[moooo99]

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.

[lnsru]

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 will last for 3 decades again. The monthly bill is the same.

[xeromal]

I installed mini splits (small heat pumps) in each of our rooms. Everyone gets their own temperature and they were only 800$ a piece. Did installation myself and it was pretty easy. Hardest thing was pulling a vacuum in the lines before releasing the freon (or whatever it's called) but all I did was watch a youtube video. They've been going strong for several years. I looked at the prices and they are still the same.

[bratwurst3000]

Did the same. air air is cheap and works like a charm. this 40k for heatpump is for the most luxury version every salesmen trys to sell

[xeromal]

Yeah if 40k is the go to amount of heat pumps, the entire country has lost the plot

[mk89]

BTW, in Germany you're not allowed to install it yourself. At least that's what I read some time ago. I guess nobody checks, of course, but in case things go bad and you need insurance, probably they can invalidate it due to the fact you did something illegal.

Not saying it makes sense, though.

[bratwurst3000]

i installed mine myself and probably illegaly. But its super easy and those people who install it do a shit job sometimes. I watched professionell people flushing those pipes with compressed air....

And the fine is nonexistent so everyone should do it themself.

[mk89]

I also don't think it's that hard, at least by looking at the YouTube videos.

Do you risk to lose house insurance in case of issues?

This is one of the reasons why sometimes I am even afraid of thinking about such DIY projects.

[bratwurst3000]

yes for heatpump specific problems that are based on faulty installation.

[stefanfisk]

What is the calculus behind 40k? I just checked some Swedish vendors and here they calculate 12k for hardware and installation of a fairly large heat pump.

https://www.polarpumpen.se/kunskapsbanken/varmepump-kunskaps...

[ZeroGravitas]

Octopus and a German University did a report on costs.

UK heat pumps are half the cost of German installs 14k Vs 28k euros.

Theres multiple reasons given:

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/03/13/heat-pumps-in-germany...

Also, I believe Octopus have nearly halved the UK price since that report by optimising installs.

[willvarfar]

Yeah small air-air pumps - which are the most common for single houses - are easily under 2000EUR including installation; if you keep eyes out for special offers it'd be about 1500EUR in Swedish prices.

[lnsru]

State subsidies and insane overregulation. Think about replacing the cabinet for electricity meters (+4000€) for heat pump installation.

[bratwurst3000]

smart meters are paid by the grid operator and you have to pay maximum 50€ a year for a smartmeter. I honestly dont know where you get your numbers. a friend with a big house and 3 children switched to air water heatpump with floor heating etc and it was 18k€ and half of that paif by the state and the smart meter was mostly free( he pais 25€ a year for it).

and this is a hugeeee house. No solar but he is working on it.

could you link some proof of this smartmeters I have to pay? Or some calculations from firms it whatever that proof your point.

[lnsru]

Think about cabinet from 1972 for one electricity meter. Now you have one electricity meter for house electricity and second one with dynamic plan for heat pump and spare place prepared for third meter for wallbox. So the new cabinet costs you 3000€ including my work and it’s not seldom, that the house has no grounding rod. With couple small repairs/upgrades it’s 4000€ without VAT. And since everything must be documented I can’t work without invoice.

It has nothing to do with smart meters. Some electrical installations are heavily outdated by today’s norms. And norms are obviously written by greedy suppliers of the cabinets and parts for them. Worst thing is that I can’t make any money by selling this stuff. It’s already too expensive for the people. And it will not be cheaper with Paragraf §14a EnWG.

[pjc50]

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

[holowoodman]

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 meter which includes the possibility (just the possibility, not actually the real thing) of online reporting and minute-by-minute pricing. In the rest of the world, that would just be swapping the meter or slapping some Wifi-to-IR-interface on it, but not so in Germany. You need to install a new metering cabinet that provides space for at least one digital meter (but better provide more than one...), one remote control receiver (for old-style night/day tariff switches, obsoleted by smart meters but still required nonetheless) and a smart meter gateway. That new metering cabinet needs to conform to standards set by your local electricity supplier (which can be as small as a city), so there is no nation-wide standards, more like 50 of them. And the metering cabinet is huge, not someting like the 30x40cm thing you see on sidewalks in spain or something, no. More like 200x140cm in the smallest(!) version. So those are really expensive just because the market is tiny and the requirements are completely crazy: Even though most smart meter gateways are wireless nowadays (UMTS or GSM) and usually such a gateway won't be installed anyways (because just the possibility of installing one is required), you also need to provide for cabled internet uplink to the metering cabinet. That uplink is a Cat6 cable to the gateway, but it crosses through the electrical uplink part of the cabinet. So the insulation of that cable has to be certified for at least 10kV insulation voltage, at least 80A current on the shielding and more stuff like that. So e.g. just that one stupid half-meter Cat6 cable will set you back 50Eur. Installation isn't any less crazy. You definitely cannot do anything yourself. Even your licensed electrician can only do the menial preparations. When your licensed electrician is done with the prep, you request an appointment with the local supplier's meter installer, who, after a typical wait time of 2 months, will install and seal the meter in the presence of your licensed electrician (who is there to receive complaints about incorrect prep, followed by another 2 months wait time for another appointment...).

