[eru]

> Installing one should be certified, performance should be mandated to protect consumers and grant money.

That seems entirely like a lucrative insurance product that the market could offer. (Just like extended warranties for your electronics.)

I wonder if any actuary is working on it.

[mikewarot]

How is insurance going to provide heat for 2 weeks?

Pay for rental of propane heaters during a cold snap when they're all gone?

Insurance is not the answer here.

[eru]

> Installing one should be certified, performance should be mandated to protect consumers and grant money.

How is a certificate and a mandate that oliwarner suggested going to provide heat? Burning a certificate takes at most a few seconds.

To spell it out for you, the mechanism is pretty much the same as elsewhere:

Companies can offer customers some warranties that their system will work as advertised (ie provide heat with a minimum of fuel). Lots of companies in the private sector offer such warranties on a variety of products. The warranty by itself does not keep you warm, but it typically provides for some restitution in case of failure. (In an extreme case, you can imagine that people would be happy to be paid a million dollars in return for putting up without heat for two weeks. In practice, the warranty will probably settle on something less extreme. For example, some modest monetary compensation plus help with sourcing propane heaters as you suggest. Your imagination is the limit here.)

Because the small companies that do this kind of heat pump installation go bankrupt and disappear all the time, you can administer the warranty via a third party insurance company.

And here's where the certificates come in: just like some car insurance companies give you discounts in return for eg a clean driving record, you would imagine that your heat pump installation company would also be able to purchase much cheaper insurance to benefit their customers if they can provide evidence that they know what they are doing.

In practice the main benefit of the whole scheme would come from insurance companies keeping an eye on the installation companies. The payouts are mostly there to provide discipline and align incentives; but in a well running system the payouts shouldn't be necessary very often.