inverter allows the compressor to adjust based on demand and exterior temperature to maximize efficiency. This allow these units to operate efficiently down to -13F depending on the unit. Now there will still be some capacity loss at those temps so during the design of the system this has to be taken into account. For detailed information on the efficiency of heat pumps I would check out NEEPs website. It is a great resource, it will show you capacity and efficiency (COP) of tons of different units across their operating temperatures. https://ashp.neep.org/ https://ashp.neep.org/

mr_mitm 4y ago

You should expect this impression to become more intense. How else will you heat your home without emitting greenhouse gasses? Electric space heaters are vastly inferior for obvious reasons. Everything else is out because we eventually need to achieve (net) zero emissions. And since there are a lot of gas and oil heaters to be replaced, heat pumps will only increase in demand.

Maxburn 4y ago

YES. There is a massive electrification push right now because electric items can be fed from "sustainable" things like wind/dam/solar and don't emit CO or CO2 in operation. Heat pumps are also inexpensive on initial cost and less expensive than straight AC with gas heat. They are also low maintenance in comparison to straight AC with gas heat. Very popular units in southern US.

bcrosby95 4y ago
This hasn't been my experience. I can get an AC unit and gas furnace installed for something like 7k. But a heat pump unit that heats and cools is something like 13k installed. I obviously went with the former.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  The install price is only the start. The total cost of ownership over expected lifetime is the important number for many. That initial 7K installation cost is only a fraction of what you’re going to pay in gas and electricity over the next decade.
  - Maxburn 4y ago
    Very true. Simply having gas available to use results in a base bill for service, even if your usage is zero. And yet what I see time and again is that initial purchase price is the only focus for construction costs, even rehab work. Those budgets are a separate bucket from utility bills so lower priced projects get approval even if utility bills will be higher.
- Maxburn 4y ago
  That's fascinating and I believe you were subject to some weird market conditions there. Look at the complexity of gas burners vs a reversing valve and electric heat strips and I think you will see what I mean.
  - Thlom 4y ago

notdarkyet 4y ago

I see this as well and it looks to be multiple people buying in to the campaign, especially here on HN. Having lived in a new, high end apartment that had a heat pump for both heating and cooling for 3 years, I am very unimpressed with the tech. Running nonstop, couldn't heat/cool above/below a certain threshold. Electric bill very high. Clogged and broke a lot. If the general radiant heat and cooling from being in large building didn't exist, I couldn't see this working halfway decent in any place in the midwest. This might work for areas with less variable temperature ranges but for the midwest USA, not seeing it.

fullstop 4y ago
Your high end apartment must have had a low end heat pump installed. In the midwest a geothermal heat pump would work wonderfully. Also, they are designed to run constantly in order to maintain the set temperature -- it's not like a natural gas fired furnace where it quickly reaches the set point.
- prottog 4y ago
  > Also, they are designed to run constantly in order to maintain the set temperature Not all heat pumps are variable-speed like you describe. My own home, built in 2000, has a single-speed heat pump that kicks on 100% or off, like a regular old AC unit.
  - fullstop 4y ago
    Right, what I'm trying to say is that it is normal for it to be on 100% of the time when it is cold out. If you are used to gas heat which can turn on for 15 minutes, overshoot the set point, and then be off for the next 45 minutes, a heat pump will seem strange. Mine is a variable speed unit, but that's not the function that I'm talking about.
- slfnflctd 4y ago
  What's the payback time on something like that for a modest home in a place which can get significantly under 20 degrees (F) or over 95 degrees for weeks or longer? How effective is it at those extreme temperatures when it matters the most, and how does this affect maintenance costs? Additionally, there are multiple types of restrictions on where geothermal pumps can be installed, and navigating this can add to costs. I don't see it as a one size fits all solution, there are far too many people for whom the household/company math doesn't add up. However, I agree we should be doing fair comparison against other renewable-friendly options for all new construction. I'm sure heat pumps could win out in a great many situations, and we should use them where they do.

