The article doesn't mention that new building construction has almost halted in many European markets. I would assume that to play a much larger role than the reasons presented in the article.
It also doesn't help that, at least here, prices are higher and delays are longer because of high demand and low supply, especially on the side of the craftspeople who install heatpumps. That, combined with an overloaded power grid, isn't helping adoption much.
You can't "just" install a heatpump like you install a TV, these figures are more complex than just "people aren't buying them".
Of course the heat pump industry, which is the source of the data indicating a collapse, would prefer to maintain the huge growth the invasion into Ukraine and the subsequent changes in fossil fuel prices have brought to the sector. However, I suspect sales may fall back to pre-war levels, which is still a sizeable industry, and that the recent boom was an abnormality rather than an indicator of consumer interest.
Makes sense. In our new neighborhood in North America every single house got a heat pump by default. If housing starts drop that would significant affect sales.
That's because they're not running gas lines in a lot of new neighborhoods. If you don't have a gas line then the only sane alternative is to get a heat pump.
This is Canada so we actually have both a heat pump as well as a secondary natural gas furnace for when the heat pump isn't sufficient. We get temperatures that go below -30C in the winter, which is beyond all heat pump's operating range.
That's interesting. Here in the States they use heat pumps in a similar fashion, except it's backed by heating coils (electric furnace). As you say, the heat pump is much more efficient - until it isn't. Then the system switches over to heating coils.
Where we have natural gas available we tend to just install a gas furnace and leave it at that.
It depends. In my 2016 build, my heat/cooling is heat pump, my hot water is gas (so is my stove). But I’m in Seattle where heat pumps don’t need a backup, and electricity is fairly cheap. A gas furnace would seem like a waste even though we have a gas line, although we do have a gas fireplace that we use for heat more often than the heat pump (which we only use when it is really cold).
They're more expensive than a new gas boiler, more expensive to run than gas heating (due to low gas prices), they often need upgrades to the entire home heating system and there's a cost of living crisis across Europe. It's not really a surprise.
Are low gas prices due to subsidized gas? They were supposed to be very high due to the German-corruption-made dependence on Russian gas, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
It's not subsidies, gas prices are down to pre-invasion levels. Lots of changes were implemented to reduce overall gas demand, plus all governments build up their gas reserves so to avoid local energy shocks. Countries also set up alternate sources of gas. This all combined to push down gas prices.
> due to the German-corruption-made dependence on Russian gas
You have a source for this? Corruption is a criminal offence under both german and EU laws. So if there was corruption ... where are the court cases, where are the convictions? Who went to jail? Did anyone even TRY to bring someone to court for this?
There was a time when most germans had oil central heating. And then, since about 1980, this gradually changed. People installed gas central heating more and more --- not caring at all if the gas came from the Netherlands, Norway or Russia. One normally didn't knew. But why did they do that?
- the central heating device was cheaper
- the central heating device was more efficient (especiall the "Brennwertkessel")
- you didn't need a stinking oil tank in your basement, so yay, one more cellar room!
On top of this, a lot of eastern european country dependend WAY more on russian fossil fuels than Germany, like Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary (that one even today!). That only Germany is singled out is probably a result of very succesful polish PiS propaganda. And the tendency of people to believe things that sound okay, without actual research.
Just look at a map of eastern european pipelines. You might know "North Stream" becuase of propaganda. But notice that there is a maendering of 15 other pipelines visiting all eastern and southern european countries? You never hear about the others ... why? Here's a list of all of them: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_Erdgaspipelines#Euro... --- and that JUST gas. Not even oil. And it doesn't also cover coal (where Poland made itself dependent on Russia).
The UK sources most of its gas from the North Sea, not Russia, and that's become cheaper now that there's less of a demand for it from mainland Europe (for many reasons). Also, though gas is cheaper, power is 2x the price it was 3 years ago and more expensive than much of mainland Europe. Still, relative to electricity, the cost per kWh of gas remains very cheap.
