Heat pumps are key to home electrification -- but will Americans buy in?

Heat pumps are so unpopular in the UK that politicians avoid mentioning them. They are large and loud and require intrusive alterations inside peoples' homes. They are also very expensive.

The trained labour required is not available at scale and won't be for some time, so they are mainly forced on housebuilders in return for permission to build, or on housing association tenants.

A much cheaper, faster option would be to return to immersion heating using green electricity. This was the norm in the UK until the government's 'Dash for Gas' promotion saw a rise in gas central heating.

It should be possible to produce an electric boiler as an easy, low-cost slot-in replacement for a gas boiler. Electric radiators are widely available already. Just roll out as much solar and wind generation as you can, as fast as you can, with battery storage.

If you want to do stuff quickly at scale, it needs to be cheap, easy to install and work well. Once it gets a bad reputation - and clunky 'first gen' stuff will - it's game over.

Heatpumps are great if you live in California, Japan lower USA, most of western Europe, etc... but if you live in areas that get cold or very cold winters then you need to be careful.

Unless you buy the top of the line most modern model and by that I mean most expensive, you will need a supplementary hear source and even if you do buy the best on the market you will still need a backup heating source.

At below -15°C most models are ether very inefficient or just don't work and the best models don't work at below -25°C .

So as an efficient cooling system they are great but even at - 10°C they have a very difficult time heating.

Often if you dive into many of these articles and look at the data, the often activist writer omits large amount of data.

One thing they nearly always leave out when one points out the problems in very cold weather is that the newest models that are supposedly good down to -25°C is that at below -10°C to -25° these models working depends on the thermostat setting which is nearly always far cooler than most North American homes are used to.

Generally (note generally not always it depends on the model) the thermostat needs to remain below 18°C.

My favourite avoidance in nearly every report or instructions, etc... is the little notation usually hidden somewhere:

keeping your indoor temperature close to outdoor temperatures, you increase efficiency.

At -10°C I wonder how that works!

Its minus 10C most nights in winter where we live but we heat 100 square meters with one air con (=heat pump) only. Its not as efficient as it would be if it were zero C every night or milder, but still easily good enough. The key factor is that the equipment cost is very low, and arguably "free". We heat with the essential machine we already have for cooling in summer. If we fitted underfloor heating with a kerosene boiler, that would have been 1.5 to 2 million yen to install, and we couldn't have used the birch flooring we have. We'd have had to use some inferior flooring, probably composite, compatible with underfloor heating. We'd also still need an aircon for summer! Kerosene boilers for underfloor heating generally break in 10-15 years and cost 400,000 or so to replace. Compared to that, heating with an air con has a way lower total cost, even if the energy bill is 15,000 or so a winter higher than kero might be if we stumped up the huge equipment cost.

Heat pumps can be used for heating water like a Eco Cute, but are much better at heating air in a house, as an air conditioner, than heating water to be circulated through radiators or underfloor heating as a gas boiler replacement. British people seem very keen on using massive heat pumps as gas boiler replacements for central heating, but this strikes me as a very poor use of heat pump technology. Our air con in 8.2kw for low temp heating (8.2kW is more than enough for 50sqm on two floors) but cost 130,000 yen, about 700 pounds. UK heat pumps often cost 7,000 to 10,000 pounds.

Heat pumps are just air conditioners with an extra valve. The Build Of Materials (BOM) cost differences are minimal. Yet in the US the heat pump systems are sold for thousands of dollars more than conventional HVAC systems. That's really the issue with adoption is there's a lot of companies out there ripping off consumers in the US.

kohakuebisu

Today 10:51 am JST

Its minus 10C most nights in winter where we live but we heat 100 square meters

I am guessing you are taking about in Japan?

Are you talking about every room including bath, toilet, entrance etc.... AKA centrale heating?

Now transfer that to North America where the article is centred on.

Homes in most of the colder regions are centrally heated or if electric, baseboard heated in every part.

Houses in Japan example my place is 3 small floors, generally low ceilings halfways and stairs area are not heated and including the hallways stairs entrance etc... is around 115 square metres.

In North America we are talking about 220 square metres larger rooms often higher ceilings, today often "open floor plan" etc....

My 3 siblings and parents homes in Canada have central heatpumps but also baseboard heaters as the systems despite all being fairly new (government subsidies and Hydroelectric company subsidies) cannot keep the house warm in January and February.

Comparing Japanese homes and North American homes doesn't work.

I live with heat pumps in apartments since the 1990s with no complaints. I sincerely wish I had specified a ductless system for our current house when we were building it instead of the conventional ac and gas furnace our builder installed.

Heat pumps are so unpopular in the UK that politicians avoid mentioning them. They are large and loud and require intrusive alterations inside peoples' homes. They are also very expensive.

Not sure if we're talking the same hardware here. It's an outdoor unit and an indoor unit connected with a refrigerant pipe, NO ducting, most runs on single phase, and cheap as chips.

They are quiet, very energy efficient, and low maintenance. No brainer.

Ok sure, not romantic like a wood fire, not luxurious like infloor heating, and not aesthetically subtle like ducted heating, but very efficient and cheap.