Live data from Hacker News

Heat pump sales rise across Europe

pv-magazine.com

151–160 of 227 posts

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#151
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some potential future, there is an engineered a plant/fungus in a pot that you place onto the worksite. Months later, with regular sugar-water and hormones, it gives you a root-pipe for pennies a day. Of course at that point we might not need the cheap pipe in the first place.

Nanobots that manage a plant / fungus / bacteria/‘ / amoeba workforce. They drill and line boreholes to both anchor the foundations of the building and provide a closed loop system for a reticulated-water ground-sourced heat pump system. They also use the soil recovered from the boreholes to build the soil-polymer foundation. In the future, pallets of nutrient-cement are placed on the site and the bio-borg-bot farm a…

> nutrient-cement

That reminds me of a less grey-goo-adjacent idea from a Larry Niven book, in which the base-structure of houses were cheaply made by growing a kind of coral inside a watertight scaffolding.

Given the last few centuries of humans under-estimating nature, I predict that many "nanobots" predictions will turn out to be a kind of optimistic hubris. We'll end up making comparatively minor tweaks to the massive base of existing nanobots called biological life. Especially the multicellular varieties, which have many tested and integrated strategies for building things, such as the towering bipedal mega-fortress my hive mind currently inhabits.

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#152

If governments would get their act together and build nuclear power… End users could have simple resistive heating. But no, in the name of invitation and net zero, end user are forced to bear the cost and maintenance burden of much more complicated equipment systems. It’s all arse-backwards.

The latest nuclear reactor built in Europe was in France and took 17 years and its costs were 23 billion euro (roughly 27 billion $) with this amount of money you can basically install around 750000 heat pumps costing 30000€. So no it is probably not arse-backwards. (Germany alone would need 20-25 of them and it is unlikely that we can build more than 3-4 at the same time and even that is unlikely…)

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#153
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are WAY more complex to plan, install and maintain than traditional heating. I'm curious what about them would be more difficult to plan, install, and maintain. Obviously there are many things to consider when retrofitting a building with a central gas furnace... but otherwise why would they be much more complicated than an air conditioning system?

I've had a lot of mold problems with mine. Because they have to be strong enough to handle the coldest winter days, which makes them way overpowered when running air-conditioning in the summer, which means that when you run them in energy efficient mode, they are actively cooling only a small fraction of the time and all of the condensed water just sits there growing mold all day long. It also leaves the home far mor…

Sounds like you've got a single stage/speed heat pump, the good ones nowadays are variable speed, with pretty significant turndown ratios, so oversizing is less of an issue. I've been idly hacking on this site for comparing heatpump stats, if you're curious to learn more: https://www.heatpushers.com/

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#154
post #152

If governments would get their act together and build nuclear power… End users could have simple resistive heating. But no, in the name of invitation and net zero, end user are forced to bear the cost and maintenance burden of much more complicated equipment systems. It’s all arse-backwards.

The latest nuclear reactor built in Europe was in France and took 17 years and its costs were 23 billion euro (roughly 27 billion $) with this amount of money you can basically install around 750000 heat pumps costing 30000€. So no it is probably not arse-backwards. (Germany alone would need 20-25 of them and it is unlikely that we can build more than 3-4 at the same time and even that is unlikely…)

Now pick the best (least costly / swiftest build) new power reactor build in the last ten years anywhere in the world.

And anyway, your numbers are disingenuous, because it ignores the fact that heat pumps need electricity to power them, and that nuclear power reactors can provide district heating and that, and that the mean time between failures for the average split system heat pump is 7 to 10 years and that heat pumps sometimes fail in ways that the ozone depleting refrigerant to escape.

It’s evident the average commenter on this subject hasn’t run the numbers on a full cost benefit of the various options.

A mix of nuclear / hydroelectric / combined cycle gas turbine power plants provided ample electricity for end-users to make use of cheap to manufacture heating technology (resistive), low maintenance, low replacement costs.

Well, that’s my argument anyway.

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#155

Shame on The Netherlands: ~89% of homes still use natural gas in some way for heating [1], and their government are now "scrapping the obligation to purchase a heat pump in 2026" [2]. [1] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2025/50/ever-more-gas-free-hom... [2] https://www.abnamro.nl/en/personal/specially-for/preferred-b...

Yeah big surprise that the populist government didn’t achieve anything and rolled back green initiatives. Good thing that they fell, sad that it took so long.

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#156
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are WAY more complex to plan, install and maintain than traditional heating. I'm curious what about them would be more difficult to plan, install, and maintain. Obviously there are many things to consider when retrofitting a building with a central gas furnace... but otherwise why would they be much more complicated than an air conditioning system?

I've had a lot of mold problems with mine. Because they have to be strong enough to handle the coldest winter days, which makes them way overpowered when running air-conditioning in the summer, which means that when you run them in energy efficient mode, they are actively cooling only a small fraction of the time and all of the condensed water just sits there growing mold all day long. It also leaves the home far mor…

Yep! Massively overlooked aspect of the pro- heat pump crowed.

It’s good to see this brought up and discussed more.

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#157

For anybody in TVA's electricity networks (mostly: Tennessee): they offer an annual promotion to single-family homeowners only to purchase an $1800 AO heatpump waterheater for only $250 . Maths: 85% discount on fancy new waterheater, which also dehumidifies and cools your house (passive result of heatpump). TVA usually offers this promotion between Thanksgiving and NYE. You can order online from HomeDepot, or walk in…

Important caveat: > You must swap out an old electric unit; switching from gas to electric doesn't qualify.[0] That’s a bummer; totally would have done this otherwise [0] https://www.hotwater.com/water-heater-rebates/tva-heat-pump-...

Go to the dump and find an old electric unit, slap it in the corner of your garage?

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#158

In DACH, there's not really an alternative for many homes. Heat pumps are by now cheaper, more efficient, more versatile and definitely greener than other means of heating. If you get one, just make sure to get the dimensioning right. They are WAY more complex to plan, install and maintain than traditional heating.

> DACH, an acronym for Deutschland (Germany), Austria, Confoederatio Helvetica (Swiss Confederation), the three major German-speaking countries I was not familiar with this term before, had to look it up.

I guess GAS is a bit awkward when talking about green energy (even if somehow natural gas is considered "green") and sustainable heating source.

Re: Heat pump sales rise across Europe

#160
post #26

> [it] become[s] cheaper than gas heating within 11 to 14 years This a no-brainer for buildings with high energy use. But we looked into getting a heat pump last year but it doesn't pan out because our house (15 years old) has a very low energy use and we would not recover the costs (about 20K euros after subsidies) for 20+ years.

> [it] become[s] cheaper than gas heating within 11 to 14 years

They also always stop the savings estimates right before the expected lifespan of the heatpump, at which point you have to buy a new unit which destroys the actual savings

Post reply on HN