There was a distinct pressure to invest in electric heat pumps because the prices for fossil fuels were so insane. Now the prices have normalized and suddenly paying what you were used to sounds more attractive than spending tens of thousands of Euros on top of the electric bill.
Where do you get your numbers from? Right now, pre heat pump, I'm at 2000kWh usage and return to the net 4000kWh (so 2000kWh in excess). I use 750m3 of gas.
This costs me 100e per month.
I'm investing in a full electric ground source heat pump. Which cost me 20k. An alternative is a air heatpump which is around 8k, but with a lower scop.
Let's assume a scop of 5 (air-air) which is conservative. The amount of energy required for heating / showering / cooking was 750 * 9.27 = 6952.5 kWh. Dividing this by the scop of 5 means I require 1390.5 kWh to replace gas. This means I still have excess of solar kWh.
For now I can use the grid as a battery. This means I have no electricity costs - I actually get 20e per month after taxes.
So for 8k I have nullified my gas and electric bill. This means a payback period of 5.5 years (8000/120/12) or a yield of 18% (120/8000 * 100*12) per year.
So it isn't required to have tens of thousands to invest and you get a positive yield (depending the tax climate) even with current gas prices.
The 20k ground source heat pump looks a bit different. But I like that it is quiet and it can cool in summer for less energy that an air-air one.*
While heat pumps tend to pay themselves back by simply being one of the most efficient methods of heating possible, they do require a large investment upfront. With the current economic situation, it makes sense that fewer people are willing to make such an investment. You could of course get a loan, but not everyone is interested in getting themselves into any kind of financial risk when cost of living is up and wages are lagging behind.
ROI depends heavily on the amount of solar power you can also invest into, the weather, and fossil fuel prices. Right when fossil fuel prices spiked because of Russia's invasion, getting a heat pump was a no brainer, because the difference between electricity and fossil fuel prices took months or more off the time to earn back the heat pump investment, but now that fuel prices are dropping back to normal, the equation changed.
The problem is that an outdated inefficient Rankine Refrigerant Heat controls 99% of the market and in extreme climate temperatures (High Delta Ts) the Rankine COP efficiencies are 0-1 in the example of - or + 10-20C , virtually useless and use excess Kwh. The HVAC OEMs are about the slowest good ole boys to adapt or innovate. Our co, Sencera (sincere.com) is mfg the 1st Stirling Heat Pump that replaces Rankine Refrig Heat Pumps @same and delivers 30% HIGHER COP efficiency over Rankine Heat Pumps and is performs even better in extreme cold/hot climates. Trust and used by NASA Stirling was previously known as super expensive and used in the RPS systems in the Space shuttles. We reconfigured Stirling to be low cost ($600 mfg cost 3 Tom/10Kwh Units) with a Patented all Rotary design and utilize Helium or Nitrogen(NON toxic and NON flammable) with working prototypes with independent lab verified COP efficiencies HIGHER than Rankine. In 2024 you'll see the comm'l entry of our 1st Home Units then we scale to EVs and Comm'l Cold Chain apps. Since 100% of every Rankine Heat Pump leaks in all Homes, Schools, Hospitals and Businesses and depends on Refrigerants, the lazy HVC market's new spin is "sustainable" Refrigerants, such B.S, they contain harmful CFC/HFCs or in Europe you have R-290, a Propane derivative, try lighting a match next to it and see what happens:). The Industry is so old and apathetic it's going to see a refreshing disruptive change maker in Stirling as an end user option that can serve Colder/otter climates and significantly reduce Kwh/Utility Bills. mike.draper@sencera.com
BTW, when Daikin or Carrier or anyothers sell their Heat Humps at COPs of 5 based on a SEER Rating, you can laugh....it's a blended rate and represent ZERO integrity to the actual Heat Pump performance in extreme temps....how did this happen? ASHRAE , SEER Rating are all sponsored and created by WHO? The HVAC good ole boys....so they are blatantly overselling HYPED COP efficiency that are actually 25% of their real COP....we've tested Daikin the highest selling Home Heat Pump units in Spain lab and the results were clear at -20C the COP was 1.25 but SEER Rating star it's 5. If the general public only kew the facts :)
Good question. It depends on how that would work. Meaning can I offset against the whole year and just get less money back per kWh or will it become seasonal or day pricing. Day pricing would be the most impactful as during summer time prices are cheaper and I deliver back the most.
