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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 kn

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.
- pgeorgi 3y ago
  It's a bunch of stuff all coming together: Electric heating is still memetically coupled with resistive heating in Germany, which isn't very efficient (and can't beat subsidized fossils anyway). Post-war era houses in regions that don't usually see -10°C or less tend not to be airtight "because it's healthier" (because vapor can escape, avoiding mold). Heating engineers preferred to sell the stuff they know (and is somewhat easier to install) so they discouraged heat pumps. So everybody has been telling everybody in Germany that "electric heating" doesn't work, heat pumps are vaguely "electric heating" (different mode of operation, but for that you'd have to know how heat pumps work in the first place), and with all that you end up with some "wisdom of the crowd" that fuels false confidence.
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    >Electric heating is still memetically coupled with resistive heating in Germany, which isn't very efficient Why is this? Isn't electric heating (in the space heater context) by definition 100% efficient, because all of the energy is translated into heat (with the light as a byproduct)?
    - pgeorgi 3y ago
      In the small: Those space heaters Germans think about when talking electric heating tend to be night storage heaters. So they consume electricity at night (when the grid is free) to heat up, then radiate the heat until the next evening. That scheme was accompanied by cheaper electricity at night. Not very comfy, and slow to react, and the "cheaper electricity" bit supported the notion that it only works when "subsidized" (just the market at work, but it looks like that - unlike fossils whose subsidies were usually not as obvious for the regular citizen.) In the large: That idea is from a time when burning fossils at home (including coal) was the way to heat, and burning fossils to drive a (relatively inefficient, at least compared to today, and filters were an unknown luxury) generator was the way to create electricity. You likely got more heat at home out of a bucket of coal when burning it at home rather than burning it at the power plant (with some excess heat there), converting it to electricity (with some losses), transporting electricity home (with some losses) and then heat up the home with that, even with 100% efficiency at that last step. (These days I wouldn't be so sure: those power plants, even the fossil burning type, are fine tuned high-tech at a level you can't just put in ordinary homes, so they might actually extract more energy to use after all the losses along the chain than the fireplace at home that evicts a considerable percentage of the heat through the chimney)

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.

pgeorgi 3y ago
It's a bunch of stuff all coming together: Electric heating is still memetically coupled with resistive heating in Germany, which isn't very efficient (and can't beat subsidized fossils anyway). Post-war era houses in regions that don't usually see -10°C or less tend not to be airtight "because it's healthier" (because vapor can escape, avoiding mold). Heating engineers preferred to sell the stuff they know (and is somewhat easier to install) so they discouraged heat pumps. So everybody has been telling everybody in Germany that "electric heating" doesn't work, heat pumps are vaguely "electric heating" (different mode of operation, but for that you'd have to know how heat pumps work in the first place), and with all that you end up with some "wisdom of the crowd" that fuels false confidence.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >Electric heating is still memetically coupled with resistive heating in Germany, which isn't very efficient Why is this? Isn't electric heating (in the space heater context) by definition 100% efficient, because all of the energy is translated into heat (with the light as a byproduct)?
  - pgeorgi 3y ago
    In the small: Those space heaters Germans think about when talking electric heating tend to be night storage heaters. So they consume electricity at night (when the grid is free) to heat up, then radiate the heat until the next evening. That scheme was accompanied by cheaper electricity at night. Not very comfy, and slow to react, and the "cheaper electricity" bit supported the notion that it only works when "subsidized" (just the market at work, but it looks like that - unlike fossils whose subsidies were usually not as obvious for the regular citizen.) In the large: That idea is from a time when burning fossils at home (including coal) was the way to heat, and burning fossils to drive a (relatively inefficient, at least compared to today, and filters were an unknown luxury) generator was the way to create electricity. You likely got more heat at home out of a bucket of coal when burning it at home rather than burning it at the power plant (with some excess heat there), converting it to electricity (with some losses), transporting electricity home (with some losses) and then heat up the home with that, even with 100% efficiency at that last step. (These days I wouldn't be so sure: those power plants, even the fossil burning type, are fine tuned high-tech at a level you can't just put in ordinary homes, so they might actually extract more energy to use after all the losses along the chain than the fireplace at home that evicts a considerable percentage of the heat through the chimney)