Heat pumps are efficient and eco-friendly. So why are they so rarely used?

Heatpumps are great! Having a coefficient of performance equal to 4 (1kW electricity to 4kW heat) is possible today!<p>Unfortunately it is not as easy as just switching your gas heating with a heatpump. For one, heatpumps have a lower flow temperature, therefore a good insulation of the house is required. Also big radiators such as floor or wall are preferred.<p>Moving to heatpumps might start an entire house renovation which comes at a cost.

Technology connections did a great video on heat pumps.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;7J52mDjZzto" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;7J52mDjZzto</a><p>One of the best things is that is an air conditioner you run in reverse to get some heating.

&quot;One of the most common complaints about heat pumps, experts said, was that they would stop providing heat on very cold days. But advances to heat pump compressors have made them more efficient, cost effective and successful at providing heat in colder temperatures.&quot;<p>Yeah this is a key issue that shouldn&#x27;t be glossed over like this. We need more data about how much they have improved.

I think the issue in the UK is that the majority of houses are simply not good isolated. A heat pump needs to pump into an isolated house or it will not be very efficient.

Speaking from the UK. We had 2 days of hot weather. A reasonably insulated house or one with decent thermal mass is fine. Heat pumps are more use here for the heat, we don&#x27;t have extreme winters, so the basic premise of the article from a UK perspective is wrong. Plus the name &#x27;heat pump&#x27; doesn&#x27;t indicate a direction anyway.

In New Zealand heatpumps are the norm, and have been for 20+ years. But culturally wood burning is another norm. So we have this werid combination of wood burners in the same room as high powered heatpumps because people want the feel of radiated heating.

I wonder when the heat pump technology will be so widespread&#x2F;standardized that I can for example buy a refrigerator and connect a couple pipes so that instead of releasing heat into the kitchen I can transfer that heat to warm water for a shower. Also, using washing machines flushing water to fill a bigger tanks later accessed by the house&#x27;s toilet tanks should be standard procedure.

&gt; <i>the British government has provided grant money to a little-known solution: heat pumps.</i><p>What the hell? Heat pumps are not little known. An air conditioner is a heat pump. It&#x27;s hard to take the article seriously when they gloss over this basic fundamental point.<p>I can tell they&#x27;re trying to advocate for something, perhaps using the heat wave as a push to install larger bidirectional heat pumps that will make Europe less dependent on natural gas come winter? Still the whole framing just comes across as odd... like &quot;Local area man stays cool with this one simple trick&quot; [install an air conditioner]

They are used a lot in hot climates but from what I heard, they aren&#x27;t very efficient in cold climates.