If I assume that 2/3 of my usage will be in Winter and I can offset just 200kWh (there is always a bit of sun) then it look like this:
1390.5 * 2/3 = 927 kWh
927kWh - 200 = 727 kWh
727 kWh * 0.40 = 290.80 / year (0.40 is price per kWh)
So I would spend 290 per year so about 25e. Which is 75% less then I do now.
Well, even today, using heat pumps is cheaper on the long run (like on a 10 year horizont). Especially if you have solar on your roof and can use your own solar electricy, at least partially.
Besides the "big heat pump" outside that sometimes needs changes to the house (like installing underfloor heating) people are now starting to use normal split-AC devices with a SCOP of 3 or better for heating. That's even cheaper.
So I googled, and it seems that sales have increased every year from 2005 to 2022, but sales in 2023 will be only slightly higher than those in 2021. "Collapse" doesn't seem quite right.
The cost of electricity in most of Europe is prohibitive, all things and fees considered I'm sitting at €0.50/kWh. Furthermore, most homes are allotted 3kW, upgradeable to 6kW for a fixed one-time fee, and perpetual fees in the monthly bill.
The recent (2021) AC unit with a heat pump in this apartment draws 0.75 to 1.1kW. That means for every hour I'm using it I'm paying about €0.50, and I can't turn on neither the dishwasher, nor the washing machine, nor the oven while it's running. Maybe I can use the hairdryer but even that might trip the breaker if the wrong combination of lights, TV and fridge happens.
Electricity is scarce and expensive in Europe, gas isn't. I appreciate how efficient and more sustainable heat pumps are but money doesn't grow on trees.
> Furthermore, most homes are allotted 3kW, upgradeable to 6kW for a fixed one-time fee, and perpetual fees in the monthly bill.
Are you sure of those numbers?
3kW is the max capacity of a single socket (at least in the UK). My electric shower is 10kW and electric hobs/cookers also need higher ratings than standard sockets. Here in the UK I believe that the standard domestic capacity is 100A per home (so about 24kW).
You’re making generalisations about Europe that just don’t make sense. There are plenty of countries/regions in Europe where electricity is more readily available.
You can’t even generalise about a single country. North Germany has a lot more renewable electricity than South Germany.
Is the AC power consumption you’re citing for summer or winter? Seems crazy high for winter in Italy (if that’s where you’re from ref your other comment). Our home in Norway uses about that much right now in mid winter.
I guess the apartment might not be well insulated? That’s another problem countries in Europe need to work on. It’s insane to waste energy due to insufficient insulation. Energy, especially fossil energy, is not going to get more plentiful any time soon. If you don’t invest in energy saving measures soon you’ll be screwed eventually.
I live in a top top US state and pay <$0.10/kWh for unlimited electricity and can get down to 7 cents if I sign up for alternate times and special programs.
I used over 1,000kWh last month.
I’m trying to figure out if my future is 5x energy prices or there’s just a huge structural difference that makes one country’s energy infrastructure vastly superior.
I read a statistics before the COVID pandemic (and Russia's invasion) and that boiled down to two things:
* electricity is half as expensive in the USA
* but median US households use double the electric power than their european counterparts
Reasons are much better housing standards here (much better insulation), and WAY less AC devices. Another reason is of course the higher price, this makes people buy household devices that use less power. Like the european fridge, which hasn't an ice-cube maker by default, so it's insulation isn't artificially broken.
