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The biggest heat pumps

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Re: The biggest heat pumps

#111

Post by oceanplexian »

triceratops wrote: post #101
looofooo0 wrote: post #42

Germany at its best, instead of keeping its 20GW+ nuclear power running and get district heating pipes installed to them, they engineer this solution at x times the cost. In this case a 30km pipe from Philippsburg NPP would have done the trick.

It's the year 2135. Discussions about energy anywhere in Europe begin with the customary lament for Germany's shortsighted decision to cease nuclear energy production sometime in the 20th century. Nobody knows where this tradition originates from but it is rigorously upheld.

At this rate by 2135 Europe will have returned to feudal society, most people will be living without electricity, and the primary source of heating will be wood and coal.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#112

Post by jabl »

renhanxue wrote: post #103
jabl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. In Helsinki the municipal energy company has a plant with 7 heat pumps which is slightly smaller at 160 MW heat and 100 MW of cooling. https://www.helen.fi/en/news/2023/Waste-heat-plays-a-signifi...

Looks like the expansion to 300 MW will have Stockholm beat soon if it hasn't already happened! Or is that in a different plant? Wasn't entirely clear to me, but great progress nonetheless!

My understanding is that at the moment there's no expansion happening at the Katri Vala plant (the 160MW mentioned in the link above), the 300 MW is the total heat pump capacity spread out over half a dozen locations.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#113

Post by triceratops »

oceanplexian wrote: post #111
triceratops wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the year 2135. Discussions about energy anywhere in Europe begin with the customary lament for Germany's shortsighted decision to cease nuclear energy production sometime in the 20th century. Nobody knows where this tradition originates from but it is rigorously upheld.

At this rate by 2135 Europe will have returned to feudal society, most people will be living without electricity, and the primary source of heating will be wood and coal.

Touch grass.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#114

Post by worik »

lnsru wrote: post #38
moooo99 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German, I find the popularity of heat pumps in the nordics especially amusing. In Germany heat pumps were an incredibly political topic and people were pushed by some media outlets to really hate heat pumps. One recurring topic was that heat pumps can‘t work at German temperatures.

Nothing amusing. Germany is not really rich compared to nordics. And now let‘s do so math! Electricity: 0,3€/kWh and gas 0,1€/kWh. I need ~3x more gas to get same temperature in my room. And gas heating costs €10k while heat pump €40k without subsidies and probably raw €15k material cost if I install it by myself. So why should I pay more by €30k to install experimental thing for a decade when my low cost gas heating…

> So why should I pay more by €30k to install experimental thing for a decade when my low cost gas heating will last for 3 decades again.

Because:

It is not experimental (it is no longer 1992)

Your gas comes from Russia, and they hate you - roughly speaking

Your prices are miles from reality

Face it, fossil fuels are deprecated. Your gas heating will be unusable with no gas to put in it

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#115

Post by jabl »

lnsru wrote: post #38
moooo99 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German, I find the popularity of heat pumps in the nordics especially amusing. In Germany heat pumps were an incredibly political topic and people were pushed by some media outlets to really hate heat pumps. One recurring topic was that heat pumps can‘t work at German temperatures.

Nothing amusing. Germany is not really rich compared to nordics. And now let‘s do so math! Electricity: 0,3€/kWh and gas 0,1€/kWh. I need ~3x more gas to get same temperature in my room. And gas heating costs €10k while heat pump €40k without subsidies and probably raw €15k material cost if I install it by myself. So why should I pay more by €30k to install experimental thing for a decade when my low cost gas heating…

> Germany is not really rich compared to nordics.

(From another post I made in this thread)

Looking at IMF 2025 GDP per capita figures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... ):

Norway: $92k

Denmark: $77k

Sweden: $62k

Germany: $60k

UK: $57k

Finland: $56k

So yeah, Denmark and particularly Norway are a bit richer than the others, but the others are in the same ballpark.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#116

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

pjc50 wrote: post #59
mrmlz wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UK houses are really interesting.. Single-glass windows, poor insulation etc. And plumbing on the OUTSIDE(!) :) Are the boilers typically connected to water-radiators?.. I assume so based on the word "boiler". There are heatpumps that are used to heat water so it would be a slot in replacement..

Not many people left with single glazing unless they've been trapped by historic building rules. "Outdoor plumbing" is not a thing. The pump is a drop in replacement unless you have 8mm "microbore" piping, at which point the lower temperature times restricted flow rate becomes a problem in terms of getting enough heat through.

