11 ms·

European heat pump sales are collapsing

19 points by rustoo 3y ago

chewz 3y ago
In Northern Europe heatpumps are simply not effective (yet). Heating at colder nights means heating with electricity, where gas is 1/3 of the electricity price. 100s of stories of people who converted to heat pumps (being oversold with less then perfect home insulations) and who are disapointed financialy. Southern Europe is different story.
- bad_alloc 3y ago
  This is false. The Nordics use way more heat pumps than the rest of Europe: https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/30/do-heat-pumps-work-in-winter-experts-explain-why-nordic-countries-have-installed-the-most- https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/30/do-heat-pumps-work...
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    A charitable reading of the parent comment is to focus on "converting". The Nordics tend to have their buildings designed for heat pumps from the start, or converted (and fixed up) a long time ago. I'm in a house in Germany and got it converted from gas to heat pump a couple of years ago. It took some adaptations to make that work, but on the flip side we obviously blasted lots of heat into the atmosphere before, which we're reigning in now (still work in progress). So yeah, conversions of houses not built to "heat pump spec" has follow-on efforts and costs that the heat pump hype didn't advertise. I had a rough idea what to expect and that it'll take a while to sort out everything, but if you went into the conversion with the idea that you're just replacing one part with another, you're in for disappointment.
    - dghughes 3y ago
      That reminds me of a house built here in SE Canada in New Brunswick. It's a super efficient home with quadruple glazed windows and walls 1m thick or something like that. The entire house is heated with a unit using the power equivalent to a hair dryer. Just for some perspective it can easily get to -20C or -30C in winter in New Brunswick. It's airtight and very well insulated but yes built that way from the start. https://www.ecohome.net/guides/1401/new-brunswicks-most-energy-efficient-home/ https://www.ecohome.net/guides/1401/new-brunswicks-most-ener...
    - chewz 3y ago
      Exactly what I have meant. New building code is heat-pump friendly but lots of people with older (not old just older) houses had been sold on heat pumps and now pay the price in electricity bills.
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      > The Nordics tend to have their buildings designed for heat pumps from the start My grandma's house from the 1950's wasn't "designed for heat pumps", neither my other grandma's house from 1940. Neither was my mother in laws from the same period. You don't need to design anything, you just need a hole in the wall to run the cables. What does make the houses suited for heat pumps is the fact that Nordic houses are designed to keep the weather out. So when you heat/cool the inside, the house doesn't leak it all outside.
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        > What does make the houses suited for heat pumps is the fact that Nordic houses are designed to keep the weather out. So when you heat/cool the inside, the house doesn't leak it all outside. Alright, my bad. Consider "designed" replaced by "suitable". Houses of a certain era in large parts of Germany (those with only a few days of moderate sub-zero temperatures) tend to have been built with a bit of air leakage capacity to avoid mold. Yes, that's wasteful, but since fossils were (and are) subsidized like crazy, you just heat a bit more and be over with it. That strategy doesn't work as well when you have less heat to work with. There are still people who argue that it's unhealthy to live in a properly insulated house ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I doubt you have a lot of that nonsense in areas that deal with freezing temperatures for months at a time.
        theshrike79 3y ago
        Yea, the German insistence on "lüften" curing all ailments is legendary :D
    - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
      Do you have online resources I can browse through for conversions? I have a gas boiler -radiator piping built into the walls and people I talk to say the radiators wont work with heat pump level of temperatures so as in your case the system needs to be converted but how. What are methods and techniques?
      - pgeorgi 3y ago