Also, european pay more for infrastructure in their power prices, like for the transit lines. If you ever look up hard statistics about power outages (like the SAIDI value, amount of minutes per year per customer without power) you see that the US power grid has been starved to death: more than 240 minutes per year without power. Compare this with about 11 minutes in Germany ...
And finally, many european subsidized "green energy" (like Solar) when it was still more expensive than fossil-made electricity. And the subsidy was then paid by all power consumers, not from general taxes.
As a result, CO2 emission per electricity customer / household in most of europe is lower than the same value in the USA.
Top top as in north or top top as in expensive? Are you factoring in delivery charges? Cause the average American electric price is 0.163 kWh which is pretty close to what I pay.
No more cheap Russian energy. In place, expensive nordic and American energy. It is basically active self-sabotaging by European leaders. Not only heat pumps, a lot of businesses bankrupt. You can ask any Germans friends how bad German economy is and next couple of years. Some even wish to move to Indonesia or Eastern Asia side to look for jobs. Heat pump sale is just minuscule to all other collapsing sales there. Meanwhile the business contacts I know in Moscow and Petersburg having historic bonuses and pay increases. Meanwhile, UK and German tax payers still facing new taxes and subsidies cuts as I type this. Look on the bright side, look for military complex jobs. I see they are hiring.
In Northern Europe heatpumps are simply not effective (yet). Heating at colder nights means heating with electricity, where gas is 1/3 of the electricity price. 100s of stories of people who converted to heat pumps (being oversold with less then perfect home insulations) and who are disapointed financialy.
This is not my own experience nor the experience of every other homeowner I know in my corner of rural Sweden (and it's a popular discussion topic). I don't know of a single disappointment story, nor is it a thing in the local media.
Heat pumps are very cost effective and me and most other homeowners I know have, over the last couple of decades, completely migrated from wood to heat pumps. In fact, there might not be that many homes who'd convert left to convert.
The House construction locally has definitely tanked this last year. Much fewer projects.
Do you use it as part of a geothermal system, or are you talking about extracting the heat from the air?
My thermodynamics class is some time ago, but pumping the heat stored in arctic air to a sufficiently high level for residential heating sounds indeed like an electric heating effectively.
Modern air source heat pumps are fine. Where I live it's hard to even find someone who services ground source heat pumps. Ground source works slightly better but the install cost is so much higher that it's rarely worth it.
Digressing a bit... there's something weird about these stories.
I come from rural-ish Norway and live in a big city in Germany. Lots of people here in Germany are quite willing to tell me that heat pumps don't work in the area where I come from, where I have many friends with heat pumps. Their confidence amazes me. I don't understand how they can be so confident.
It's a bunch of stuff all coming together: Electric heating is still memetically coupled with resistive heating in Germany, which isn't very efficient (and can't beat subsidized fossils anyway). Post-war era houses in regions that don't usually see -10°C or less tend not to be airtight "because it's healthier" (because vapor can escape, avoiding mold). Heating engineers preferred to sell the stuff they know (and is somewhat easier to install) so they discouraged heat pumps.
So everybody has been telling everybody in Germany that "electric heating" doesn't work, heat pumps are vaguely "electric heating" (different mode of operation, but for that you'd have to know how heat pumps work in the first place), and with all that you end up with some "wisdom of the crowd" that fuels false confidence.
>Electric heating is still memetically coupled with resistive heating in Germany, which isn't very efficient
Why is this? Isn't electric heating (in the space heater context) by definition 100% efficient, because all of the energy is translated into heat (with the light as a byproduct)?
In the small: Those space heaters Germans think about when talking electric heating tend to be night storage heaters. So they consume electricity at night (when the grid is free) to heat up, then radiate the heat until the next evening. That scheme was accompanied by cheaper electricity at night. Not very comfy, and slow to react, and the "cheaper electricity" bit supported the notion that it only works when "subsidized" (just the market at work, but it looks like that - unlike fossils whose subsidies were usually not as obvious for the regular citizen.)
