Heat pump sales rise across Europe

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/05/04/heat-pump-sales-rise-17-across-europe-in-q1-as-energy-prices-surge/

by doener • 3 months ago

273 213 3 months ago

pv-magazine.com

wxw• 3 months ago

That's a neat proxy measurement to track.

infecto2• 3 months ago

I am probably simply confused but what’s the proxy measurement?

hervature• 3 months ago

Heat pump sales for energy costs.

comrade1234• 3 months ago

I assume a product related directly to another product. So when energy prices start to go up, invest in heat pump companies.

NewJazz• 3 months ago

More efficient hvac tech is a partial substitute for fuel.

jakozaur• 3 months ago

A heat pump could win as the best HVAC technology, though a better drilling for ground-sourced ones. Just a shallow drilling (up to 100m) that works in retrofit mode, such as drilling from the basement, would be a great upgrade:

- No outdoor unit that looks awful in many settings

- works well, even in the coldest winter, without a spike in electricity usage, COP 5

- very reliable with long durability

- super quiet, no ambient noise

- 20% more efficient

Currently, drilling is very disruptive in retrofits, but there is progress in compact techniques that might change the equation.

Disclaimer: angel investor in https://www.flexdrill.at/

mono442• 3 months ago

It's usually so much more expensive than an air source heat pump that makes it completely not worth it.

cenamus2• 3 months ago

Yeah, recently saw some numbers for air-to-air vs air-to-groundwater, and it break even after more than 25 years, with more than twice the initial cost

jltsiren• 3 months ago

That depends on climate. The longer and colder your winters are, the more you benefit from the reliable efficiency of a ground source. Ground source heat pumps have been the most common choice for heating new single-family homes in Finland for the last ~20 years.

dzhiurgis7• 3 months ago

Bingo. Literally abandonded in Lithuania, air to air is so much cheaper. Some builders even ditch hp altogheter - basic electric underfloor heating + solar panels is so much cheaper.

I'm in New Zealand and my bedroom heater is $20 electric + $20 smart plug + $10 temperature sensor. Winter bill is ~$100 NZD. It would take ~20 years for heat pump to recover install cost alone.

twothamendment• 3 months ago

Yeah, not worth it in most cases, but when things line up, it is the best.

I've built 3 houses and got a bid on ground source heat for each one. I finally pulled the trigger on the 3rd house because we:

1) Moved where it was quite a bit colder, -20F for a week is common. 2) We have enough land to trench only 6'/2m deep to bury the loops instead of drilling like we would have needed to do on the first 2 houses. 3) There was a tax credit on it 4) No equipment exposed outside

Absolutely love it and it will make it difficult to move away when we want to down size b/c we'll pay more in utilities for half the space.

We also have some air-source on an addition I built, I'd use it anywhere that was slightly warmer than where I'm at.

dunk0102• 3 months ago

Air-source heat pumps give their worst performance when you need heat the most. Ground source doesn't vary year-round.

konschubert2• 3 months ago

Friends in south Sweden and they got a hole drilled in the front yard like it’s the most normal thing. Is it there?

joe_mamba8• 3 months ago

The challenge is for people who live in apartment buildings in urban environment where you have no front yard you can drill into at your leisure.

raverbashing• 3 months ago

Drilling only works if you have access to a garden where to drill. Any kind of apartment has to use the outdoor unit

gpm2• 3 months ago

If you're an individual with an apartment you don't have the choice to drill.

If you're building the apartment building you have the choice to drill for the entire building, and the number of units that benefit mean this is much more cost efficient than with single family homes.

yxhuvud• 3 months ago

In sensible countries each housing unit have a central heating solution, regardless of where the heat comes from.

double0jimb04• 3 months ago

Ground source heat pump owner here in the US. The original system was installed in 2007, and the loop field was designed to "best knowledge at the time". Well in the 20 years since then, NREL changed guidance on how far apart and how deep loops need to be installed. Rightly so, because our circa-2007 is "short looped", it's not sufficient for the house loads, but there is nothing we do about it other than putting on more expensive pumps, more expensive antifreeze and live with heat pump compressors dying pre-maturely because they are working at their design limits. All this makes it as expensive as traditional system (and if we tried to go net-zero with solar, the amount of solar required (because it runs so inefficiently) is larger than our roof area.

So I'm looking at a backup gas boiler to take load of the heatpump/ground loop (house has radiant heat).