That's why it's 4kEur...

And if you want your power to be a few cents cheaper (28ct/kWh instead of the usual 35ct/kWh), you need an extra meter for your heat pump. Have solar? Another extra meter. Want to charge your electrical car? You guessed right. And you cannot bring your own. Each of those "smart" meters has to be rented from your local supplier at around 20 to 120Eur/year.

[UomoNeroNero]

Ok. For once, I’m glad to be Italian :-D Here the national grid operator has installed smart meters. They support remote management of limits (maximum power in watts, tariffs, time-of-use tariffs), remote meter reading by the operator or local access plus an app, remote diagnostics, and simplified installation (strict rules and operator intervention, but in the end nothing particularly complex).

[stefanfisk]

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.

[skeletal88]

wtf, this is totally insane.

Here the upgrades for meters are paid for by the grid operators. No changes to the cabinets are required, old analog meters were replaced by them for smart meters, at no extra cost to the consumer, and now they will replace them with new meters capable of metering by 15 minute interval.

This cost in germany is really only created by overregulation and insane bureaucrats creating work for them.

I first heard that in Germany there is much resistance to smart meters and I thought they were just silly people, but if it costs so much..

[seec]

I know the electricity situation is pretty bad in Germany, but come on, can't they manage to make an equivalent to the French Linky?

[worik]

> So why should I pay more by €30k to install experimental thing for a decade when my low cost gas heating will last for 3 decades again.

Because:

It is not experimental (it is no longer 1992)

Your gas comes from Russia, and they hate you - roughly speaking

Your prices are miles from reality

Face it, fossil fuels are deprecated. Your gas heating will be unusable with no gas to put in it

[pjc50]

The problem is the gas (a) emits CO2 and (b) comes from Russia.

[Retric]

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.

[vintermann]

If we only could get China to do for heat pumps what they did for solar panels...

[Scoundreller]

I’m filling my garage with cheap heat pumps and solar panels.

Going to sell for 10x when the water wars commence.

[pettertb]

Note that we don't have much gas infrastructure here in the nordics, since we (used to) have cheap electricity.

If you choose between heat pump and not-heat-pump electric heating, it is cheaper.

[bratwurst3000]

that doesnt even make sense. if gas is 3x of electricity it should be the same cost but for every watt of electricity you get 3 watt of heating. so by your math if I pay 1w gas but need 3w for 1w of electricity and heatpumps give 3w on every watt of electricity heatpumps are 300% more effective then gas. sooo your point is also heatpumps ftw ;)

[triceratops]

€40k for a heat pump is insane. Even just the parts for €15k is unbelievable. Do you have a source?

[jabl]

> Germany is not really rich compared to nordics.

(From another post I made in this thread)

Looking at IMF 2025 GDP per capita figures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... ):

Norway: $92k

Denmark: $77k

Sweden: $62k

Germany: $60k

UK: $57k

Finland: $56k

So yeah, Denmark and particularly Norway are a bit richer than the others, but the others are in the same ballpark.

[looofooo0]

Well Norway (Hydro), Sweden (hydro and nuclear) and Finland (Nuclear Wind Hydro) all have cheap electricity which seems to be the main driver for adoption.

[mrmlz]

Hrm. It might be cheaper than in Germany but its not cheap in Sweden except for the most nordic parts (hydro).

South Sweden - i think the prices are more on par with germany.

[looofooo0]

Well in the south you might need to factor the gas cost in (vs Germany) and also the network effects of heat pump being the main form of heating in sweden.

[willvarfar]

The south of Sweden is expensive because Sweden did away with the previous single energy market and split into zones with sales abroad. Often Swedish producers sell to Germany at the same time Swedish consumers are forced to buy from German producers. It was a big thing about 'free market' and iirc Denmark was upset that Danish manufacturing could not compete with the price of energy across the straights in Sweden. The solution was to make energy more expensive in Sweden.

[looofooo0]

I was solely talking about heat pump adoption due end user prices.

[willvarfar]

I know I paid about 1000EUR for an air-air heat-pump with install in Sweden, but that was a decade ago and they cost 1500-2000EUR total these days. I also have a fancy big ground-source heat-pump bigger than most residential ones and that cost under 10000EUR total. So not sure what makes them so expensive in other countries; you'd hope competition kept prices competitive.

[1313ed01]

Sweden used to have very cheap electricity. That's why there are so many houses with electric radiators. Far more expensive now.

That is why so many houses here now have air-to-air heat pumps. That is by far the cheapest way to improve heating in an old house with only electric radiators and no existing water heat pipes.

[enaaem]

Imagine if things were the other way around. That we already had heat pumps and someone suggests we should pipe this toxic and explosive gas into our homes and burn it. That would be an insane idea.