Commercial heat pump makers have developed next generation cold climate heat pumps. Next-generation cold-climate heat pumps—a key clean energy technology that can potentially save households $500 a year or more on their utility bills while also slashing harmful carbon emissions. The DOE Challenge specifies that prototypes deliver 100% heating capacity without the use of auxiliary heat and with significantly higher efficiencies at 5 degrees Fahrenheit.
Heating and cooling buildings, homes, offices, schools, hospitals, military bases, and other critical facilities contribute to more than 35% of all U.S. energy consumption, driving carbon emissions that fuel climate change, jeopardize public health, and pollute local ecosystems. Heat pumps efficiently provides comfortable temperatures for heating and cooling homes and businesses in all climates, especially when homes are well insulated, and can also provide more efficient water heating. Unlike heaters that run on natural gas or heating oil, heat pump technology uses only electricity to extract heat from the air to heat and cool buildings and, when compared to gas boilers, heat pumps reduce on-site greenhouse gas emissions by up to 50%.
Eight manufacturing partners successfully passing the laboratory testing stage in the Challenge, DOE is now turning to the nearly 30 state, utility, and other partners that were part of the original Challenge commitments to encourage the adoption of CCHPs.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/Tesla-Master-Plan-Part-3.pdf suggests that heat pumps would save more energy than a total conversion to electric cars. Start reading on page 7. Where is the Tesla Home Heap Pump? Are they waiting for AI’s to come up with the solution?
Admittedly: SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla Power Walls, solar cell roofs, AI Dojo, X/Twitter, self-driving 12.x, The Boring Company, Solar City, Neuralink, and oh-by-the-way-various-electric-cars (including the one I may actually afford, someday)* are sexier and more headliney, but honestly, Elon, get some folks on that inexpensive heat pump soon — please! Bring that down to $5000USD or less with installation. Have a micro-Boring machine lay pipe in a backyard 5-10 meters down.
* Did I forget any companies? 😉
Meh. 120m³ of composting wood chips will heat your house for 18 months with 60C water while collecting biogas for your kitchen and truck the whole time too. The resulting humus can be used in no-dig market gardens or in biological-extracts to replace crop fertilizers. See Jean Pain’s Biomeiler, Johnson-Su and Richard Perkins.
[ what’s about a 5m length cuboid ]
No data about efficiency?
Here in Sweden, almost everyone have been using heat pumps in sub-freezing temperatures for decades. Here is one example of COP numbers for an existing heat pump.
https://outl1.se/mwdownloads/download/link/id/456
COP typically falls between 2.5 – 3.5 at -12 C
Are these “next gen” pumps significantly better?
My recent heat pump replacement cost C$17,000 and we live in the mildest Canadian climate. Hydroelectric costs will continue to escalate as the infrastructure upgrades necessary to charge all the neighbours’ Teslas continues- actually the neighbours mostly drive half- to one-ton pickups, gas or diesel, but you never know when we might get 10 cm of snow and need 4wd to navigate out of the subdivision. Our local council has imposed a heat pump requirement on all new construction as a condition of issuance of a building permit. So I get to amortize $500 per year over 35 years and then I break even? The replacement would have been under C$10,000 except they changed the fluorocarbon goo used as a refrigerant for the new highly efficient heat pumps a couple of years ago and the rest of the system needed replacement. It didn’t work as installed, required another modification (the supplier ate about $500 for that) so ran on superheat for a month (I paid the cost of that.)
Brian states unequivocally that we need to reduce atmospheric (planetary?) CO2. I commend Brian or any of us to review Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Professor Soon and get back to us. In a science forum this is a powerful statement, the video is free but the transcript is paywalled (listen while cooking or doing chores.)
For bonus points, The Epoch Times has a nice article this week on the cost of battery replacement for EV’s.
I have a Carrier Variable Speed Heat Pump on Cape Cod in Massachusetts. When we purchased the house it had electric baseboard resistance heat and no central air. Winters on the Cape are mild by Massachusetts standards, but certainly colder than the Mid-Atlantic region or the South. As the house is very well insulated and tight, it holds heat well, and we keep the thermostat at 70 degrees. The central air component of the heat pump is very welcome in the summer to control humidity. All told, our house is about 1600 sf and also has electric resistance hot water. Our annual electric bill is roughly $2600. Our eletric rates are high, about $0.26 per KWH. Overall, the heat pump has been an excellent investment- our annual heating bill was cut in half.
Heat pumps are also way more expensive then a traditional Nat Gas furnace, 2-3 times as much. I’ll stick with my gas furnace, that keeps my house nice and warm when it’s sub zero outside. Heat pumps just aren’t good enough IMO for us colder states. (SD)
I don’t understand how the heat pump could operate without auxillary heat. The air coming out of the vents would be cold when the heat pump goes into defrost mode if not for auxillary heat. Even with auxillary heat it is not very comfortable. I have had heat pumps for 50 years and all of them go into defrost mode about seven minutes every hour.
The math is there, they do work at a competitive price to nat gas. As far as blowing 75 degree air you are talking about the old tech. Now days they blow hot air. It’s all thanks to digital control and variable speed fans, compressors and blowers.
I want to see the math on how much energy it takes to compress 5 degree Fahrenheit outside air to warm a 2000 square foot house to 68 degrees.
I’ve had heat pumps in the Mid-Atlantic and found them uncomfortable because even if they are blowing 75 degree air, that feels cool on a 98.6 degree body.
Agreed that’s not really confortable , my house use a heat pump that heat or cool the floor , much more confortable