And they are not quiet. 5-Ton water to water compressors are not quiet.

And the control system (HDX) and amount of expertise required to keep the thing running is a major barrier to getting low cost maintenance.

Maybe a 2026-designed system will work better and actually live up to the hype you talk about, but there are decades of poorly designed and discarded ground loop heat pumps that have "poisoned the well" if you will.

hvb2• 3 months ago

Out of curiosity, has the demand stayed the same? I'm asking because you see the same with electricity grids, designed in a different time with much lower demand.

Sorry to hear this, it seems like a great system to me but you have to have the capacity right. I'm planning on getting one in the next year but the drilling will be more than we need and we opt for no glycol (yet) as that also gives us headroom

adonovan• 3 months ago

Does the ground source heat up (or cool down) over time, making it less effective? The deep ground is very well insulated, which is why after a century of operation the London Underground is 10 degrees warmer. I wonder whether GSHP users need to balance their load by (say) consuming more heating than they actually need in winter so that summer cooling remains effective.

frevib• 3 months ago

Drilling alone is €10.000. The whole installation of a air/water heat pump is €10.000. Mostly not worth it.

wattso3• 3 months ago

To jakozaur’s point, there’s plenty of reasons drilling can get cheaper and there’s at least one other company working on it [1]—would love to hear about others! I’m a minimally informed amateur but my intuition is that the way it’s typically done (multiple inch borehole, U-tube geometry) is fairly suboptimal since the diameter is a lot wider than you need it to be just for hydrodynamic resistance and you get losses from the outgoing liquid cooling the incoming liquid. Dropping the diameter should make drilling a lot easier—-you can sink a 5/8”x12’ ground rod with hand tools in the right soil! (you’d still have to figure out how to make the holes meet up but I imagine there are ways of doing this).

[1] https://www.borobotics.ch/

theshrike79• 3 months ago

A winter's worth of heating oil is easily 1000€ With the current prices it's nearing 2k€.

Very much worth it.

stephencanon• 3 months ago

We have a ground-source heat pump for our ADU. We did it because we were curious about just how efficient we could make the house, but I don't expect that it will ever break even financially vs a modern air-source system with resistive backup in our climate (northern New England, typically very few –20˚ nights, –10˚-0˚ more common with daytime highs in the single digits).

It works great, but it's hard to see a way to it making sense for most folks here.

puzzlingcaptcha• 3 months ago

You might still get the most out of it when the AMOC collapses.

gandreani• 3 months ago

Drilling in the basement seems like a pain to remove the dirt you dig up. Saving yourself a couple of feet cannot be worth the access troubles

stephen_g• 3 months ago

The 'outdoor unit that looks awful' is an interesting quirk especially with US equipment - most Japanese and European residential units actually look fine, I'm not sure why American ones have tended to look especially ugly.

I notice this with electrical stuff too - things like switchboards etc. in residential and light commercial installations we have quite neat stuff that's usually quite streamlined and in light white/grey/cream colours, whereas the switchboards and conduits and thigns I see in videos of US home installations look like grey chunky metal stuff that you'd only see in heavy industrial sites here!

coryrc2• 3 months ago

Buying the panel box which is unchanged from the last 70 years and costs $50 less than a nicer new style, but also our houses are big enough the panel is nearly always in a mechanical room so who cares what it looks like.

quickthrowman6• 3 months ago

The IEEE and ASTM decided that ANSI 61 Gray is the color that all low-voltage (under 1000V) switchgear should be painted.

https://blog.se.com/datacenter/2013/04/09/two-shades-of-grey...

Electrical panels are installed in mechanical/electrical rooms or outdoors, there’s zero point in having a cream colored panelboard cover or enclosure. The coating is to protect the metal, not for aesthetics.

Colored conduit is available, but it’s more expensive and specifically used for different low-voltage (under 50V) control wiring, like red for fire alarm wiring, blue for BAS wiring, and so on.

fennecfoxy2• 3 months ago

Borehole or the pipe grid they stick under your backyard/garden (if you have a decent sized one) end up way more expensive.

