[coryrc]

They don't work well with heat pumps. Heat pumps lose efficiency as the differential increases, so if you try to store heat in a tank, you quickly drop capacity and efficiency.

Versus resistance, which is exactly as efficient at 0°C and 1000°C, and why those storage heaters used to make sense.

(And storage is directly proportional to temperature differential above interior ambient)

[ZeroGravitas]

Home hot water heating in the UK with heat pumps is about 250-300% efficient (slightly lower than the efficiency of home heating but still much better than resistive).

No one is storing 1000C water at home.

It is true that the temperature deltas affects efficiency. You can use the thermocline to draw from the cooler lower portion of the storage tank to push this further. Or less technically, just a bigger tank, though this has some tradeoffs.

In warmer countries they are set up differently can act as free air conditioning by extracting heat from indoor air at the same time as heating water.

[coryrc]

> No one is storing 1000C water at home.

Right, but UK has/had "storage heaters" which were bricks with nichrome wire. They would heat the bricks really hot during cheap electricity times, and use that heat the rest of the day.

EDIT: I misread "ripping out these energy storage devices" as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater

Of course heat pumps for DHW should all have a tank for smoothing demand across several hours.

[leoedin]

Every air-to-water heat pump install will have a hot water tank. So I'm not sure why "don't work well" is the term used.

It is true that heat pumps coefficient of performance drops as the output temperature increases. So you need a proportionally larger hot water tank to store the same amount of energy. So it is fair to say there are tradeoffs. But hot water storage is still a necessary part of most heat pump installs - because peak output of heat pumps tends to be below the heat demand of showers.

[coryrc]

EDIT: I misread "ripping out these energy storage devices" as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storage_heater which are basically bricks with nichrome wire.

You're right, of course heat pump water heaters use tanks to smooth out DHW demand, but that same thing isn't feasible for space heating.

[modo_mario]

Isn't it better to heat the water up to a point (let's say 40 or 50 degrees) and to heat it the rest of the way with resistance heating?

>Versus resistance, which is exactly as efficient at 0°C and 1000°C

It isn't. The difference is smaller than for a heatpump tho obviously.

[coryrc]

1. No, absolutely not. Why would you settle for COP=1 when you can have COP>1?

2. The electrical to heat conversion efficiency is indeed 100% regardless of the temperature of the resistor. And if you're putting out 1000W, then all input losses are also identical. If you put a 1000W light bulb in the middle of your room, or 2 of them but run both at 500W, you'll get EXACTLY the same heat output in your room, but the single bulb is much hotter.

[modo_mario]

1. Are there not scenarios where it drops below 1? The stats for them always seem optimistic scenarios given what i hear from people during winter cold spell in houses that aren't absolutely perfectly insulated. If your water term needs to remain above 70C and it's starts freezing hard outside during winter when that COP starts to matter the most for example.

[coryrc]

If there were, you installed the wrong equipment.

[ZeroGravitas]

Older heat pumps had max temperature limits and did often have resistance heaters to get that last push above 60C. Modern household heat pumps will reach 75C while staying above 100% efficient and can skip the resistance heater.

This is partly due to a change in the refrigerant used.

[modo_mario]

> Modern household heat pumps will reach 75C while staying above 100% efficient and can skip the resistance heater.

Is this adequately maintained even as temperatures drop? I was recently considering getting a heatpump in addition to my gas installation but I assume I need to go for more than a bit better than resistance heating during winter for that investment to make sense.

[leoedin]

> It isn't. The difference is smaller than for a heatpump tho obviously.

Where does the energy go then?

[modo_mario]

It mostly leaks and such. Limescale buildup is also a small issue for their efficiency and more so if they run hot. If we reduced it to a simple input output calculation that would never be an issue except for some speed of transfer.