        Nothing convenient. Bits and pieces here and there, tons of forums, a few videos, a bunch of books, a few specialists who gave good advice. The inbound temperature into the radiator network took a dive from about 70°C to about 40°C here (I _could_ push the inbound temp to nearly 50°C but by then I'm no better off than with resistive heating), and that's rather obvious when heating the rooms. The main advice everything came down to was "have a lot of surface that can heat" and from my experience that seems to be quite true. The house has a bunch of radiators that never ran in the nat-gas days, basically it was overcommitted on heating surface. Now they're pretty well used. Another retrofit option that I had in the back of my head was radiators equipped with a fan to move the air along the radiator surface more quickly (essentially creating "virtual heating surface"), but I didn't need those. Other than that, warm and cold parts of the house (e.g. basement) are more clearly separated. A FLIR camera module for my phone gave some hints on where heat escapes so that I could focus on the right spots. When a larger rework of a room is due (and there's a huge mess in any case), that's a chance to look into floor or wall heating there, connected to the same system. Once that's (mostly) done, I suppose the inbound temperature can be reduced some more, and I expect super-linear electricity savings from that (due to the way the heat pump works). In terms of costs, it comes out at about the same, although there are more options in electricity availability, and I suspect that pricing there remains more stable than with fossil fuels, so longer-term I expect operating costs to develop beneficially (even if that only means "remains flat"). TCO of the project, I don't know, but I was optimizing for long-term OpEx for various reasons. By the way: Heating engineers tended to dismiss the project, but the project started before there were any issues with gas supply, so "just use gas" was their go-to solution anyway (for the eco-conscious, they dangled the carrot of "it's H2 ready!", even though it's unlikely that the pipe work will ever support that). Not sure if the attitude of heating engineers changed in the meantime. In the end it was done by air conditioning technicians, and it can be switched between heating mode using radiators and AC with split system frontends, so this house covers cold winters and hot summers with just one external device (which pleases the historical landmark office)
- willvarfar 3y ago
  This is not my own experience nor the experience of every other homeowner I know in my corner of rural Sweden (and it's a popular discussion topic). I don't know of a single disappointment story, nor is it a thing in the local media. Heat pumps are very cost effective and me and most other homeowners I know have, over the last couple of decades, completely migrated from wood to heat pumps. In fact, there might not be that many homes who'd convert left to convert. The House construction locally has definitely tanked this last year. Much fewer projects.
  - lagrange77 3y ago
    Do you use it as part of a geothermal system, or are you talking about extracting the heat from the air? My thermodynamics class is some time ago, but pumping the heat stored in arctic air to a sufficiently high level for residential heating sounds indeed like an electric heating effectively.
    - geon 3y ago
      Yes, when you get down to -20 C or so, the efficiency drops below 1. Depending on the model. I think air heat pumps are more common due to their low price. They are easy to install and work well as a complement to other heat sources. Geothermal is popular too, but the installation cost is significantly higher.
    - D13Fd 3y ago
      Modern air source heat pumps are fine. Where I live it's hard to even find someone who services ground source heat pumps. Ground source works slightly better but the install cost is so much higher that it's rarely worth it.
  - Arnt 3y ago
    Digressing a bit... there's something weird about these stories. I come from rural-ish Norway and live in a big city in Germany. Lots of people here in Germany are quite willing to tell me that heat pumps don't work in the area where I come from, where I have many friends with heat pumps. Their confidence amazes me. I don't understand how they can be so confident.
- distances 3y ago
  They are massively popular in Finland, so clearly they work in the Northern Europe. Gas isn't even a competitor there, the other main option is district heating. Basically all other forms (mainly oil, direct electric heating) are on their way out.
- zelos 3y ago
  In the UK it's more pronounced. I pay £0.28/kWh for electricity and £0.069/kWh for gas, so as I understand it installing a heat pump will end up increasing my energy bills unless its coefficient of performance is over 4.
  - teamonkey 3y ago
    And in the UK the regulation that bans new gas boilers doesn't come in until 2025. Despite all the new homes being built in the UK, most are still being built with gas central heating.
    - benj111 3y ago
      The ban is on single fuel gas boilers. New ones will have to be able to use hydrogen.
      - mytailorisrich 3y ago
        If the UK had made the strategic decision to stick with nuclear we would have much more electric installations (like they have in France) and it would be easier for homes.
      - ajb 3y ago
        They're floating the idea of an outright ban, including 'hydrogen ready'. See Sec 4.1.2 of https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-future-homes-and-buildings-standards-2023-consultation/the-future-homes-and-buildings-standards-2023-consultation https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-future-homes...
  - sim7c00 3y ago