But tbf, AI and robotics are rolling along pretty well. I'm surprised there's not a company that's just build the "this robot installs your borehole/underground pipes in 3 hours by itself" robot.

ck2• 3 months ago

imagine the President of the US and his "braintrust" accidentally making the world much more green and efficient by forcing a radical reduction in oil dependency

while they purposely end climate-change research including destroying billions in observation satellites by deorbiting them

the history written about this decade is going to be wild, if we survive it

jochem9• 3 months ago

EU severely reducing its fossil fuel imports from Russia in 2022 cut down natural gas usage by 17% and overall energy consumption by 3%. So yeah, increased price due to scarcity help a lot in shifting around the energy mix.

It's a bit shit that hits poorer people relatively more than richer people. Governments can reduce this impact by subsidizing sustainable alternatives (like heat pumps). It's still leading to inequality (unless you give more subsidy to the poor), but at least overall people will hopefully benefit.

usrnm• 3 months ago

overall energy consumption by 3%

Is it possible that some non-trivial part of that number comes not from increased efficiency but from losing some energy-dependent industries?

ejoebstl3• 3 months ago

In DACH, there's not really an alternative for many homes. Heat pumps are by now cheaper, more efficient, more versatile and definitely greener than other means of heating.

If you get one, just make sure to get the dimensioning right. They are WAY more complex to plan, install and maintain than traditional heating.

pimlottc• 3 months ago

DACH, an acronym for Deutschland (Germany), Austria, Confoederatio Helvetica (Swiss Confederation), the three major German-speaking countries

I was not familiar with this term before, had to look it up.

ndr423• 3 months ago

A great acronym as it translates to roof (Dach in german).

jmercouris• 3 months ago

It doesn’t even make sense though, shouldn’t it be DÖCH?

0dayz• 3 months ago

I guess GAS is a bit awkward when talking about green energy (even if somehow natural gas is considered "green") and sustainable heating source.

joe_mamba8• 3 months ago

In DACH, there's not really an alternative for many homes.

And yet in Austria, most apartment buildings in big cities are still heated by burning heating oil, gas or even firewood. Worst of the worst for air quality.

Walk through Graz in sub-zero winters and it's like you're breathing in a barbeque bonfire. Even your clothes smell like soot when you get home if you've been out too long. Which is bizarre to me, considering how much posturing and chest thumping Austria is doing about how green and anti-Nuclear they are yet they love burring wood and oil. Male this make sense please.

Sure, rich people in the bacon belt living in single family homes in the suburbs or rural areas, have heat pumps, solar panels on the roof and a Tesla in the garage, but that's a different story compared to those living in the city stuck in the fossil fuel stone age, where they have no choice over their rented building's heating method.

How do you convert the city's apartment buildings to heat pumps? Is it a technological limitation? Money limitation? Bureaucratic and political limitation? All of the above?

gpm2• 3 months ago

Beurocratic and political limitation.

Firewood and heating oil isn't cheaper, it merely has lower upfront cost in exchange for a higher total cost. An efficient governance system (whether that's capitalism and banks with loans or renting out the hearpumps or a centrally planned replacement program or anything else) would figure out the financing and save the system money by updating.

Technology can make the incentives even larger. Excess money can make it easier for the governance system to reach the solution. But it's at the point where without any improvement to either an ideal system would figure out how to make the switch happen.

ejoebstl3• 3 months ago

It's incentives. Landlord pays for the installation and decides, tenant for the operation/heating.

Best way to get around this is making heat pumps more accessible (easy to get, financing options), as well as legislation (banning gas/oil heating).

pojzon6• 3 months ago

1) To make it really green and viable -> you „need” solar installation

2) To have solar installation you have to abaid to painfully stupid legistlation

3) In winter pump is as green as the diesel generator that produces energy for it to run

jmull• 3 months ago

Sounds like you're in a specific situation.

I wonder what it is and whether it applies to a lot of other people?

klinch• 3 months ago

I'm sure you already made up your mind about heat pumps and that I can't convince you otherwise. But for other readers, let me add some thoughts to your points.

1) well, there's a grid. So as long as someone somewhere on your continent produces green energy it is viable and green.

2) arguable. Depends on your legislation.

3) Again, there's a grid. And even considering the worst case of no renewable sources at all: A heat pump (which uses 1kWh of electricity to provide 3-6kWh of heat) powered by a diesel generator is still more efficient than burning the diesel directly. Now add efficient combined cycle power plants, wind, biomass, hydro and battery storage systems...

leononame• 3 months ago

That's not true. A heat pump produces 1.5 to kwH of heat per kwH of electricity consumed, so it's already much more efficient than a diesel generator.