Lutger 4y ago

Just the hivemind I guess, doesn't feel coordinated to me but rather obvious. In my country the waiting time for heat pumps is now over a year. People can't stop talking about energy, the war and their utility bills. Heat pumps are very on topic. Any reasons to change my mind?

rhussmann 4y ago

At least in NYC, new installations of gas and oil boilers for building and water heating will be regulated away in favor of electric-heating means (like heat pumps) by 2025: https://www.silive.com/news/2022/12/new-yorks-new-roadmap-to-climate-change-goals-heres-what-it-says-about-heating-your-home.html https://www.silive.com/news/2022/12/new-yorks-new-roadmap-to... This is, of course, the regulation as it stands today; things can always change. Additionally NYC alone likely doesn't account for the attention. But, other metros and municipalities could have similar legislation.

redeeman 4y ago

topic of discussion: is anyone else concerned that all the new things being clearly pushed hard, regardless of reasons(good or bad), has the common theme of centralizing. In a world where if your heatpump stops working, you die from cold, it would be an awfully sad thing if social credit scores dictated a very low kilowatthour limit. Much more sad than a world where you obtain firewood from some local vendor

kevstev 4y ago
I am not sure the case you are making here- most people who would be switching to a heat pump for heat are almost certainly using oil, natural gas, or propane to heat their homes, all of which require a good deal of centralization. Those that have the ability to use firewood to heat their homes today can continue doing so if they need to- its not a requirement to close up your chimney permanently to use one. FWIW I am considering switching to a heat pump, but would still have natural gas fireplaces as a backup.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> has the common theme of centralizing. In a world where if your heatpump stops working, you die from cold, Using machinery for heating isn’t new. Virtually nobody in the modern world uses firewood from a local vendor to heat their homes. These conspiracy theorist angles are baffling. Heat pumps are just another variation of AC, which is already ubiquitous. If people don’t use heat pumps, they won’t use firewood. They’ll use a regular furnace or electric heat.
pjc50 4y ago
> Much more sad than a world where you obtain firewood from some local vendor A while ago I ran the numbers, and to meet UK electricity demand from wood would consume every single tree in the country in three months. Limiting that to heating and giving up on industry would stretch that a bit, but the country is fundamentally dependent on imports to stay alive. We can't not be global.
micromacrofoot 4y ago
They could also just shut off your gas, heat pumps introduce no newfound ability to be authoritarian that isn't already there.

mschuster91 4y ago

> Clearly there is a push. Yeah, tl;dr: fuel price scares and the French nuclear power plant disaster, as well as government regulations. To expand: most homes traditionally are heated by either burning something fossil (oil, gas, coal), somewhat half-ish renewable (wood pellets, straight chopped wood), by straight electricity (resistive heating) or by heat pumps (air-to-air, ground-to-air, deep-well-to-air aka geothermal). Some homes particularly in urban areas or in close proximity to a large power plant can also be heated by district heating using one of the aforementioned heat sources. And all of these classes of heaters have their issues: - Electricity is the easiest of the bunch from a technical point of view, but you're out of luck when the grid fails for whatever reason, you're tied to grid price hikes in some contract models (as people learned the hard way in Texas' last winter spike), there will be fuel burned as part of the generation and frankly resistive heating is wasteful. - Wood pellet has the problem that the amount of waste (=sawdust) is finite, which means you're chopping down wood that could be used for construction and burning it instead. That is a waste of money and valuable resources when wood is scarce, fine particulate matter causes smell and health issues, and a lot of wood is unethically sourced. - Solid-wood or coal heaters are difficult to properly fire up - most people fire it wrong (not enough oxygen / too much fuel load), resulting in higher consumption of wood, higher emissions and a danger of soot buildup which is a fire risk. Additionally, many home fires are started by people disposing not-completely-cooled ash or placing flammable objects too close to the oven or exhaust, and still a lot of people die because of carbon monoxide emissions caused by improper handling. - Oil stinks to hell and beyond, the boilers need an insane amount of maintenance so they don't clog up, you need to ship tanker trucks to homes, there are risks of spillage and contamination, and the same emissions issues of wood apply (plus, oil generates more CO2 than gas per kWh of heat). Also, it's not renewable at all. - Gas is relatively easy to ship around when there is a gas distribution network in place, it burns relatively clean, but carries an explosion risk and is fossil in origin (at least for the next decades that it will take to build up power-to-gas infrastructure). In contrast, heat pumps are pretty awesome: - all they need is a bit of electricity - a good heat pump can achieve up to 4x ratio, meaning it generates 4 kWh of available heat in the home by using 1 kWh of electricity. That also makes off-grid or local generator fallback solutions more feasible - a 20 kW heat-pump boiler needs a 5 kW generator which can be had for a couple hundred dollars instead of a massive generator unit. - their heat sources (or rather, cold sinks) are renewable - air, local ground loops or deep wells are virtually infinite. That means, as long as your electricity supply is renewable, your heat generation also is renewable. - Most heat pumps run at 40-ish degrees. That in turn prohibits the use of old-school convection radiators, so most installations with heat pumps tend to use floor heating which needs less energy to achieve a temperature comfortable for humans (our feet are the most sensitive part, but as heat from a convection radiator rises to the top of the room, it needs a lot of energy for a comfortably warm floor). - they are, particularly when compared to oil heating, extremely small and don't cause emissions - they don't need much maintenance effort to keep running, and no need for chimney sweepers either - they don't pose an imminent risk of carbon monoxide poisoning or outright fire Basically, the only issue heat pumps have is you need specially trained people to install them and they are short in supply at the moment since everyone and their dog got shocked to heaven in the last year of that goddamn war and heat pumps are the objectively best way to heat a home.

