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Comment by readthenotes1

5 months ago

Isn't that similar to how neighborhood heat pumps work?

https://www.araner.com/blog/district-heating-in-sweden-effic...

7 comments

readthenotes1

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hunterpayne  5 months ago

Heat pumps require a specific temperate differential to work. So they work in zones with are a bit hotter or colder than you would like and so require moderate amounts of heating or cooling. They don't work in temperate zones nor in very hot or cold places. So Santa Fe or Minneapolis for example they work but Mexico City or San Francisco they don't. If you are in a place where they work and that isn't too dense or has earthquakes, go for it. If not, don't. There are businesses that will help you understand when they do and don't make sense. Those businesses don't sell heat pumps though (the businesses that sell things will almost always tell you it works, even when it doesn't, for example PV in the UK doesn't work).

  • sokoloff  5 months ago

    I’ve never heard a claim that heat pumps won’t work well in a climate like San Francisco and, from looking at the annual temperature patterns, it seems like both air source and ground source heat pumps should work extremely well as they do in the “shoulder seasons” here in New England.

  • rcxdude  5 months ago

    Heat pumps have gotten a lot better, you need a pretty extreme climate for them to start to struggle, even the air-source ones.

    (And PV works well enough in the UK for it to be a no-brainer to put on residentials roofs, which is on the whole the most expensive way to deploy it. Though this is in large part due to the way that it competes with retail prices and not wholesale prices)

  • laurencerowe  5 months ago

    This is nonsense, heat pumps are more efficient at smaller temperature differentials. I suspect we don't see them much in San Francisco only because there is so little need for heating and cooling the potential savings are smaller.