Fuck fossil fuels.
Perhaps it surprises you but a lot of people are such oil brained corpo shills they cannot fathom not burning the planet down to the ground. They call free energy ideologically driven in an obvious attempt at projection.
Which is to say that sadly a lot of people would never guess importing fossil fuels just to burn them might be a terrible idea actually.
Won‘t stop the tidal wave of heat pump installations though because most people actually like saving money.
Money.
I just want affordable heat.
The monkey's paw just curled. You've been granted a heat-wave, free of charge
Didn't Germany add shitload of renewable capacity recently?
https://www.theguardian.com/...
In other European countries that also expanded renewables at great speed – such as Germany, which increased its share of wind and solar in power generation from 28% to 45% in the last five years
45% of wind and solar is impressive.
Tldr: they are trying to sabotage existing transitions, like with fossil fuel boilers and the hydrogen/efuel bullshit, which is about 14x more expensive than electricity.
Source:
https://www.autoevolution.com/...
Edit: The electrification of Germany is happening in spite of the shit gov, not because of.
Yes, but our current Minister of Economic Affairs is all out to kill it again.
Because renewables, while cheaper, have their share of problems, the first one is that you cannot (yet and completely) store what they produce. Oil in more something like "on demand" in some aspects, people generally expect that when they want hot water they have it, not that they need to plan when to use it.
Another big problem, actually, is that renewables tends to not be available when you need them the most (this derive from the fact that for now we have limited storing capacity): wind turbines have speed limits to not break and solar panels need at least a certain exposure to produce for example.
Other sources could not be available everywhere or be economically justified.
Nobody really like to pay more, it is simply that for now oil and gas are seen as more reliable than renewables, and this offset the fact that they are more expensive.
This will change in the future, no doubts, but the solution is a lot more complex than simply saying "renewable are cheaper".
Yes, but it's important imo that Europe produces heat pumps and components itself rather than importing it from countries like China. It wouldn't make sense to replace dependence from Russian fossil fuels by dependence on Chinese technology.
There is a bit of a difference there, though.
If European-Russian relations sour, the fossil fuel supply can be cut off and you're just fucked by that.
If European-Chinese relations sour, the Chinese can cut off supply of new heat pumps, but all your existing heat pumps will still be there and will still work.
Losing fossil fuel supply is an immediate and urgent problem; losing heat pump supply is a much less pressing issue and leaves you much more time to spin up alternate supply lines.
Why would you connect your heat pump to the internet
Why do people connect their home security, thermostats, or refrigerators to the internet? Because they’re designed, first and foremost, as data collectors. Users discover after the fact that they don’t actually own anything, and the company hides behind software licenses to maintain their control.
Likely so you can control it when you're away from home.
In every heat pump I've ever seen, internet connectivity is optional.
And even if you did connect it and the Chinese server told the thing to shut off ... I'm betting it's nothing a decent appliance/electronics technician couldn't undo by resetting the board. Or, in the very worst case scenario, the heat pumps would require replacement logic boards, but all the actual heating/cooling hardware could still be used once that board was replaced.
the Chinese can cut off supply of new heat pumps, but all your existing heat pumps will still be there and will still work.
No. As someone already said, a remote control with the data on servers in China is apparently a bad idea. In addition, Europe must produce the pumps and its components on the continent where we have better labour rights and social welfare systems. We don't need cheap products made by slave labour with intransparent supply chains under a dictatorial regime.
Yeah, but the secondary problem of trade with China is finding something they will buy equivalent in value to what you'll buy from them. Europe seems to be going back to pre century of humiliation with China where Europe didn't have anything that China would buy.
important imo that Europe produces heat pumps and components itself rather than importing it from countries like China
Don't worry. We only sell our heat pump producers to the US.
Its becoming more common here in Central Europe, most new builds family houses have them.
They have a couple drawbacks, like the high upfront cost (in my country a mid-range pump can cost between 3-8K Euros) and they work best with well insulated buildings, but once its installed they can save a tons of money, especially when paired with solar panels or wind turbines.
In a modern build or something that is easy to insulate properly they're a great idea. Expensive here in the UK but still great.
But as @StealthLizardDrop@piefed.social already mentioned retrofitting to old housing stock (Eg. Victorian terraces) are an absolute ball ache.