Even in winter, electricity from the grid is greener than burning diesel. I didn't find specific numbers for winter, but wind is about 30% of Germany's (just picking the biggest country out of DACH to support the point, not trying to come up with exact numbers) electricity production year-round, and wind doesn't tank in winter like solar does.

So, in short. Installing a heat pump and just taking electricity from the grid is still better for the environment. Of course, having your own solar is great if you live in a house, but you don't need it.

CivBase• 3 months ago

They are WAY more complex to plan, install and maintain than traditional heating.

I'm curious what about them would be more difficult to plan, install, and maintain. Obviously there are many things to consider when retrofitting a building with a central gas furnace... but otherwise why would they be much more complicated than an air conditioning system?

crazygringo• 3 months ago

I've had a lot of mold problems with mine. Because they have to be strong enough to handle the coldest winter days, which makes them way overpowered when running air-conditioning in the summer, which means that when you run them in energy efficient mode, they are actively cooling only a small fraction of the time and all of the condensed water just sits there growing mold all day long. It also leaves the home far more humid than usual because it's not removing nearly as much humidity from the air as a less powerful unit running constantly would.

This isn't a problem with regular air-conditioning that is provisioned correctly for the size of your home, because it winds up actively running a lot of the time so the water is draining as new humidity condenses.

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

[heatpump waterheaters are] WAY more complex to plan, install

Only if you place them within <700sqft (for a typical indoor residential location). Only in areas smaller will you need to duct them, somewhat similarly to:

<https://i.imgur.com/4wCez9u.jpeg> this specific design draws from both bath and bedroom [dual 6" inlets], exhausts into kitchen [single 8" outlet] | utility closet is only 5ft x 4ft (~20sqft)

As an added bonus it'll passively dehumidify/cool whereever it drafts to/from.

ndr423• 3 months ago

[it] become[s] cheaper than gas heating within 11 to 14 years

This a no-brainer for buildings with high energy use. But we looked into getting a heat pump last year but it doesn't pan out because our house (15 years old) has a very low energy use and we would not recover the costs (about 20K euros after subsidies) for 20+ years.

teachrdan• 3 months ago

With any luck, oil prices will rise enough to make that conversion worthwhile!

bluGill4• 3 months ago

Your existing system will not last forever. When you have to spend money anyway that changes things.

ndr423• 3 months ago

Yes. It also depends on the age of your gas heating as in Germany you get 20% subsidies when your system is 20 years or older, unfortunately this subsidy decreases 3 percentage points every year so when we are due it will be about 5%.

mikestorrent• 3 months ago

It did for me. 40-year old furnace was starting to sound bad and subsidies locally were excellent; I now have a 3-ton heat pump and my house is fine in winter or summer for far less money than gas. It might have been harder to justify without subsidy, but we do need people to make this shift and a lot of homeowners will not consider things with 20-year ROI.

monegator• 3 months ago

in my case: 3k at most for a replacement gas furnace, and heat pumps would require new wirings as well. Many things would need to break at once to make it worth considering when you have older homes

New homes with mandated PV and battery, that's another story.

toasty2283• 3 months ago

[it] become[s] cheaper than gas heating within 11 to 14 years

They also always stop the savings estimates right before the expected lifespan of the heatpump, at which point you have to buy a new unit which destroys the actual savings

ZeroGravitas2• 3 months ago

At the moment, heat pumps are mostly retrofitted to homes not designed for heat pumps, which adds to the cost. You can't compare that work to a future heat pump swap which is a much smaller job.

seydor2• 3 months ago

in the south, a lot of people opt for split Airconditioning instead of heatpumps. Cheaper and much easier to install/maintain

shellfishgene2• 3 months ago

That's the same thing, no?

masklinn4• 3 months ago

In the same way that an electric motor and a generator are the same thing.

gosub100• 3 months ago

I think they mean "air exchange" (split AC) vs "heat pump" (dig into the earth to draw/eliminate heat). Not saying that's the right definition though. I am guessing at an auto-correction of what they meant.

crote3• 3 months ago

It needs some extra valves to switch the flow of coolant around, but yes.

dzhiurgis7• 3 months ago

Some refrigerants are more suited for cold climates, some of which require very high pressures.

seydor2• 3 months ago

split a/c (heat/cooling) is dirt cheap compared to the cost of heat pump installation

thinkcontext2• 3 months ago

Do the places you are referring to not require heat? If so I don't see why having a separate heating and cooling system would be cheaper to maintain than a single system. Come to think of it I don't see why a heatpump would be more expensive to maintain than split AC. I guess there is some extra circuitry to make sure it doesn't ice up in the winter and maybe backup resistance heating builtin.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 3 months ago

Most split A/Cs can also heat.

