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Huh? The main reason heat pumps are being pushed is because they are extremely efficient, not as some kind of sacrifice that we are doing to protect the grid. T
by OGWhales 3y ago
Huh? The main reason heat pumps are being pushed is because they are extremely efficient, not as some kind of sacrifice that we are doing to protect the grid. There is no better option if we are moving away from gas at home.
The only competitive alternative is gas powered heating. However, I believe it’s more energy efficient to use natural gas for electricity generation and use heat pumps for heating rather than piping gas to people’s homes and burning it there. The exception is when it’s so cold that heat pumps do not perform well (although modern heat pumps can work in very cold situations)
- cesaref 3y agoThe exception is for old housing stock which isn't well enough insulated to be heated by a heat pump, and there's huge amounts of single glazed, poorly insulated (by modern standards) housing around in the UK
- notacoward 3y agoDoesn't that lack of insulation affect all heating and cooling technologies? Seems kind of orthogonal to me. Where insulation is poor, people - individually and/or through the government - absolutely should be investing first on improving it. But once that's done, we're back to the original question of what technology to use for heating or cooling the now-well-insulated space. Note that it's entirely possible e.g. for a furnace to have a greater capacity to heat a space while still being less efficient at it within any but the most extreme ranges.