Mini-splits are really not that hard. Run an electricity supply and punch two holes through the wall. Mount the units.
I get that, but in the UK they're so expensive for homeowners. The uptake isn't quick enough.
As someone who recently moved to the UK, how at they so expensive? The price for the unit isn't that bad, but I assume duct works to all rooms would be? Maybe I'm just not understanding apples to apples coming from the US.
Heat pumps in UK are mostly air to water and integrate into your central heating They do not offer cooling, so no need in ducting to every room.
UK problems are around retrofitting housing stock never designed with an idea of a unit outside. For example the logical place for me to place a heatpump is roughly more than 8m away from where the water tank would be. So you would have to run ducting outside of the house.
And thats after i took out a door and walled that in (with eventual upgrade to heatpump) to leave the space specifically for the heatpump.
So alot of the extra cost would be working around ducting it to the place where it integrates into existing heating system.
We tend not to have air-conditioning either, housing stock can suffer from condensation and mould easily here. As its old and never designed for modern standards. Mine is about 130 years old or so.
So all in all, its a right pain to do.
The main problem with heat pumps is that it usually don't generate as much heat as burning something(gas, wood...) So if houses are not well insulated you will spend much more time and a lot of electricity heating it and maybe won't have the same comfort
Yeah that's a worry for me, I do want to switch to heatpump in the future, I can benefit from having solars on the shed (have a nice ~25m2 shed), and a few panels on the house, so it may offset the running costs. But ofc thats some time in the magical future where I have money for all that.
And I have yet not done any surveys about how effective it would be
In the UK we have A LOT of safety regulations for these sorts of things. They were mostly EU rules that we kept after Brexit (not necessarily a bad thing), getting something approved takes time, development and money. Another issue is we have many MANY small terraced (lots of houses joined together in a row) houses that would struggle to fit a large heat pump and many of these houses are old, like 100 years + making modifications expensive. Until they're smaller and cheaper with better incentives I unfortunately just don't see us taking them up.
I don't understand why any of these factors, none of which seems specific for the UK but instead applicable to the entire EU, would make heat pumps more expensive in the UK compared to the EU.
You’d think all new builds would have to have heat pumps and solar panels, thereby reducing demand.
Sadly, that’s probably like 1% of housing stock.
Out of interest, just how expensive are they? I can get a minisplit heat pump installed on our house for about a 1000€ (higher end models are obviously more expensive) here in Finland. It requires a small-ish hole trough the wall for pipes/wires, but otherwise the installation is pretty easy.
We have one in the house and another in garage and both have already paid for themselves since I don't need to run electric radiators anymore. Newer models would be even more efficient, but as the current ones still work they're not the first thing on the long list of house maintenance.
Its around 3 to 5 thousand pounds and thats after a government grant.
That's pretty crazy, specially considering that UK doesn't require as arctic-proof pumps as we do here. The absolutely cheapest pump I can find right now is 199€ (without installation obviously). I wouldn't really recommend that, it's the cheapest piece of shit you can get. I have previous "cheap" model from that particular store in garage and efficiency on that drops dramatically when it's below -20C, but it does function even after several years.
Cheaper bosh/samsung/panasonic are around 900€ for the unit and full installation is around 500, but if you put some elbow grease there yourself it'll be around half of that.
What are we talking about here? The machine itself + installation? How many square meters are we talking about? I've checked recently and two splits for 30m^2 each (so 60m^2 total) would cost me about 1.5k and that's with the top, most efficient model.
Single unit for only 30m² sounds a bit excessive. At the house we have one split unit and it has ~170m² in two floors. On top of that we have electric heating in the wet spaces (shower, sauna, laundry room) and couple of radiators in the bedrooms (which are rarely used). Those alone would are just fine most of the year, but we also have a pretty big wood oven and a wood stove and while we could use only the heat pump+radiators it's a lot cheaper to use wood during winter. Also warmth from the oven feels better, but only for heat it's not strictly necessary until temperature drops below -25C.
We just got a air to water heat pump installed. It was a “drop-in” replacement for our gas furnace, so it produces hot water to radiators and under floor heating, and hot water for the taps. Total price with installation was around 18,000 euros. Will save us around 2,000 euros per year compared to gas, but as we also have solar cells, that will probably be more like 2,500-3,000 euros. We need to see a full season of usage to know how much the solar cells can help over winter but at the moment the little heating we need + hot water does not cost us any electricity.