My parents' house in Bath is not "trapped by historic building rules" but there is no way in hell they are ever going to replace 3-4 stories of single pane glass double hungs ...

and that house still has the sewage stacks on the outside of the house, as do almost all homes in Bath and environs.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#117

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

stephen_g wrote: post #60
jack_tripper wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sign of a rich and very developed country. A lot of buildings in Austrian cities are still heated by burning oil or wood and the whole city smells like a bonfire. Probably gonna have my lifespan shortened by at least a decade from all that fossil fuel pollution, but at least we banned that dirty nuclear from killing us.

Longer term this shouldn’t be the case though - a fridge is just a heat pump, and an air-to-air or air-to-water heat pumps aren’t that much more complicated, nor should they be any less reliable. It’s something that will become more of a commodity and eventually won’t be any more sign of wealth than owning a fridge. I mean, we can see it already in air-to-air systems - I’ve had mini-splits supplied and installed here…

> air-to-water heat pumps

these are slightly odd, however: they either need an external air intake set up, or they require that the water (tank/heater) be located in a space that you don't mind being cooled down (often quite significantly) AND that isn't thermally connected to the space you're heating via other means.

still great technology, but deployment can be a little more challenging that space heating/cooling.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#118

Post by xeromal »

bratwurst3000 wrote: post #95
xeromal wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I installed mini splits (small heat pumps) in each of our rooms. Everyone gets their own temperature and they were only 800$ a piece. Did installation myself and it was pretty easy. Hardest thing was pulling a vacuum in the lines before releasing the freon (or whatever it's called) but all I did was watch a youtube video. They've been going strong for several years. I looked at the prices and they are still the same.

Did the same. air air is cheap and works like a charm. this 40k for heatpump is for the most luxury version every salesmen trys to sell

Yeah if 40k is the go to amount of heat pumps, the entire country has lost the plot

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#119

Post by ssl-3 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #117
stephen_g wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Longer term this shouldn’t be the case though - a fridge is just a heat pump, and an air-to-air or air-to-water heat pumps aren’t that much more complicated, nor should they be any less reliable. It’s something that will become more of a commodity and eventually won’t be any more sign of wealth than owning a fridge. I mean, we can see it already in air-to-air systems - I’ve had mini-splits supplied and installed here…

> air-to-water heat pumps these are slightly odd, however: they either need an external air intake set up, or they require that the water (tank/heater) be located in a space that you don't mind being cooled down (often quite significantly) AND that isn't thermally connected to the space you're heating via other means. still great technology, but deployment can be a little more challenging that space heating/cooling.

They are weird in the way that their utility varies.

IIRC Dave Jones of EEVBlog fame has shown a air-to-water heat exchanger that he has at his home. It's outside. And the climate in Sydney is generally warm(ish), so it makes perfect sense there.

I can also see them being useful in parts of the American South where big garages being common and the weather gets hot: Take some of the heat from the garage and convert it into hot water for showering and cleaning. Win-win.

But they're not so hot, per se, in my part of Ohio, where unfinished basements are commonly used as utility spaces.

My own basement, for instance: As unfinished basements go, it's pretty good. It's not a bad place to hang out and work on stuff any time of year. But it's a big space, and it's cold down there in the winter because I don't want to pay to warm it up. Despite being cold, that's really the most-suitable place for a conventional water heater for this house -- and it's where the house was designed to have it, too.

But if I were to "upgrade" to a heat-exchanger water heater, then as a practical matter I'd be making my already-cold basement even colder.

If it ever got cold-enough down there to make supplemental heat desirable (or worse: necessary), then it'd be an absolute loss: Burn energy over here in one place in the basement to try to keep it warm, and use that energy down the way a bit to concentrate into a tank full of hot water, while the basement stays cold.

Even if it I had a nice modern mini-split down there to provide that supplemental heat: That would mean having air-to-water heat exchanger that is backed up by an air-to-air heat exchanger that is already at the edge of its efficiency curve because it's cold outside. The combination would be reprehensibly dumb: A complicated Rube Goldberg system that costs more to buy, more to maintain, and more to run than approximately anything else would. (I might even be better off just burning my dollars directly.)

(The smarter move for my own home, in Ohio, would probably be a gas-fired tankless water heater, since they leak almost no heat while not being used.)

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#120

Post by OptionOfT »

willvarfar wrote: post #14

In the nordics we love heat-pumps! Something like 70% of houses are heated by heat-pumps, and 90% of apartment buildings are heated by district heating and that is often generated by huge heatpumps. Apparently 95% of new heating installations in Swedish houses are heat-pumps these days: https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC1... Heatpumps have been heating nordic homes for decades. Even in the co…

Interesting that district heating is so popular there.

IIRC in the Netherlands people don't like it, because it because it means that there is a single company supplying my heat, with

    * minimum amounts of 'heat' purchased 
    * no incentives to maintain their infrastructure above the bare minimum
    * no competition
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