    in my country new homes come with solar panels and heatpumps usually. if you are unlucky not to earn litteral shit-tons, you can only rent as house prices are through the roof.. with that rental contract comes extra service fees for heatpump and solar panels. those costs are about 10 times higher than savings from not using Gas and having the panels... and they persist for the entirety of the contract. so basically you are off much more expensive. --- for the climate they say >.> ... i can see people getting much less excited to go for green options, simply because its not affordable especially for regular or low income homes... it's just another scheme to get ur money. - it's maybe a bit harsh opinion, but its hard to draw any other conclusions. Send billions upon billions for War, and have households collapse by forcing these kinds of tech on people without any subsidies or help to pay for them. I hope soon to move away from the western countries. i work in IT on a nice salary and i can't even afford to live here anymore :/
- xoa 3y ago
  >In Northern Europe heatpumps are simply not effective (yet). That's not what I've heard of even air, but to be clear, you are talking air source right? I'm near the Canadian border in northern New England and am getting ready at work to have another vertical ground source (geothermal) heat pump put in, and those are very effective year round. Well loop is around 515' (~155m), which is on the longer side but not a big deal by well drilling standards (which is why lots of well drilling companies have been expanding into heat pumps in the last 5 years and availability has sky rocketed). The price is definitely much higher than air source for now, maybe always will carry some premium, but the major government incentives here help significantly and of course the reliability is high. There are a few minor other bonuses as well I guess, like aesthetically speaking once done there can be nothing to near nothing visible outside. There are a few other strategies (horizontal ground, water source, semi-open) that some are looking at too but around here simple vertical closed looks likely to end up as the majority due to economies of scale, it can be done anywhere vs needing more/special land, and like I said leverages an existing industry. It's neat to see coming along, so perhaps longer term that'll offer an option in Northern Europe too.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
distances 3y ago
The article doesn't mention that new building construction has almost halted in many European markets. I would assume that to play a much larger role than the reasons presented in the article.
- bhouston 3y ago
  Makes sense. In our new neighborhood in North America every single house got a heat pump by default. If housing starts drop that would significant affect sales.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    That's because they're not running gas lines in a lot of new neighborhoods. If you don't have a gas line then the only sane alternative is to get a heat pump.
    - bhouston 3y ago
      This is Canada so we actually have both a heat pump as well as a secondary natural gas furnace for when the heat pump isn't sufficient. We get temperatures that go below -30C in the winter, which is beyond all heat pump's operating range.
      - taylodl 3y ago
        That's interesting. Here in the States they use heat pumps in a similar fashion, except it's backed by heating coils (electric furnace). As you say, the heat pump is much more efficient - until it isn't. Then the system switches over to heating coils. Where we have natural gas available we tend to just install a gas furnace and leave it at that.
        seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        It depends. In my 2016 build, my heat/cooling is heat pump, my hot water is gas (so is my stove). But I’m in Seattle where heat pumps don’t need a backup, and electricity is fairly cheap. A gas furnace would seem like a waste even though we have a gas line, although we do have a gas fireplace that we use for heat more often than the heat pump (which we only use when it is really cold).
r0ckarong 3y ago
There was a distinct pressure to invest in electric heat pumps because the prices for fossil fuels were so insane. Now the prices have normalized and suddenly paying what you were used to sounds more attractive than spending tens of thousands of Euros on top of the electric bill.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Installation is way too expensive and potentially disruptive.
- smooc 3y ago
  Where do you get your numbers from? Right now, pre heat pump, I'm at 2000kWh usage and return to the net 4000kWh (so 2000kWh in excess). I use 750m3 of gas. This costs me 100e per month. I'm investing in a full electric ground source heat pump. Which cost me 20k. An alternative is a air heatpump which is around 8k, but with a lower scop. Let's assume a scop of 5 (air-air) which is conservative. The amount of energy required for heating / showering / cooking was 750 * 9.27 = 6952.5 kWh. Dividing this by the scop of 5 means I require 1390.5 kWh to replace gas. This means I still have excess of solar kWh. For now I can use the grid as a battery. This means I have no electricity costs - I actually get 20e per month after taxes. So for 8k I have nullified my gas and electric bill. This means a payback period of 5.5 years (8000/120/12) or a yield of 18% (120/8000 * 100*12) per year. So it isn't required to have tens of thousands to invest and you get a positive yield (depending the tax climate) even with current gas prices. The 20k ground source heat pump looks a bit different. But I like that it is quiet and it can cool in summer for less energy that an air-air one.*