"Heat pump" can mean many things, from essentially "split A/C" (air-air heat pumps) to ground-source heat pumps, using floor heating for the output, warm water production from the heat pump, etc.

dyauspitr• 3 months ago

Split units are heat pumps right? They heat and cool. What’s the catch? They don’t have a very high range of operation?

ericd6• 3 months ago

Why would it be easier to install/maintain? It's basically the same machine.

jagermo• 3 months ago

it makes sense combined with solar, I think. Hot weather usually means a lot of solar energy you can ideally use to cool your home. I still wonder why there isn't as much PV activity in Greece. I see solar water heaters on nearly every roof, but not solar energy.

quickthrowman6• 3 months ago

A heat pump is a condensing unit with a reversing valve. Or, a condensing unit is a heat pump without a reversing valve.

Carrier article: https://www.carrier.com/residential/en/us/products/heat-pump...

pandora-health• 3 months ago

I run daily comparisons between a gas boiler and a heat pump in the UK. Given that gas is cheaper than electricity, a well-installed and well-controlled gas boiler can still be cheaper to run. Heat pump running costs can drop drastically when combined with solar and battery storage, but that requires a much greater upfront investment.

https://x.com/AO7186252340513

https://bsky.app/profile/showpiece.bsky.social

PanMan• 3 months ago

I'm no expert on UK energy pricing, but the main difference between a boiler and heat pump is that heatpump can be, eg "500% efficient" - a COP of 5. So even if a KWH of energy is 2x the price for electricity a heatpump often comes out ahead.

double0jimb04• 3 months ago

COP of 5 when running in perfect conditions (load, EWT temps, variable stage compressor, infinite heat sink/source). You might want to research how realistic constant COP of 5 really is.

zipy124• 3 months ago

Electricity in the UK is often 3x or more expensive than electricity for the same energy content. We have some of the most expensive electricity in the world.

IshKebab• 3 months ago

Yeah a COP of 5 is very good. 3 is much more typical.

And OP is right. When I've looked into it you aren't going to save any money going to a heat pump; in fact it will likely increase costs slightly.

So it really only makes sense to do when you need a new boiler. If you don't, it makes way more sense to get solar because that's also good for the environment but actually saves you money.

foo42• 3 months ago

Seems like a decent place to point out that there are good savings to be had on heat pump running costs with a smart controller designed for heat pumps which can learn the dynamics of your building then preheat when tariffs are low or outdoor conditions are favourable.

I work for homely energy which has such an offering, but fwiw I genuinely think it's a good product. It's been studied by Salford uni in their energy house lab, so if anyone's interested maybe dig into that for a more neutral verdict.

ZeroGravitas2• 3 months ago

On one of your graphs you have the CO2 per day of gas and heat pumps but the two use different scales on the same graph.

Another graph in a footnote table shows the heat pump is delivering 6x the heat of the gas boiler, which feels like it should be mentioned in the text when you say it costs 3x more.

And actually that makes the previously mentioned CO2 graph even more misleading.

pjc503• 3 months ago

I've ended up with a "hybrid" system, which (claims to) automatically choose which of gas and electricity is cheaper on a minute by minute based on COP derived from temperature. I have solar panels but not a battery. On net, it's ended up as roughly the same price as the old gas boiler. Better CO2 emissions but not that much cheaper.

It's not automatically linked to rate updates. There's probably a way of automating that for Vaillant systems?

(Shoutout to ProllyInfamous, who's been making the great point that in many climates HW systems that also cool and dehumidify are a great benefit. Not here at 56N, though)

spiffotron• 3 months ago

I have always wondered if a heat pump is even worth it if you don't have solar, all well and good the government giving massive discounts on heatpumps but not for a combined heatpump/solar install which would probably actually push most people towards it

noplacelikehome• 3 months ago

IMO we don’t place enough emphasis on the gain in comfort: my home is a solid 21°C at all times since we replaced our aging gas boiler. The larger radiators, lower water temperature and “always on” operation have removed the temperature swings.

