Heat Pumps: the Future of Home Heating

> I'm wondering if there's any low-energy or green solutions to this. The answer is "it depends". How your flat is designed will have an impact on what you can do. But if you are able and willing to do some house work, there is a lot you can have control over. At the end of the day, it's all about how you can control humidity, the flow of hot and cold air and humidity. At your disposal, tools such as conductive materials, insulating materials, etc. Google "passive house" to see the concept and what these things use. With that said. Heat pumps are incredibly efficient, and replacing your heater with a reversible air conditioner which you can then run in both summer and winter will do far more for your overall energy efficiency than anything else you can do. Most of your energy consumption comes from winter-time heating. Start here for a good introduction to heat pumps and how they are so efficient: [this video]

They are great if you are looking to use electricity to heat because they are 3 to 4 times more efficient than resistive heaters. It depends on the price of electricity and other heat sources in your area. If you live in the north where temperatures go below -15 Celsius, air-to-air units aren't as great because they lose efficiency as it gets colder outside. My heat pump has a COP of 3, meaning it can generate as much heat as a resistive heater using 1/3 the electricity, but it shuts off at -15 Celsius because below that point it is less efficient than resistive heat. If your heat pump has a COP of 4, you might get to -25 Celsius before it is less efficient than a resistive heater. Better, but more costly, heat pumps use in-ground water, either from a pair of wells, or from a deep pond that won't freeze to the bottom, or from many meters of water pipe buried deep enough beneath your lawn to not freeze in the winter. Because of the depth, they always have access to the earth's heat so they don't lose efficiency in the winter. The Technology Connections YT channel has a couple of good videos about how them: 1. [this video] 2. [link]

This guy[0] has done quite a few deep dives on heat pumps that cover a lot of the myths (eg they don't work in the cold). It's pretty interesting material if you're thinking about a heat pump. It has always seemed silly to me that we spend money to keep a box of cold (fridge) inside the houses we're spending money to heat in the winter and spend a lot of money to heat up dryers, stoves, etc in the houses we're spending money to cool in the summer. Watching these videos made me think there's a real possibility at some point to have something like a whole home heat pump that just moves heat from where it is to where you want it and in the process reduces the need for systems working against each other to heat/cool specific parts of the house. I understand there's something in commercial settings that has this capability but I'm blanking on the name. 0: [this video] 1: [link]

The first answer tells you why you are wrong. Heat pump. It's a silly question trolling for the obvious first year engineering/high school answer, heat pump. In practice how heat pumps work in the artic circle might be interesting. But in practice light bulb in the article are probably working to government rules for the entire country. Or practical limitations like exposure to the cold or transport costs or what's getting mass produced in society. Post internet heat pumps have become quieter and far less in cost that's why they are popular now (and trolled for karma) Technology Connections talked about them in an ok vid - [this video]