  - benj111 3y ago
    How would the sums work out if you were actually paying for electricity?
    - smooc 3y ago
      Good question. It depends on how that would work. Meaning can I offset against the whole year and just get less money back per kWh or will it become seasonal or day pricing. Day pricing would be the most impactful as during summer time prices are cheaper and I deliver back the most. If I assume that 2/3 of my usage will be in Winter and I can offset just 200kWh (there is always a bit of sun) then it look like this: 1390.5 * 2/3 = 927 kWh 927kWh - 200 = 727 kWh 727 kWh * 0.40 = 290.80 / year (0.40 is price per kWh) So I would spend 290 per year so about 25e. Which is 75% less then I do now. This excludes any other cost / benefit.
teamonkey 3y ago
They're more expensive than a new gas boiler, more expensive to run than gas heating (due to low gas prices), they often need upgrades to the entire home heating system and there's a cost of living crisis across Europe. It's not really a surprise.
- immibis 3y ago
  Are low gas prices due to subsidized gas? They were supposed to be very high due to the German-corruption-made dependence on Russian gas, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
  - dagw 3y ago
    It's not subsidies, gas prices are down to pre-invasion levels. Lots of changes were implemented to reduce overall gas demand, plus all governments build up their gas reserves so to avoid local energy shocks. Countries also set up alternate sources of gas. This all combined to push down gas prices.
    - teamonkey 3y ago
      I wouldn't say they were down to pre-invasion levels. I'm paying 2x for power what I paid 3 years ago. That is, however, much better than last year.
      - dagw 3y ago
        Technically they are just about down to pre-invasion levels, but not year-before-invasion levels.
        The_Colonel 3y ago
        Yes, Russia started to reduce supply in the autumn 2021 to build leverage during invasion.
  - teamonkey 3y ago
MilaM 3y ago
Sales have decreased from 565,000 to 485,000 or 14% in "Europe" YoY in the third quarter 2023. I would not call that a collapse.
eur0pa 3y ago
The cost of electricity in most of Europe is prohibitive, all things and fees considered I'm sitting at €0.50/kWh. Furthermore, most homes are allotted 3kW, upgradeable to 6kW for a fixed one-time fee, and perpetual fees in the monthly bill. The recent (2021) AC unit with a heat pump in this apartment draws 0.75 to 1.1kW. That means for every hour I'm using it I'm paying about €0.50, and I can't turn on neither the dishwasher, nor the washing machine, nor the oven while it's running. Maybe I can use the hairdryer but even that might trip the breaker if the wrong combination of lights, TV and fridge happens. Electricity is scarce and expensive in Europe, gas isn't. I appreciate how efficient and more sustainable heat pumps are but money doesn't grow on trees.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  > Furthermore, most homes are allotted 3kW, upgradeable to 6kW for a fixed one-time fee, and perpetual fees in the monthly bill. Are you sure of those numbers? 3kW is the max capacity of a single socket (at least in the UK). My electric shower is 10kW and electric hobs/cookers also need higher ratings than standard sockets. Here in the UK I believe that the standard domestic capacity is 100A per home (so about 24kW).
  - Macha 3y ago
    Yeah, 3kW is crazy low. I checked my local appliance store's website and they sell kettles capable of pulling 3kW on their own.
  - bowietrousers 3y ago
    Standard single phase grid connection is either 60A, 80A or 100A in the UK. The numbers the OP is quoting here certainly aren't representative.
    - eur0pa 3y ago
      There are other countries beside the US and UK. Italian homes get 3kW in total, breaker trips at 3.3. You may request up to 6kW for additional fees.
Arnt 3y ago
So I googled, and it seems that sales have increased every year from 2005 to 2022, but sales in 2023 will be only slightly higher than those in 2021. "Collapse" doesn't seem quite right.
altals2023 3y ago
No more cheap Russian energy. In place, expensive nordic and American energy. It is basically active self-sabotaging by European leaders. Not only heat pumps, a lot of businesses bankrupt. You can ask any Germans friends how bad German economy is and next couple of years. Some even wish to move to Indonesia or Eastern Asia side to look for jobs. Heat pump sale is just minuscule to all other collapsing sales there. Meanwhile the business contacts I know in Moscow and Petersburg having historic bonuses and pay increases. Meanwhile, UK and German tax payers still facing new taxes and subsidies cuts as I type this. Look on the bright side, look for military complex jobs. I see they are hiring.