scythe 4y ago

I'm just annoyed that I was talking about heat pumps for the last five years or so and nobody is giving me any credit for running an international conspiracy. But seriously, it's just the next fish to fry after electric vehicles became a solved problem. Heating buildings is somewhere around 10-25% of total emissions and probably the largest remaining single factor not directly addressed by switching the electric grid to renewables, so many people concerned about climate change have converged on it.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

achenatx 4y ago

my friend is building his house and is putting in 4 heat pumps (big house). The problem is we just lost power for 4 days and 2 years ago we lost power for 5 days. He is discovering that electric heat uses massive amounts of electricity and there is no way to get a residential generator big enough to power them all. He might not even be able to power one (they can use in excess of 20kw). I would never get electrical water heater, stove, and heater for that reason.

boringg 4y ago
So this is one of my big concerns - I live in a cold weather country currently. We have power outages once every couple of years. If I don't have back up power my pipes freeze and then i'm out probably > $50k. I was thinking the solution for me is to put in a heat pump and then run a backup gas generator. But that solution feels like a significant amount of overbuild. I have 3 minisplits already but they aren't valuable in the winter -- where you install your AC units isn't where you would install your heating units .. I.e. the top of my house for AC, the bottom of the house for heat. Having multiple energy sources to defray risk is helpful.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Heat pumps are great when things are mildly cold. While do work down to -20C or so, efficiency drops off, so you need bigger and bigger units. It often makes sense to have a smaller heat pump that will only work down to -5C (random temperature, a real analysis of your house is required to give a better answer), and then a gas furnace backup for those really cold days. Once you have the gas furnace backup you can run that off of a small generator on the few days you are without power.
thekingshorses 4y ago
If there is a power outage, you can't run your natural gas heater either. It needs fan to run.
- triceratops 4y ago
  But you can run a furnace fan off a diesel generator.

Silverback_VII 4y ago

preparations for nuclear winter.

bilsbie 4y ago

Easier to turn off people’s electric than gas when they don’t follow the social rules.

timbit42 4y ago
Not when they have solar.

burkaman 4y ago

Yes, there is currently a coordinated push by the entire world to prevent excessive climate change.

kavalg 4y ago

I am a happy user of a DYI air source heat pump, that I've been using for 8+ years, mostly for heating in a residential building. First, it must be told that an off the shelf AC unit is technically speaking also a heat pump. There has been this distinction (and confusion) between AC units and (mostly) ground source heat pumps because, you know the latter actually have a water 'pump' to circulate fluid in the ground piping. Ground source heat pumps are far more expensive that AC units and are nearly impossible to retrofit in existing buildings. Hence, companies came up with a 'middle ground' solution, called air source heat pumps. In these devices the outdoor unit is much like an outdoor unit of a split type AC, but the indoor unit is basically a refrigerant/water heat exchanger with a water pump and some sensors around it. There is also a monoblock type of air source heat pump, where all components are in the outer block and you only connect the piping. IMHO, the reason air source heat pumps are becoming popular now is because their price went down considerably during the last 5 years, whereas the price of fossil fuel heat sources has gone up. Back then when I had to choose between a gas boiler and a heat pump, the boiler was around EUR 2, off the shelf heat pump (24000 btu) was around EUR 7k and for the DIY option I paid a total of EUR 2.3k. The reason for this was that the market for air source heat pumps was underdeveloped and companies (e.g. Mitsubishi, Daikin, Fujitsu) were charging a lot more in this market segment (rich people with new houses). At some point in time, people started realizing the benefits of a heat pump over a normal AC (less units, no noise, nor air currents, better efficiency, can produce hot water, heating is decoupled from the source and more sources, such as solar can be seamlessly plugged in). Manufacturers albeit slowly responded to this demand. Now with solar power gaining more traction, they are becoming a very obvious choice.

