I’m pretty sure heat pumps are still more efficient than heat generators when it comes to residential climate control, but the levels of efficiency he’s measuring in this demonstration are not typical the efficiency in real-world conditions.
Efficiency definitely drops as the temp difference increases, but at least with modern heatpumps, they generally can remain 150 to 200% efficient (compared to resistive heat) all the way down to -22f (-30c), based on this study which has a short summary available over on Wired.
For most of the world, it either doesn’t get down to those temperatures at all, or only does so for a relatively brief time. So for the majority, the sort of efficiency he’s demonstrating in the video is fairly accurate to what people who can afford the top-teir models from Mitsubishi would be able to achieve most of the year.
For less expensive heatpumps that aren’t rated to be as efficient at colder temps, they should still be able to achieve roughly 300% efficiency when averaged over an entire season (at least, basing that off of Technology Connections heat pump video and his location).
Thanks for doing the legwork on this - I was just going off my basic understanding of entropy and it’s nice to see examples of real-world experience and numbers.
I can nerd out about appliance efficiencies for days! (help), always glad to help spread the good word of that sweet, sweet COP (not to be confused with the bad type of Cop).
Tech Ingredients did a pretty great video about easily improving efficiency of solar panels by adding an enclosure and some box fans to the back of them, which seemed to have no real downsides, so I’m quite intrigued to see how he’ll drastically improve the efficiency of that air conditioner in his next video.
Efficiency definitely drops as the temp difference increases, but at least with modern heatpumps, they generally can remain 150 to 200% efficient (compared to resistive heat) all the way down to -22f (-30c), based on this study which has a short summary available over on Wired.
For most of the world, it either doesn’t get down to those temperatures at all, or only does so for a relatively brief time. So for the majority, the sort of efficiency he’s demonstrating in the video is fairly accurate to what people who can afford the top-teir models from Mitsubishi would be able to achieve most of the year.
For less expensive heatpumps that aren’t rated to be as efficient at colder temps, they should still be able to achieve roughly 300% efficiency when averaged over an entire season (at least, basing that off of Technology Connections heat pump video and his location).
Thanks for doing the legwork on this - I was just going off my basic understanding of entropy and it’s nice to see examples of real-world experience and numbers.
I can nerd out about appliance efficiencies for days! (help), always glad to help spread the good word of that sweet, sweet COP (not to be confused with the bad type of Cop).
Tech Ingredients did a pretty great video about easily improving efficiency of solar panels by adding an enclosure and some box fans to the back of them, which seemed to have no real downsides, so I’m quite intrigued to see how he’ll drastically improve the efficiency of that air conditioner in his next video.