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> [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.
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Drilling alone is €10.000. The whole installation of a air/water heat pump is €10.000. Mostly not worth it.
To jakozaur’s point, there’s plenty of reasons drilling can get cheaper and there’s at least one other company working on it [1]—would love to hear about others! I’m a minimally informed amateur but my intuition is that the way it’s typically done (multiple inch borehole, U-tube geometry) is fairly suboptimal since the diameter is a lot wider than you need it to be just for hydrodynamic resistance and you get losses…
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Friends in south Sweden and they got a hole drilled in the front yard like it’s the most normal thing. Is it there?
The challenge is for people who live in apartment buildings in urban environment where you have no front yard you can drill into at your leisure.
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 think there's one big issue for massive electrification and insulation of buildings: renting. As a renter, I have no incentives to invest thousands in my home's betterment because I will have lost those when I am gone. As an owner, I have no incentives to make my apartment/house better because I don't live in it and I don't pay the energy bills. Something has to be done about that if we want to combat climate chang…
Installing a heat pump can require (city) permits, permission from your landlord (if renting) or HOA/condo association (if you own a flat in a shared building) which can either be or feel impossible to get.
Some cities have either actually or de facto (through requirements/regulations that are impossible or unaffordable to meet) banned air conditioners, resulting in people buying inefficient monoblock units that can't be used for heating.
Edit: Other regulatory hurdles come from rules about refrigerant handling. Refrigerant must only be handled by experts who are certified in proper handling and recovery (and who, of course, are now in high demand and charging princely prices for their work). This made a lot of sense in the times where 1 kg of refrigerant had 10 tons CO2e in global warming potential, ozone depletion potential or other dangers.
Nowadays, a skilled layperson can probably set up an air conditioner with quick-connect couplings by themselves, but they aren't legally allowed to. These cost something like 500 EUR, contain less than 1 kg of R32 with a GWP of 675, so let's say 500 kg CO2e of harm if it leaks. If you passed a law that landlords cannot prohibit installation, and any electrician that passes a quick online training can install them, you could have them all over the place very quickly.
These could then be used for covering some or all of the heating load in winter, but they'd also alleviate suffering in summer, and that's luxury, and we can't have that (especially as it uses energy to provide the "needless" luxury!)
in the south, a lot of people opt for split Airconditioning instead of heatpumps. Cheaper and much easier to install/maintain
Do the places you are referring to not require heat? If so I don't see why having a separate heating and cooling system would be cheaper to maintain than a single system. Come to think of it I don't see why a heatpump would be more expensive to maintain than split AC. I guess there is some extra circuitry to make sure it doesn't ice up in the winter and maybe backup resistance heating builtin.
"Heat pump" can mean many things, from essentially "split A/C" (air-air heat pumps) to ground-source heat pumps, using floor heating for the output, warm water production from the heat pump, etc.
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EU severely reducing its fossil fuel imports from Russia in 2022 cut down natural gas usage by 17% and overall energy consumption by 3%. So yeah, increased price due to scarcity help a lot in shifting around the energy mix. It's a bit shit that hits poorer people relatively more than richer people. Governments can reduce this impact by subsidizing sustainable alternatives (like heat pumps). It's still leading to ineq…
> overall energy consumption by 3% Is it possible that some non-trivial part of that number comes not from increased efficiency but from losing some energy-dependent industries?
in the south, a lot of people opt for split Airconditioning instead of heatpumps. Cheaper and much easier to install/maintain
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.
2) To have solar installation you have to abaid to painfully stupid legistlation
3) In winter pump is as green as the diesel generator that produces energy for it to run