In the large: That idea is from a time when burning fossils at home (including coal) was the way to heat, and burning fossils to drive a (relatively inefficient, at least compared to today, and filters were an unknown luxury) generator was the way to create electricity.
You likely got more heat at home out of a bucket of coal when burning it at home rather than burning it at the power plant (with some excess heat there), converting it to electricity (with some losses), transporting electricity home (with some losses) and then heat up the home with that, even with 100% efficiency at that last step.
(These days I wouldn't be so sure: those power plants, even the fossil burning type, are fine tuned high-tech at a level you can't just put in ordinary homes, so they might actually extract more energy to use after all the losses along the chain than the fireplace at home that evicts a considerable percentage of the heat through the chimney)
I personally knew all that and still am amazed at how confidently these people tell me it doesn't work. "Oh, you're from Norway? I understand (X) is very popular in Norway, but of course it doesn't work at all well there." The details of X doesn't matter, the statement is all duh anyway.
A charitable reading of the parent comment is to focus on "converting". The Nordics tend to have their buildings designed for heat pumps from the start, or converted (and fixed up) a long time ago.
I'm in a house in Germany and got it converted from gas to heat pump a couple of years ago. It took some adaptations to make that work, but on the flip side we obviously blasted lots of heat into the atmosphere before, which we're reigning in now (still work in progress).
So yeah, conversions of houses not built to "heat pump spec" has follow-on efforts and costs that the heat pump hype didn't advertise. I had a rough idea what to expect and that it'll take a while to sort out everything, but if you went into the conversion with the idea that you're just replacing one part with another, you're in for disappointment.
That reminds me of a house built here in SE Canada in New Brunswick. It's a super efficient home with quadruple glazed windows and walls 1m thick or something like that. The entire house is heated with a unit using the power equivalent to a hair dryer. Just for some perspective it can easily get to -20C or -30C in winter in New Brunswick. It's airtight and very well insulated but yes built that way from the start.
Exactly what I have meant. New building code is heat-pump friendly but lots of people with older (not old just older) houses had been sold on heat pumps and now pay the price in electricity bills.
> The Nordics tend to have their buildings designed for heat pumps from the start
My grandma's house from the 1950's wasn't "designed for heat pumps", neither my other grandma's house from 1940. Neither was my mother in laws from the same period.
You don't need to design anything, you just need a hole in the wall to run the cables.
What does make the houses suited for heat pumps is the fact that Nordic houses are designed to keep the weather out. So when you heat/cool the inside, the house doesn't leak it all outside.
> What does make the houses suited for heat pumps is the fact that Nordic houses are designed to keep the weather out. So when you heat/cool the inside, the house doesn't leak it all outside.
Alright, my bad. Consider "designed" replaced by "suitable".
Houses of a certain era in large parts of Germany (those with only a few days of moderate sub-zero temperatures) tend to have been built with a bit of air leakage capacity to avoid mold. Yes, that's wasteful, but since fossils were (and are) subsidized like crazy, you just heat a bit more and be over with it.
That strategy doesn't work as well when you have less heat to work with.
There are still people who argue that it's unhealthy to live in a properly insulated house ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. I doubt you have a lot of that nonsense in areas that deal with freezing temperatures for months at a time.
Do you have online resources I can browse through for conversions?
I have a gas boiler -radiator piping built into the walls and people I talk to say the radiators wont work with heat pump level of temperatures so as in your case the system needs to be converted but how. What are methods and techniques?
Nothing convenient. Bits and pieces here and there, tons of forums, a few videos, a bunch of books, a few specialists who gave good advice.
The inbound temperature into the radiator network took a dive from about 70°C to about 40°C here (I _could_ push the inbound temp to nearly 50°C but by then I'm no better off than with resistive heating), and that's rather obvious when heating the rooms.
The main advice everything came down to was "have a lot of surface that can heat" and from my experience that seems to be quite true.
