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Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

willbrownsberger.com

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Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#11

Post by waynenilsen »

Weatebob wrote: post #5
tgflynn wrote: post #2

It's good to see a politician actually doing their own analysis rather than just following every fad. It's a characteristic that is sorely lacking from the US political class.

I would agree with you if that person would have mentioned research paper and not just some very weak anecdotal evidence. I find it very weird that their heat pump leaked and the efficiency is only at 150%. It's not clear at all if this is an crazy outlier or reality. IF this is not just an outlier than the next proper step from him would be to get the ball rolling with the right people to investigate the status quie…

fraud on the part of the manufacturer is a distinct possibility with that kind of discrepancy also

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#12

Post by ct0 »

derekp7 wrote: post #7

I was wondering what the overall efficiency would be if you still used gas, but had that gas power a combustion engine to drive the heat pump compressor, while also reclaiming the heat from the engine and exhaust? Would that be more efficient than burning gas at a peaker plant to convert to electricity to run the heat pump?

Seems like this exists for non single family home applications. https://www.yanmar.com/global/energy/ghp/vrf/merits.html

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#13

Post by NDizzle »

tcfhgj wrote: post #10

> I do not fault the particular pump that we bought or our installers who were careful and professional. Apparently, however, we lack good rules of thumb to predict how a pump will perform in a particular installation. A 278% estimation turning out as 150% real world performance, certainly was not done very carefully.

No, it works exactly like solar does. The companies say one thing, but reality doesn't match up. It doesn't matter how careful an installation is.

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#14

Post by tcfhgj »

jnmandal wrote: post #9

Anytime you have a technology that is marketed ubiquitously as if it's a silver bullet solution, you are going to have disappointed users and implementations that under deliver. Of course it's extremely important to switch people to electrified heating systems, regardless of their efficiency. However it's a little disingenuous to pretend there is nothing but upside here. The upside is for humanity as a whole; for ind…

a (quasi) silver bullet solution, can have legitimate (individual) down sides

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#15

Post by ct0 »

post_break wrote: post #8

I wonder if we will ever see them switch to R-1234YF refrigerant. "While R-134a has a Global Warming Potential of 1300, R-1234yf’s GWP is less than 1." The only issue is the higher pressures and the fact that it's somewhat flammable might be why. I will say, my heat pump dryer, while it has removed some buttons from shirts, has exceeded my expectations on energy usage. It's night and day compared to my toaster I had…

In your experience, does your heat pump dryer actually dry in a similar amount of time to a conventional electric dryer?

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#16

Post by tapoxi »

tgflynn wrote: post #2

It's good to see a politician actually doing their own analysis rather than just following every fad. It's a characteristic that is sorely lacking from the US political class.

Brownsberger is my state senator and he's actually pretty great, he works on things his constituents care about and I've seen him on public transit a number of times.

My only real critique of him is that he had too much faith in the MBTA getting battery electric busses up and running when voting to get rid of our trolleybus system (MBTA 71 and 73).

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#18

Post by endisneigh »

I intuited this as well, which is why I stayed with gas heat.

These days I'm even wondering if wood heat with a high efficiency furnace makes sense. There are so many dead trees around me. The carbon is going to go back either way. In the case of decomposition, there may be other negative effects of leaving it on the ground compared to burning it.

I haven't given much thought to a way to capture the heat in a way that can be used later. Ideally I can build some giant container of sand with some cinderblock, run some copper through the sand, and heat both using the wood being burned. Then, I could pump water through the copper which is being passively heated from the sand into my existing hot water baseboard, but it's unlikely to be hot enough - oh well.

--

I actually looked at some old quotes I found for mini split installs before and after the tax credits Massachusetts introduced and *big shock*, the price of the installs increased about 90% of the tax credit.

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#19

Post by phkahler »

jnmandal wrote: post #9

Anytime you have a technology that is marketed ubiquitously as if it's a silver bullet solution, you are going to have disappointed users and implementations that under deliver. Of course it's extremely important to switch people to electrified heating systems, regardless of their efficiency. However it's a little disingenuous to pretend there is nothing but upside here. The upside is for humanity as a whole; for ind…

>> Of course it's extremely important to switch people to electrified heating systems, regardless of their efficiency.

You could use a gas fired heat pump. It won't work as an air conditioner, but it won't stress the grid and could even work when the power goes out.

Re: Heat pump disappointment for climate-minded Massachusetts state senator

#20

Post by tcfhgj »

NDizzle wrote: post #13
tcfhgj wrote: post #10

> I do not fault the particular pump that we bought or our installers who were careful and professional. Apparently, however, we lack good rules of thumb to predict how a pump will perform in a particular installation. A 278% estimation turning out as 150% real world performance, certainly was not done very carefully.

No, it works exactly like solar does. The companies say one thing, but reality doesn't match up. It doesn't matter how careful an installation is.

Why not?

The real heating demand can be observed up front and with the typical (or even exact) weather you can easily determine the efficiency of the heat pump.

Yeah expect some inaccuracies, but not this huge

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