19 points by rustoo 3y ago

In Northern Europe heatpumps are simply not effective (yet). Heating at colder nights means heating with electricity, where gas is 1/3 of the electricity price. 100s of stories of people who converted to heat pumps (being oversold with less then perfect home insulations) and who are disapointed financialy. Southern Europe is different story.

bad_alloc 3y ago
This is false. The Nordics use way more heat pumps than the rest of Europe: https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/30/do-heat-pumps-work-in-winter-experts-explain-why-nordic-countries-have-installed-the-most- https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/10/30/do-heat-pumps-work...
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  A charitable reading of the parent comment is to focus on "converting". The Nordics tend to have their buildings designed for heat pumps from the start, or converted (and fixed up) a long time ago. I'm in a house in Germany and got it converted from gas to heat pump a couple of years ago. It took some adaptations to make that work, but on the flip side we obviously blasted lots of heat into the atmosphere before, which we're reigning in now (still work in progress). So yeah, conversions of houses not built to "heat pump spec" has follow-on efforts and costs that the heat pump hype didn't advertise. I had a rough idea what to expect and that it'll take a while to sort out everything, but if you went into the conversion with the idea that you're just replacing one part with another, you're in for disappointment.
  - dghughes 3y ago
    That reminds me of a house built here in SE Canada in New Brunswick. It's a super efficient home with quadruple glazed windows and walls 1m thick or something like that. The entire house is heated with a unit using the power equivalent to a hair dryer. Just for some perspective it can easily get to -20C or -30C in winter in New Brunswick. It's airtight and very well insulated but yes built that way from the start. https://www.ecohome.net/guides/1401/new-brunswicks-most-energy-efficient-home/ https://www.ecohome.net/guides/1401/new-brunswicks-most-ener...
  - chewz 3y ago
    Exactly what I have meant. New building code is heat-pump friendly but lots of people with older (not old just older) houses had been sold on heat pumps and now pay the price in electricity bills.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    > The Nordics tend to have their buildings designed for heat pumps from the start My grandma's house from the 1950's wasn't "designed for heat pumps", neither my other grandma's house from 1940. Neither was my mother in laws from the same period. You don't need to design anything, you just need a hole in the wall to run the cables. What does make the houses suited for heat pumps is the fact that Nordic houses are designed to keep the weather out. So when you heat/cool the inside, the house doesn't leak it all outside.
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      > What does make the houses suited for heat pumps is the fact that Nordic houses are designed to keep the weather out. So when you heat/cool the inside, the house doesn't leak it all outside. Alright, my bad. Consider "designed" replaced by "suitable". Houses of a certain era in large parts of Germany (those with only a few days of moderate sub-zero temperatures) tend to have been built with a bit of air leakage capacity to avoid mold. Yes, that's wasteful, but since fossils were (and are) subsidized like crazy, you just heat a bit more and be over with it. That strategy doesn't work as well when you have less heat to work with. There are still people who argue that it's unhealthy to live in a properly insulated house ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I doubt you have a lot of that nonsense in areas that deal with freezing temperatures for months at a time.
      - theshrike79 3y ago
        Yea, the German insistence on "lüften" curing all ailments is legendary :D
  - 2Gkashmiri 3y ago
    Do you have online resources I can browse through for conversions? I have a gas boiler -radiator piping built into the walls and people I talk to say the radiators wont work with heat pump level of temperatures so as in your case the system needs to be converted but how. What are methods and techniques?
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      Nothing convenient. Bits and pieces here and there, tons of forums, a few videos, a bunch of books, a few specialists who gave good advice. The inbound temperature into the radiator network took a dive from about 70°C to about 40°C here (I _could_ push the inbound temp to nearly 50°C but by then I'm no better off than with resistive heating), and that's rather obvious when heating the rooms. The main advice everything came down to was "have a lot of surface that can heat" and from my experience that seems to be quite true. The house has a bunch of radiators that never ran in the nat-gas days, basically it was overcommitted on heating surface. Now they're pretty well used. Another retrofit option that I had in the back of my head was radiators equipped with a fan to move the air along the radiator surface more quickly (essentially creating "virtual heating surface"), but I didn't need those. Other than that, warm and cold parts of the house (e.g. basement) are more clearly separated. A FLIR camera module for my phone gave some hints on where heat escapes so that I could focus on the right spots. When a larger rework of a room is due (and there's a huge mess in any case), that's a chance to look into floor or wall heating there, connected to the same system. Once that's (mostly) done, I suppose the inbound temperature can be reduced some more, and I expect super-linear electricity savings from that (due to the way the heat pump works). In terms of costs, it comes out at about the same, although there are more options in electricity availability, and I suspect that pricing there remains more stable than with fossil fuels, so longer-term I expect operating costs to develop beneficially (even if that only means "remains flat"). TCO of the project, I don't know, but I was optimizing for long-term OpEx for various reasons. By the way: Heating engineers tended to dismiss the project, but the project started before there were any issues with gas supply, so "just use gas" was their go-to solution anyway (for the eco-conscious, they dangled the carrot of "it's H2 ready!", even though it's unlikely that the pipe work will ever support that). Not sure if the attitude of heating engineers changed in the meantime. In the end it was done by air conditioning technicians, and it can be switched between heating mode using radiators and AC with split system frontends, so this house covers cold winters and hot summers with just one external device (which pleases the historical landmark office)