elil17 4y ago

Well of course it is being pushed, though I would not necessarily call it coordinated. Companies that sell heat pumps are advertising hard. It's an easy sell for them with rising gas prices. The US government is "pushing them" by offering tax credits for heat pump systems. This is part of a plan to reduce pollution, improve energy independence/energy security, and save citizens money on their heating bills. No secret there - politicians and public servants are excited about this and they are talking about it. They are also offering tax credits for other high efficiency heating systems, but not that many people are looking at those tax credits because buying a new high efficiency gas furnace doesn't make that much sense when you could buy a more efficient heat pump instead. Many individual people are also talking about them because they are a great way to help the environment and save money at the same time. And I think a lot of people just think they are cool technology as well.

boringg 4y ago
I think this is probably the right answer. It keeps popping up everywhere. I'm always a skeptic on when something gets super hyped. In this case it's more use-case specific that makes me skeptical - majority of people its 100% fit.
- elil17 4y ago
  I also tend to be skeptical when I see something hyped, but I work in this space and I can say that this tech is really the best option for most residential applications. It's old tech, it's been around since the 1800s. The only thing that has changed is that heat pumps have gotten cheap and energy has gotten expensive. There are applications where heat pumps cannot replace boilers - in industrial processes where high temperatures are required or tremendous capacity is needed intermittently. However, unless your temperatures are routinely below about -20 F, a heat pump is the best choice (and even if temperatures occasionally drop below that, heat pumps are still an excellent choice because those extreme temperatures might only last for a handful of hours out of the year, during which insulation or a cheap electrical resistance heater can keep you warm).

billjings 4y ago

Here's a couple of reasons: 1. The American market has a lot of incorrect perceptions of heat pumps. Debunking these makes for great viral content! 2. The IRA introduced big incentives for various electrification expenses. The incentives are the big thing, but the public interest/controversy part is why some enhancements like heat pumps and kitchen electrification ("don't take away my gas stove!") are going more viral than, say, electric vehicles (technology connections guy has some good EV content, but it's not doing quite the same numbers)

sophacles 4y ago
What is IRA in this context? I don't think heat pumps have anything to do with retirement nor the political status of Norther Ireland.
- tekla 4y ago
  Its a fairly easy to parse typo of IRS.
  - sophacles 4y ago
    Oh that makes some sense, I guess I wasn't thinking about them since they aren't the ones who change tax law.
- aaronbrethorst 4y ago
  The inflation reduction act of 2022. https://www.hvac.com/resources/inflation-reduction-act-heat-pump-rebates/ https://www.hvac.com/resources/inflation-reduction-act-heat-...
  - billjings 4y ago
    Yep, the Inflation Reduction Act is what I meant. It came into effect this year.
    - sophacles 4y ago

heisenbit 4y ago

Continuous improvements in technology, growth spurt in electric motors, demand gap for automobile motor part suppliers having to seek out related industries, cheap summer electricity via solar panel meet kick in the behind by fossil fuel energy prices.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

> What is going on? Is there a global push to get everyone to switch to heat pumps. It seems that there is heat pump content everywhere. Clearly there is a push. Based on the lack of political dick swinging I don't think this is a "push". They're legitimately good technology for certain use cases, I'm sure the manufacturers are pushing them. They are also The New Hotness(TM) and they are billed as environmentally friendly. Both those attributes are valuable by themselves to some people. I think this is more a case of a grassroots-originated circle jerk within certain demographic bubbles. I get a lot of "air fryer" vibe from the whole thing. And I say this as someone who owns and really likes his air fryer.