Heat loss in our home is high (single skin brick), but our bills over the course of the year are on a par with having the heating running for 12h a day. They are substantially more expensive during the winter when temperatures drop below 5°C, but that isn’t noticeable when averaging the bills out over the year.

Got to do our roof in the next couple of years so solar is a natural next step for us.

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

For anybody in TVA's electricity networks (mostly: Tennessee): they offer an annual promotion to single-family homeowners only to purchase an $1800 AO heatpump waterheater for only $250.

Maths: 85% discount on fancy new waterheater, which also dehumidifies and cools your house (passive result of heatpump).

TVA usually offers this promotion between Thanksgiving and NYE. You can order online from HomeDepot, or walk into a local store [0]. This ends up costing LESS than a new traditional resistive-type heater.

[0] either method: they DO verify SFH (by more than just ZIP code) -- duplexes and contractors not authorized/allowed

----

My own $250.00 "TVA homeowner special" (as a licensed electrician):

<https://i.imgur.com/4wCez9u.jpeg> this specific design draws from both bath and bedroom [dual 6" inlets], exhausts into kitchen [single 8" outlet] | utility closet is only 5ft x 4ft (~20sqft)

Don't forget to use a pressure regulator, expansion tank (coldside, only), & (preferably) a sediment filter. Whatever you do: do NOT use a water softener before the tank.

GenerWork• 3 months ago

I have a heat pump hot water heater, and it's been awesome. It's ROI has definitely improved with all the energy price spikes. It's located in my garage (I live in Florida) so there's no shortage of hot air for it to use.

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

Same — I maintain four (one RHEEM and three AO's).

The AO is a much cleaner/simpler/nicer install. The Rheem stupidly requires duct adapters (for small-space, <700sqft "closet" installations). AO won't last as long, but at $250 who cares?!

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

>Florida>> "no shortage of hot air"

hot HUMID air – which heatpumps love!

Draw your inlet from [at least one] humid bathroom source, if you can. Always use insulated ducting to lessen local condensation.

----

I always smile knowing that using hot water doesn't cost any more than cold, at least when the AC would otherwise be cooling (offset).

gucci-on-fleek2• 3 months ago

Whatever you do: do NOT use a water softener before the tank.

I'm curious why not? I can't immediately think of a reason why that would be bad, but I admittedly know hardly anything about plumbing.

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

Corrosion will destroy the tank's fittings/liner. Quickly.

So quickly, in fact, that it is mentioned multiple times in the installation manual to not do lots of things (no salt-fed softeners in bold/red/all-the-things).

heathrow83829• 3 months ago

water softeners in general are pretty bad. they're not great for your health, they're terrible for your soil. and the benefits to pipes and appliances are marginal at best. i completely shut down my water softener.

ethansinjin• 3 months ago

Important caveat:

You must swap out an old electric unit; switching from gas to electric doesn't qualify.[0]

That’s a bummer; totally would have done this otherwise

[0] https://www.hotwater.com/water-heater-rebates/tva-heat-pump-...

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

Interestingly, TVA/EPB/Lowes [7] never asked for our swaps (I threw all four oldtanks away).

[7] not Home Depot; AOSmith -eligible, not Rheem (can no longer edit abovepost)

----

Didn't know about the gas disqualifier... or the great URL/reference (thanks)!

For future TVA homeowner installers: the website seems to indicate that you MUST use an approved contractor for the rebate — at least December 2025, in EPB/Chatt, this was not required: just had to go to Hixson Lowes and have them look up address and then paid (w/ delivery, not in-stock).

----

Less than a decade ago, I helped install a 38kW [•] tankless/instaHot heater (¡¡¡ that's three 240v40a two-pole circuitbreakers !!!) into a beautiful new home. Homeowner is actively doing his part not maintaining the unit in eventual hopes of justify purchasing a new heatpump waterheater.

Godspeed.

[•] I think technically it's 28kW -rated (there's a consumer-installed limit, w/o boilermaker license), but the circuits support more w/o 80% derating applied

blitzar• 3 months ago

Go to the dump and find an old electric unit, slap it in the corner of your garage?

dzhiurgis7• 3 months ago

which also dehumidifies and cools your house (passive result of heatpump).

Wait do you install these indoors? I get it's pretty hot in Tennessee, but still got some winters? Also isn't noise an issue?

In most of Australia these are installed outdoors. Pool heaters is another one where one could harvest indoor heat.

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

Wait do you install these indoors?