That sounds similar to what you'd need to pay here. In-laws did the same few years ago and it was ~20k, but there was quite a lot of additional work to fit the pump next to wood furnace.
I've been looking for a water-to-air unit for us to replace electric under floor heating and water boiler, but as we don't have any plumbing ready that'll quickly add up to the cost since we'd need to rip out tiles, grind channels for pipes, re-level and re-tile the floor and so on. With that we might get 1000-1500 savings per year, but it'd take 15 years (give or take) for the investment to pay itself assuming nothing breaks during that time so at least for it doesn't really make sense.
I feel this is an almost dilberate choice by the government at this point. The credit you get for them is a really poor scheme and every government seems determined to avoid doing anything to assist retrofitting existing homes. Probably because trying to improve things sounds too much like communism to them.
What kills me if in America, especially in New England, is we still have tons of people, if not a majority a huge percentage, burning #2 heating oil during the winter. It used to be so cheap as to hardly think about filling the tank before winter, but it's almost as much as gasoline now. My thought is "how hard can it be to convert those burners to biofuel, either reclaimed vegetable oil like diesel or with a mix of ethanol from corn to lower the cost." Because if there's one thing America has the capacity to produce a shitload of, it's ethanol.
If somebody with a better grasp of the subject has an answer for that I would be very grateful.
We have just converted from a gas furnace to a heat pump. It took a day. Connected to the existing heating system (water radiators and under floor) and hot water pipes. I know you wanted an ethanol solution, however, the electricity route combined with solar cells (like we have) makes it cheap to run.
It's cool that you had liquid based heating a heat pump could tie into, but most of new England is heated by forced hot air systems that don't tie in the same way. Most heat pump installs around here, and there are a lot, are mostly for cooling and supplemental heating. Having to install an interior unit usually winds them up near the ceiling so the more expensive cooling can fall and cool more efficiently, at the decrease of heating efficiency because it rises. Also, until pretty recently a heat pump was basically no good below zero °f, lots of people still have those units and still need heat in the winter. I resolutely think B20 (20% biodiesel mix) is a great solution for current heating prices, and think a state sponsored program to install the necessary upgrades to burn B50 and get production up to scale would be a really good investment. Big changes are great if you can afford them, but those aren't the folks I'm talking about. I'm talking about folks using HEAP benefits, people who scrounge up the $450 for a 100 gallon minimum delivery and keep a couple jugs of off-road diesel on hand in case the tank runs dry on a cold day. People that know how to bleed and reignite their furnace without calling the guy, because they've had to do it 5 times a winter because keeping oil in the tank means not eating and the stove burns propane, which is already paid for and makes heat too.
Sorry, I've had some pretty fucking desperate Maine winters in my years up here.
Currently on an oil system that uses baseboard radiators throughout the house. Didn't realize a heat pump could potentially tie into the same system but am going to look into it now. Anything to watch out for in your experience?
If I remember correctly, the issue with corn ethanol is the scale. It requires a lot of space and a lot of water.
Solar panels are energy wise a much more efficient use of the same area. They also don't require water or any kind of labour to harvest. Finally the consumption of electricity in heaters or cars is more efficient than burning ethanol.
I like your idea of using existing burners instead of replacing entire heat systems. Perhaps biogas produced by household and agricultural waste is a better option than growing corn for this purpose.
Yea, the company page I linked basically says the same. Ethanol from corn has so many more energy inputs, it doesn't wind up being very efficient. But saving fryer oil from the waste steam and mixing it with standard #2 heating oil with no burner modifications seems like a thing we should just do wholesale.
They have a large scale project of that sort in Finland.
Since this was written, they've also started running busses on that fuel.
I'm back from the Internet with knowledge to share!
https://www.northeastbiodiesel.com/...
So it does exist, requires no retrofit up to 20% biodiesel, and with minor retrofit can go to pure BD, but it congeals around 45°f so some amount of petroleum as a stabilizer is required for winter heating. Apparently ethanol from corn does not produce more energy than is required to create it, but biodiesel already being partly made for another purpose and otherwise wasted brings its creation energy down a lot.
Laughs in firewood
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Who would have guessed that importing overpriced fossil fuels is bad?
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