peterhunt 4y ago

It is coordinated. In many states there are huge incentives [1] to disconnect your existing home from (and not connect new construction to) the natural gas infrastructure. This is great for the climate but air source heat pump technology simply doesn't work well in cold climates. Most heat pumps in the United States have 100% efficiency down to about 20 degrees F. Below that they "lose efficiency." What most people don't realize is that "lose efficiency" = blows cool or cold air. So if you live somewhere that routinely gets that low you are likely either going to be really cold, or have to engage aux heat (often natgas or oil-based heating or electric resistance heating). Additionally, even when operating at 100% efficiency they don't blow air as hot as traditional heating sources. So if you have a poorly insulated room, large space, or even just an unusually cold day, it will often have a hard time keeping up. I have found that I only use my air source heat pump a little bit during the fall in New England, and I have to run aux heat throughout basically all of winter. Talking to my friends in the region who have heat pumps, they all have similar experiences. I think we are all very eager to get off of fossil fuels but the technology just isn't there yet, and I am concerned that most people installing heat pumps today don't know the risks associated with them in extreme weather events. If your heat pump can't keep up and you didn't install aux heating you can't live in your house, your pipes will freeze, and you will generally have a bad time. If you did install and use aux heating, you may be surprised at how expensive and inefficient resistive electric heating is as it may need to run all the time. [1] Massachusetts will pay you $10k to install air source heat pumps and disconnect from natural gas https://www.masssave.com/en/residential/rebates-and-incentives/air-source-heat-pumps https://www.masssave.com/en/residential/rebates-and-incentiv...

nicpottier 4y ago
This is FUD. I live in climate zone 5 in a 100 year old house that has high heating demands and our air source heat pump has been awesome, even when it dipped into the negatives briefly this year. Our heat pump is over 100% efficient down to 0F.
- peterhunt 4y ago
  What type of heat pump do you have out of curiosity?

kodt 4y ago

1. There was recently a statement released by a member of the Consumer Product Safety Commission saying they were considering regulating indoor pollution from natural gas stoves. This lead to a bunch of outrage and claims that Natural Gas was going to be banned at a Federal level. https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/11/gas-stoves-fossil-fuels-climate/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/1... 2. Cites like NYC have implemented bans or limits on new gas installations, and it has been proposed at the state level as well. Other cities such as Chicago have had conversations regarding this issue, at least enough for it to get into the news and spark minor outrage. Because of these recent controversies there has been much talk about Heat Pumps and whether or not they are able to function efficiently or sufficiently in sub zero temperatures regularly seen in the upper Midwest or North East.

danans 4y ago

> worth looking at who the winners are and what the trade offs are. The winners are consumers, the effort to reduce GHG and particulate emissions, and the drive toward energy independence (whether at the national, local, or hyper-local level). The losers are fossil fuel extraction industries, because due to the high COP of heat pumps, far more heat is delivered per unit of energy consumed, even if that energy ultimately comes from burning natural gas at a power station. Also, the source of the energy itself gets disintermediated, since electricity can come from multiple sources, including renewables. The tradeoffs are (for now): Higher upfront installation cost (tempered by the IRA, and potentially lower operating costs), availability of the equipment (supply chain stuff), and long delays in installation due to lack of qualified installers (and resulting high costs).

guidoism 4y ago

It would be great if this was coordinated. Ideas that are good for people usually don't get a very intelligent effort promoting them compared to really bad ideas that make a few people really rich.

WatchdogReset 4y ago

My two cents, I just tried to show this free course on my site, because heat pumps are an interesting topic. There is also others courses like this : https://hvac-learning.com/courses/air-handling-units-technology-part-1/ https://hvac-learning.com/courses/air-handling-units-technol... Heat pump as every heating or cooling devices, have pro and cons. This is where HVAC knowledge is nice to have, in order to have the best solutions. For example, the maintenance / obsolescence are an under estimated point when it comes to environment and savings

rgmerk 4y ago

Governments are influenced by what other governments are doing in a variety of ways. At a basic level, governments are full of people who have an interest in public policy, and they read publications that cover public policy matters from around the world. If the EU brings in a policy that encourages an expansion in heat pump usage, it'll probably get written up in The Economist (and a bunch of more specialised publications), and, guess what, bureaucrats and political staffers in the UK, the US, Canada and so on will read it. There are also institutions specifically devoted to developing policy advice for national governments, and in the renewable energy space the big one is IRENA. And guess what, they're telling their member governments that, hey, if you want to screw over the Russians, meet your greenhouse targets, and save your citizens a bunch of money, heat pumps are the way to go. And as those things happen to be basically true, national governments are falling over themselves to implement policies to encourage it to happen.