willvarfar 3y ago
This is not my own experience nor the experience of every other homeowner I know in my corner of rural Sweden (and it's a popular discussion topic). I don't know of a single disappointment story, nor is it a thing in the local media. Heat pumps are very cost effective and me and most other homeowners I know have, over the last couple of decades, completely migrated from wood to heat pumps. In fact, there might not be that many homes who'd convert left to convert. The House construction locally has definitely tanked this last year. Much fewer projects.
- lagrange77 3y ago
  Do you use it as part of a geothermal system, or are you talking about extracting the heat from the air? My thermodynamics class is some time ago, but pumping the heat stored in arctic air to a sufficiently high level for residential heating sounds indeed like an electric heating effectively.
  - geon 3y ago
    Yes, when you get down to -20 C or so, the efficiency drops below 1. Depending on the model. I think air heat pumps are more common due to their low price. They are easy to install and work well as a complement to other heat sources. Geothermal is popular too, but the installation cost is significantly higher.
  - D13Fd 3y ago
    Modern air source heat pumps are fine. Where I live it's hard to even find someone who services ground source heat pumps. Ground source works slightly better but the install cost is so much higher that it's rarely worth it.
- Arnt 3y ago
  Digressing a bit... there's something weird about these stories. I come from rural-ish Norway and live in a big city in Germany. Lots of people here in Germany are quite willing to tell me that heat pumps don't work in the area where I come from, where I have many friends with heat pumps. Their confidence amazes me. I don't understand how they can be so confident.
distances 3y ago
They are massively popular in Finland, so clearly they work in the Northern Europe. Gas isn't even a competitor there, the other main option is district heating. Basically all other forms (mainly oil, direct electric heating) are on their way out.
zelos 3y ago
In the UK it's more pronounced. I pay £0.28/kWh for electricity and £0.069/kWh for gas, so as I understand it installing a heat pump will end up increasing my energy bills unless its coefficient of performance is over 4.
- teamonkey 3y ago
  And in the UK the regulation that bans new gas boilers doesn't come in until 2025. Despite all the new homes being built in the UK, most are still being built with gas central heating.
  - benj111 3y ago
    The ban is on single fuel gas boilers. New ones will have to be able to use hydrogen.
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      If the UK had made the strategic decision to stick with nuclear we would have much more electric installations (like they have in France) and it would be easier for homes.
    - ajb 3y ago
      They're floating the idea of an outright ban, including 'hydrogen ready'. See Sec 4.1.2 of https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-future-homes-and-buildings-standards-2023-consultation/the-future-homes-and-buildings-standards-2023-consultation https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-future-homes...
- sim7c00 3y ago
  in my country new homes come with solar panels and heatpumps usually. if you are unlucky not to earn litteral shit-tons, you can only rent as house prices are through the roof.. with that rental contract comes extra service fees for heatpump and solar panels. those costs are about 10 times higher than savings from not using Gas and having the panels... and they persist for the entirety of the contract. so basically you are off much more expensive. --- for the climate they say >.> ... i can see people getting much less excited to go for green options, simply because its not affordable especially for regular or low income homes... it's just another scheme to get ur money. - it's maybe a bit harsh opinion, but its hard to draw any other conclusions. Send billions upon billions for War, and have households collapse by forcing these kinds of tech on people without any subsidies or help to pay for them. I hope soon to move away from the western countries. i work in IT on a nice salary and i can't even afford to live here anymore :/
xoa 3y ago
>In Northern Europe heatpumps are simply not effective (yet). That's not what I've heard of even air, but to be clear, you are talking air source right? I'm near the Canadian border in northern New England and am getting ready at work to have another vertical ground source (geothermal) heat pump put in, and those are very effective year round. Well loop is around 515' (~155m), which is on the longer side but not a big deal by well drilling standards (which is why lots of well drilling companies have been expanding into heat pumps in the last 5 years and availability has sky rocketed). The price is definitely much higher than air source for now, maybe always will carry some premium, but the major government incentives here help significantly and of course the reliability is high. There are a few minor other bonuses as well I guess, like aesthetically speaking once done there can be nothing to near nothing visible outside. There are a few other strategies (horizontal ground, water source, semi-open) that some are looking at too but around here simple vertical closed looks likely to end up as the majority due to economies of scale, it can be done anywhere vs needing more/special land, and like I said leverages an existing industry. It's neat to see coming along, so perhaps longer term that'll offer an option in Northern Europe too.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

