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The biggest heat pumps

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Re: The biggest heat pumps

#81

Post by holowoodman »

Maledictus wrote: post #48
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.

Guess who supplies all the nuclear fuel? Russia, and we don't want to buy from them anymore. The same is true for pretty much all nuclear power plants.

We did buy Uranium from Russia because it was cheap, but they are far from the only suppliers. Half the world can mine uranium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_uranium_r...

Even Germany had Uranium mines in the Erzgebirge. They just were closed due to environmental concerns and the iron curtain falling, which is also why there are no more "official" reserves. There was no exploration done after 1990, so known exploitable reserves in Germany are low. But that's just because nobody went looking.

Uranium isn't rare and it isn't really expensive. We just need so little of it that there are not a lot of running mines.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#82

Post by kijin »

consp wrote: post #22
kijin wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically, the water would need to be somewhat warmer than 0℃ because you don't want it to freeze and clog the plumbing after you have extracted a useful amount of thermal energy. :)

Depending on the contaminants, it's more likely a few degrees below 0C but you point still stands. Fish are removed as contaminant but minerals and pollution likely is not. And normal water takes quite a bit of heat extraction to actually freeze if at 0C, maybe the device does not even extract enough. But you want to be on the safe side of course since clogging up your heat exchanger with ice (which expands) is not g…

You also don't want to create an iceberg at the point where you dump the water back in the river.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#83

Post by stefanfisk »

holowoodman wrote: post #76
pjc50 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is that required? Switch to three phase? Wasn't required for me in the UK.

No. Everything in Germany has been three-phase since forever. But especially with old houses, with any "not insignificant change" to your electrical setup, you have to bring everything up to modern standards. Also, and connected with that, metering is weird in Germany. If your consumption rises above a certain amount (I think 10MWh for a single-family home) you are required to get a "smart meter", meaning a digital m…

OK, but what about the rest of the price difference? Once the electrical is taken care of it should just be a matter of replacing the furnace and pulling some tubes and wires to the outer unit? You said 40k, but the heat pump itself isn’t even 10k.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#84

Post by Retric »

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…

40k for heat pumps is wildly overkill here if that’s what you where quoted someone is trying to scam you. More critically, those prices aren’t set in stone over the next 30 years.

Home PV for example is way less than 0,3€/kWh and rather dramatically changes these comparisons.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#85

Post by xg15 »

A bit OT, but since this article also mentions district heating: Are there any efforts to attach any of the recently built AI data centers (and their power plants) to district heating networks?

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#86

Post by holowoodman »

stefanfisk wrote: post #83
holowoodman wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Everything in Germany has been three-phase since forever. But especially with old houses, with any "not insignificant change" to your electrical setup, you have to bring everything up to modern standards. Also, and connected with that, metering is weird in Germany. If your consumption rises above a certain amount (I think 10MWh for a single-family home) you are required to get a "smart meter", meaning a digital m…

OK, but what about the rest of the price difference? Once the electrical is taken care of it should just be a matter of replacing the furnace and pulling some tubes and wires to the outer unit? You said 40k, but the heat pump itself isn’t even 10k.

I didn't say that, but it is true that in Germany it is extremely expensive, mostly due to installers being greedy.

German article, but some translation tool might help: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/verbraucher/waermepumpe...

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#87

Post by jgalt212 »

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…

> Something like 70% of houses are heated by heat-pumps

To me, living in US Northeast, this is astounding. I've read heat pumps lose efficacy below 25F. My family would never forgive me if I made our house cold. But then I see 70% of the Nordics's house are "warm enough", or dealing colder than room temperature houses.

I've asked half-dozen contractors and HVAC people in my area, and none of them have recommended a heat pump. But, I'm just as suspicious of their motives as I am of the science and environmental populizers on YouTube.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#88

Post by cnewey »

hexbin010 wrote: post #30
wkat4242 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes heat pumps are expensive and you need different radiators and more insulation than with traditional gas central heating. That's why it's an issue in Holland too. Not many people have the investment for all that. It's mainly worth it when you have solar panels but that requires another big investment. I'm lucky to live in Spain where it's not that cold so I just have one little plug in radiator I use a few months…

Ditto UK. Gas is relatively cheap, and a replacement boiler is £1,500 to £3,000 and will last ~10 years and there'll be no doubt about whether it can sufficiently heat the home or produce enough hot water etc . Lucky you living in Spain though lol

I was recently in a situation where I had to replace my oil-fired heating system’s oil tank (it wasn’t double skinned and no longer safe).

It was £2500 to replace the oil tank, or I could opt for £2250 to install a heat pump with the government grant. This included all plumbing, electrical work, installation, and 6 new radiators all over my house.

Honestly to me it seemed like a no-brainer. It’s a tad more expensive to run, but it works really quite well and is a lot less invasive than a big smelly tank of kerosene. I gained another 90cm of width in my garden, it’s actually quieter than the oil boiler, and it doesn’t stink in the summer- win win.

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#89

Post by bratwurst3000 »

jack_tripper wrote: post #24
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…

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.

air conditioning is also a heat pump. they cost way less then the air/water heatpumps and are easy and cheap to install. Since two years I heat with air conditioning and its super effective and cheap.

edit// Hot water is generated by electric solar panels. 1200w are sufficent to have enough hot water for two persons

Re: The biggest heat pumps

#90

Post by renhanxue »

jgalt212 wrote: post #87
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…

> Something like 70% of houses are heated by heat-pumps To me, living in US Northeast, this is astounding. I've read heat pumps lose efficacy below 25F. My family would never forgive me if I made our house cold. But then I see 70% of the Nordics's house are "warm enough", or dealing colder than room temperature houses. I've asked half-dozen contractors and HVAC people in my area, and none of them have recommended a h…

A lot of the Nordic heat pumps are ground source, that is to say you drill a hole a couple of hundred feet down into the bedrock where it's always a bit above freezing and you circulate your heat exchange fluid down there and back up again. Air-source heat pumps are mostly a thing in the southern parts where the climate is relatively mild.
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