[Maxburn]

It's an industry term for mechanical equipment that can heat AND cool. One piece of equipment replaces your AC AND heat source.

Heat pumps in particular are getting a push from "green" initiatives because they only use electricity for fuel which can potentially be supplied by "renewable" sources.

ie; it's a buzz word.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It's not just buzz. It's more efficient than resistive heating and modern units have better performance in cold temps. Hence the push to promote them. The downside is that you have added complexity driving up installation costs and reliability down.

[Maxburn]

Walk around in the American Heating and Refrigeration conference for a while to get a feel of these trends, this was specifically called out by many manufacturers as driven by the green movement.

[kevin_thibedeau]

It's being driven by government pressure to reduce energy consumption and dependence on fuel imports. That isn't a bad thing. It's the sort of thing a responsible government should be planning for.

[Alupis]

Natural gas is available in abundance, is nearly free in terms of cost, and is vastly more "green" than many alternatives available today.

It may not be as green as pure electric can be in theory, but in large portions of this country electric isn't all that green either.

Heat pumps appear expensive to operate. Imagine running your AC year-round... that very thought makes many-a-homeowner shudder.

[bfuller]

Heat pumps are expensive to operate, and a nightmare to fix. There is a big movement to build whole subdivisions without using natural gas at all, electric ranges and heat pumps. I don't know why it upsets me so much but it does.

[Tor3]

Heat pumps for homes aren't expensive to operate. They are cheaper to "operate" than resistance heaters. I doubt they're a nightmare to fix - I have actually had to get mine "fixed" once. It was still fairly new, and it turned out there was a leak in the tube so the coolant gradually (over the last year) got out. The company came and fixed that easily enough. Since then (January 2011) the heat pump has been running 24/7 with no issues whatsoever. In fact you're not supposed to turn them off at all, the moving parts are supposed to keep moving. So, if I'm away for some weeks I simply set the temperature to the recommended "idle" temperature of 17C, which in practice means it's not really doing any work, but it's not off either.

[Alupis]

Well, the no-gas thing upsets me because cooking on modern electric cooktops/stoves is still staggeringly awful.

[jonny_eh]

Being responsible is so trendy.

[triceratops]

That doesn't make them a buzz word.

[1-more]

> because they only use electricity for fuel which can potentially be supplied by "renewable" sources.

They also can operate at >100% efficiency. Under the right conditions (I'll let someone who knows more about it fill that in) they can provide more heat than the same amount of power going into a resistive heater (which is I think per-se 100% efficient right?). Kinda wild.

[IanCal]

This should happen under a fairly wide range of temperatures for modern heat pumps. Quoted figures are usually in the 3-4x more efficient than resistive heating when adjusted for seasonality for air source heat pumps. Ground source are more like 5+ I think.

That's lab figures though so I guess similar to car efficiency figures.

[Maxburn]

OR another (incorrect) way of thinking is that resistive heating is 100% efficient as every bit of heat generated is inside the home. VS mechanical heat has some "loss" with some of the heat being left outside the home.

But yes, mechanical might be up to 600% efficient depending on how you think about it as moving heat around based on energy usage per therm delivered inside the home is really what people are looking for.

[jondwillis]

Why put renewable in quotes? Because it isn’t 100%?

[Maxburn]

Basically yes. Renewable is more of a supplement to current grids for most of us. There might be a couple rare few areas that currently claim 100%.

[triceratops]

Vs the alternative, natural gas, which is famously 100% renewable?

[Maxburn]

Master-Blaster rules Bartertown!