distances 3y ago

The article doesn't mention that new building construction has almost halted in many European markets. I would assume that to play a much larger role than the reasons presented in the article.

bhouston 3y ago
Makes sense. In our new neighborhood in North America every single house got a heat pump by default. If housing starts drop that would significant affect sales.
- taylodl 3y ago
  That's because they're not running gas lines in a lot of new neighborhoods. If you don't have a gas line then the only sane alternative is to get a heat pump.
  - bhouston 3y ago
    This is Canada so we actually have both a heat pump as well as a secondary natural gas furnace for when the heat pump isn't sufficient. We get temperatures that go below -30C in the winter, which is beyond all heat pump's operating range.
    - taylodl 3y ago
      That's interesting. Here in the States they use heat pumps in a similar fashion, except it's backed by heating coils (electric furnace). As you say, the heat pump is much more efficient - until it isn't. Then the system switches over to heating coils. Where we have natural gas available we tend to just install a gas furnace and leave it at that.
      - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
        It depends. In my 2016 build, my heat/cooling is heat pump, my hot water is gas (so is my stove). But I’m in Seattle where heat pumps don’t need a backup, and electricity is fairly cheap. A gas furnace would seem like a waste even though we have a gas line, although we do have a gas fireplace that we use for heat more often than the heat pump (which we only use when it is really cold).

r0ckarong 3y ago

There was a distinct pressure to invest in electric heat pumps because the prices for fossil fuels were so insane. Now the prices have normalized and suddenly paying what you were used to sounds more attractive than spending tens of thousands of Euros on top of the electric bill.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Installation is way too expensive and potentially disruptive.
smooc 3y ago
Where do you get your numbers from? Right now, pre heat pump, I'm at 2000kWh usage and return to the net 4000kWh (so 2000kWh in excess). I use 750m3 of gas. This costs me 100e per month. I'm investing in a full electric ground source heat pump. Which cost me 20k. An alternative is a air heatpump which is around 8k, but with a lower scop. Let's assume a scop of 5 (air-air) which is conservative. The amount of energy required for heating / showering / cooking was 750 * 9.27 = 6952.5 kWh. Dividing this by the scop of 5 means I require 1390.5 kWh to replace gas. This means I still have excess of solar kWh. For now I can use the grid as a battery. This means I have no electricity costs - I actually get 20e per month after taxes. So for 8k I have nullified my gas and electric bill. This means a payback period of 5.5 years (8000/120/12) or a yield of 18% (120/8000 * 100*12) per year. So it isn't required to have tens of thousands to invest and you get a positive yield (depending the tax climate) even with current gas prices. The 20k ground source heat pump looks a bit different. But I like that it is quiet and it can cool in summer for less energy that an air-air one.*
- benj111 3y ago
  How would the sums work out if you were actually paying for electricity?
  - smooc 3y ago
    Good question. It depends on how that would work. Meaning can I offset against the whole year and just get less money back per kWh or will it become seasonal or day pricing. Day pricing would be the most impactful as during summer time prices are cheaper and I deliver back the most. If I assume that 2/3 of my usage will be in Winter and I can offset just 200kWh (there is always a bit of sun) then it look like this: 1390.5 * 2/3 = 927 kWh 927kWh - 200 = 727 kWh 727 kWh * 0.40 = 290.80 / year (0.40 is price per kWh) So I would spend 290 per year so about 25e. Which is 75% less then I do now. This excludes any other cost / benefit.