The house has a bunch of radiators that never ran in the nat-gas days, basically it was overcommitted on heating surface. Now they're pretty well used. Another retrofit option that I had in the back of my head was radiators equipped with a fan to move the air along the radiator surface more quickly (essentially creating "virtual heating surface"), but I didn't need those.
Other than that, warm and cold parts of the house (e.g. basement) are more clearly separated. A FLIR camera module for my phone gave some hints on where heat escapes so that I could focus on the right spots.
When a larger rework of a room is due (and there's a huge mess in any case), that's a chance to look into floor or wall heating there, connected to the same system.
Once that's (mostly) done, I suppose the inbound temperature can be reduced some more, and I expect super-linear electricity savings from that (due to the way the heat pump works).
In terms of costs, it comes out at about the same, although there are more options in electricity availability, and I suspect that pricing there remains more stable than with fossil fuels, so longer-term I expect operating costs to develop beneficially (even if that only means "remains flat"). TCO of the project, I don't know, but I was optimizing for long-term OpEx for various reasons.
By the way: Heating engineers tended to dismiss the project, but the project started before there were any issues with gas supply, so "just use gas" was their go-to solution anyway (for the eco-conscious, they dangled the carrot of "it's H2 ready!", even though it's unlikely that the pipe work will ever support that). Not sure if the attitude of heating engineers changed in the meantime.
In the end it was done by air conditioning technicians, and it can be switched between heating mode using radiators and AC with split system frontends, so this house covers cold winters and hot summers with just one external device (which pleases the historical landmark office)
They are massively popular in Finland, so clearly they work in the Northern Europe. Gas isn't even a competitor there, the other main option is district heating. Basically all other forms (mainly oil, direct electric heating) are on their way out.
>In Northern Europe heatpumps are simply not effective (yet).
That's not what I've heard of even air, but to be clear, you are talking air source right? I'm near the Canadian border in northern New England and am getting ready at work to have another vertical ground source (geothermal) heat pump put in, and those are very effective year round. Well loop is around 515' (~155m), which is on the longer side but not a big deal by well drilling standards (which is why lots of well drilling companies have been expanding into heat pumps in the last 5 years and availability has sky rocketed). The price is definitely much higher than air source for now, maybe always will carry some premium, but the major government incentives here help significantly and of course the reliability is high. There are a few minor other bonuses as well I guess, like aesthetically speaking once done there can be nothing to near nothing visible outside.
There are a few other strategies (horizontal ground, water source, semi-open) that some are looking at too but around here simple vertical closed looks likely to end up as the majority due to economies of scale, it can be done anywhere vs needing more/special land, and like I said leverages an existing industry. It's neat to see coming along, so perhaps longer term that'll offer an option in Northern Europe too.
In the UK it's more pronounced. I pay £0.28/kWh for electricity and £0.069/kWh for gas, so as I understand it installing a heat pump will end up increasing my energy bills unless its coefficient of performance is over 4.
And in the UK the regulation that bans new gas boilers doesn't come in until 2025. Despite all the new homes being built in the UK, most are still being built with gas central heating.
If the UK had made the strategic decision to stick with nuclear we would have much more electric installations (like they have in France) and it would be easier for homes.
in my country new homes come with solar panels and heatpumps usually. if you are unlucky not to earn litteral shit-tons, you can only rent as house prices are through the roof.. with that rental contract comes extra service fees for heatpump and solar panels. those costs are about 10 times higher than savings from not using Gas and having the panels... and they persist for the entirety of the contract. so basically you are off much more expensive. --- for the climate they say >.> ... i can see people getting much less excited to go for green options, simply because its not affordable especially for regular or low income homes... it's just another scheme to get ur money. - it's maybe a bit harsh opinion, but its hard to draw any other conclusions. Send billions upon billions for War, and have households collapse by forcing these kinds of tech on people without any subsidies or help to pay for them. I hope soon to move away from the western countries. i work in IT on a nice salary and i can't even afford to live here anymore :/
