Big disclaimer - I work for a heat pump company (Quatt.io).<p>I suspect that in Europe, there could be a real opening for heat pumps when people want to install aircon - which more and more people do. Many air conditioners (mini and multi-split air to air units) are also heaters, and when I lived in Ireland in a well-insulated new build house we simply used the aircon as our only heater, and it worked well.<p>Unfortunately, much of Europe uses radiators, and you can't really pump cold water around the house to cool it due to condensation, but even here I think there could be an opportunity with add-on aircons that use the exterior heat pump to vent heat - <a href="https://www.quatt.io/quatt-chill" rel="nofollow">https://www.quatt.io/quatt-chill</a> for instance.<p>Anyway, I know the article is about the US, but I thought some perspective might be interesting.
I have some of (possibly the?) cheapest residential electric power in the US, at 5.58 cents per kWh all-in cost here in Wyoming, 90%+ hydropower.<p>Absolute lowest cold here each year will be around -30 F / -34 C (there will be several nights in the winter where it gets below -20 F / -29 C), and absolute hottest it will ever be around 85 F / 29 C, but average annual temperature is about 35 F / 2 C. It can snow any month of the year here, with snow on the ground usually between November and mid May.<p>My house was built in 1968 and I have primarily resistive baseboard heating, with a large Mitsubishi mini-split installed by my home's previous owner mainly for air conditioning purposes in major rooms for a couple of weeks in the summer. I live at 6500 ft / 2000 m altitude, so even on the hottest summer days once the sun goes down it gets quite chilly and can get close to freezing, so it's really just for a few hours in the afternoon for a/c purposes. I otherwise use the heat pumps as baseline heat in the winter.<p>I'd like to put trust in heat pumps more because they are obviously more efficient (also as seen by my already low power bill), but lack of heat on certain days in the winter has serious implications here for home integrity, and while this might just be this one Mitsubishi model (though they are less than 5 years old), I haven't been left with a good opinion of heat pump design and repairability in general and am not tempted much to explore heat pumps further.<p>The heat pumps are rated to work down to -5 F / -21 C in the manual, but in practicality it's more like 15 F / -9 C otherwise they just spend a large part of their time defrosting. The models I have don't seem well engineered for reliability or maintenance either, there are important fuses hard-soldered to the main board that are not individually replaceable, and true enough in the middle of winter my HVAC technician and I had to bypass the blown fuses with an automotive fuse we had (same stats) attached with alligator clips, as it would take weeks or months to obtain a new $1500 (!) main circuit board from who knows where. On the other hand, resistive heating usually just works assuming you have power, and I also have two fireplaces as emergency backup if there's no power (though power lines are almost all buried here due to snow/ice anyways).<p>I really would like to see more emphasis on reliability and repairability rather than, like, SEER, HSPF, or COP ratings or whatever.
I was hoping the Inflation Reduction Act Home Electrification and Application Rebate (HEAR) for buying heat pumps would help, but the money, allocated to the States, seems to be gathering dust where I live.
The HVAC trade at least in the US is interesting. I have dealt with quite a few companies, and collected a range of quotes with wild variations in pricing for essentially what is the same exact system. In my anecdotal experience the residential HVAC industry is full of scams. Maybe it's just poorly run companies that need to break even is the reason for such gouging. A quote of 12,000 USD for a 2 head minisplit system installed from one company, was 5,800 USD from another. And a Mr. Cool DIY kit could be shipped to my house for 3,000.<p>I know there is some skill in braising the lines and evacuating the system, weighing the charge, etc... and the industry is gatekept with certifications, permitting and environmental compliance, but I image most any handyperson can handle an install. Especially with the pre-charged lines that are available in many kits.<p>I've had about a dozen residential HVAC technicians do some kind of work over the past year, due to a warranty claim and they had to visit 6 times, never could troubleshoot the problem, and in the end just installed an entirely new outdoor unit. The first technician claimed the problem was a 'dirty blower' and quoted $1,200 for them to come clean the blower fins on my condensers. The second one said it was definitely a board. Then it was the board on the other end. Then it was the same board they already replaced once. They were all wrong. But their troubleshooting was done over the phone with the manufacturer. I was civil and patient with them, but it was hard to watch. I think the residential HVAC industry is the biggest problem with US adoption... The rest of the world seems to be handling it fine.
I found anecdotally that it was fairly difficult to get a heat pump when I replaced my air conditioner last year. Several reputable and carefully vetted companies suggested that retrofitiing it into a midwestern house to replace an air conditioning, because it only worked efficiently on a certain temperature band. I’m not sure why they do it, but replacing my existing system with a heat pump was heavily discouraged by the vendors in my area. We have boiler radiant heat in our older home not forced air.
On this topic I've been wondering why are the air-air heatpumps significantly cheaper than air-water units?<p>As far as I could tell, there's not that much of a difference (different heat-exchanger, circulation pump instead of a fan, maybe a three way valve for hot water)- but I have hard time seeing how they contribute to the price difference of several thousand EUR.<p>There are also quite a few conversion projects (where an air-air unit is converted to air-water), so I'm wondering if it really comes down to just higher demand for air-air?
I think we'll see a lot larger scale adoption of heat pumps once they are re-engineered for dealing with 15F average winters (where heat pumps break even vs furnaces) that also go down to -25F for a week (where heat pumps use more energy or fail). But it's good to see small progress in using them in places where it only gets cold rarely and briefly.<p>Not being able to handle the full range of average and peak(valley?) temps means a lot more complexity that prevents adoption.