teamonkey 3y ago

They're more expensive than a new gas boiler, more expensive to run than gas heating (due to low gas prices), they often need upgrades to the entire home heating system and there's a cost of living crisis across Europe. It's not really a surprise.

immibis 3y ago
Are low gas prices due to subsidized gas? They were supposed to be very high due to the German-corruption-made dependence on Russian gas, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
- dagw 3y ago
  It's not subsidies, gas prices are down to pre-invasion levels. Lots of changes were implemented to reduce overall gas demand, plus all governments build up their gas reserves so to avoid local energy shocks. Countries also set up alternate sources of gas. This all combined to push down gas prices.
  - teamonkey 3y ago
    I wouldn't say they were down to pre-invasion levels. I'm paying 2x for power what I paid 3 years ago. That is, however, much better than last year.
    - dagw 3y ago
      Technically they are just about down to pre-invasion levels, but not year-before-invasion levels.
      - The_Colonel 3y ago
        Yes, Russia started to reduce supply in the autumn 2021 to build leverage during invasion.
- teamonkey 3y ago

MilaM 3y ago

Sales have decreased from 565,000 to 485,000 or 14% in "Europe" YoY in the third quarter 2023. I would not call that a collapse.

eur0pa 3y ago

The cost of electricity in most of Europe is prohibitive, all things and fees considered I'm sitting at €0.50/kWh. Furthermore, most homes are allotted 3kW, upgradeable to 6kW for a fixed one-time fee, and perpetual fees in the monthly bill. The recent (2021) AC unit with a heat pump in this apartment draws 0.75 to 1.1kW. That means for every hour I'm using it I'm paying about €0.50, and I can't turn on neither the dishwasher, nor the washing machine, nor the oven while it's running. Maybe I can use the hairdryer but even that might trip the breaker if the wrong combination of lights, TV and fridge happens. Electricity is scarce and expensive in Europe, gas isn't. I appreciate how efficient and more sustainable heat pumps are but money doesn't grow on trees.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
> Furthermore, most homes are allotted 3kW, upgradeable to 6kW for a fixed one-time fee, and perpetual fees in the monthly bill. Are you sure of those numbers? 3kW is the max capacity of a single socket (at least in the UK). My electric shower is 10kW and electric hobs/cookers also need higher ratings than standard sockets. Here in the UK I believe that the standard domestic capacity is 100A per home (so about 24kW).
- Macha 3y ago
  Yeah, 3kW is crazy low. I checked my local appliance store's website and they sell kettles capable of pulling 3kW on their own.
- bowietrousers 3y ago
  Standard single phase grid connection is either 60A, 80A or 100A in the UK. The numbers the OP is quoting here certainly aren't representative.
  - eur0pa 3y ago
    There are other countries beside the US and UK. Italian homes get 3kW in total, breaker trips at 3.3. You may request up to 6kW for additional fees.

Arnt 3y ago

So I googled, and it seems that sales have increased every year from 2005 to 2022, but sales in 2023 will be only slightly higher than those in 2021. "Collapse" doesn't seem quite right.

altals2023 3y ago

No more cheap Russian energy. In place, expensive nordic and American energy. It is basically active self-sabotaging by European leaders. Not only heat pumps, a lot of businesses bankrupt. You can ask any Germans friends how bad German economy is and next couple of years. Some even wish to move to Indonesia or Eastern Asia side to look for jobs. Heat pump sale is just minuscule to all other collapsing sales there. Meanwhile the business contacts I know in Moscow and Petersburg having historic bonuses and pay increases. Meanwhile, UK and German tax payers still facing new taxes and subsidies cuts as I type this. Look on the bright side, look for military complex jobs. I see they are hiring.