Absolutely. Not just because of the heat, but because large parts of Tennessee are subtropical rainforest (~60+" annual rainfall) so dehumidification is absolutely essential. Why not get free dehumidification from heating water?

Installing an air-exchanging heatpump OUTSIDE?!? is absolutely a massive waste of energy in such a climate (and many more).

isn't noise an issue?

All four of mine are installed in 20sqft utility closets, using insulated ducting to top-wall registers (also, insulated). For my first install, only, I used a solid metal 90° to pierce the wall/inlet (this one is loudest, basically as if the wall weren't there).

Granted, there is definitely a "louder" side (the inlet-sides), but not by much. None of my utility closets are insulated (from surrounding draw rooms), and the entire unit isn't loud enough to justify more than just a layer of sheetrock on both side of the wall/partition.

If this was installed in a garage, it would definitely be known-to-be-on, but not aggressively-so (if you have a workbench outside, e.g.). I don't know the decibel rating, but it's about the same loudness as a stand-alone dehumidifier (same wattage/concept, actually), without walls.

Should you desire the quietest install, insulate the wall (between studs) and use dual 6" insulated ducting, with switchbacks, for both inlet and outlet (that's a lot of hardware). In such an unnecessary installation, it would be whisper-quiet.

gopperl• 3 months ago

I recently had mine installed indoors and regret it.

It's not so much the noise, it's the vibration. The damn thing reverberates through the whole house. In some areas it's quiet, in other areas there's a very disruptive hum.

The worst part though? It has an app which is infuriatingly shit. None of it makes sense, and much of it is silently locked down without informing the user (get used to "Oops! Try again!" messages).

There is no way to shut it up during sleeping hours. I cannot believe there is no option to do so. If I had kids trying to sleep here, I would demand a refund for this reason alone. It is marketed as a super quiet heat pump for indoor installation.

The firmware is cooked. Sometimes the compressor just stays on... I've left it for 36hrs+ and it never turns off. I have to power cycle it.

Fortunately there is an option in the app to use the backup electric heater instead of the heat pump. I'm willing to just use it as a poor electric heater at this point. But... It's broken. It just silently doesn't take effect. Literally as I'm typing this, the room is vibrating due to the compressor while the app reports the electric heater is off.

And now I'm mad again. Fuck Stiebel Eltron.

superxpro122• 3 months ago

In MD, they had rebates for gas-fired instant hot water heaters and tanked heat pump water heaters, but not electric instant water heaters.

Makes no sense...

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

not electric instant water heaters

The reason the electric utility offers this huge rebate is because they are attempting to reduce their peaking load delivery — a tankless instahot peaks exponentially more than a resistive-heater.

quickthrowman6• 3 months ago

An electric tankless water heater uses around four times more energy than a heat pump water heater.

Natural gas water heaters don’t use electricity.

That’s why the utility is offering rebates on them and not tankless (or tank) electric water heaters. The rebates are incentives to reduce peak electrical demand, which a tankless electric water heater does not do.

cassepipe• 3 months ago

I think there's one big issue for massive electrification and insulation of buildings: renting.

As a renter, I have no incentives to invest thousands in my home's betterment because I will have lost those when I am gone. As an owner, I have no incentives to make my apartment/house better because I don't live in it and I don't pay the energy bills.

Something has to be done about that if we want to combat climate change. I know in France it is now forbidden to rent again or sale when the renter leaves if the home's energy grade is F or G (A is best) but it is probably loosely enforced/easy to circumvent. And it is too damn slow ! This is for regulation but maybe there are other levers ?

As a renter I would basically have to wait for energy prices to skyrocket for it to make economic sense. I hate this situation.

tgsovlerkhgsel3• 3 months ago

Another big problem is NIMBYism and ideological opposition to air conditioners.

Installing a heat pump can require (city) permits, permission from your landlord (if renting) or HOA/condo association (if you own a flat in a shared building) which can either be or feel impossible to get.

Some cities have either actually or de facto (through requirements/regulations that are impossible or unaffordable to meet) banned air conditioners, resulting in people buying inefficient monoblock units that can't be used for heating.

Edit: Other regulatory hurdles come from rules about refrigerant handling. Refrigerant must only be handled by experts who are certified in proper handling and recovery (and who, of course, are now in high demand and charging princely prices for their work). This made a lot of sense in the times where 1 kg of refrigerant had 10 tons CO2e in global warming potential, ozone depletion potential or other dangers.

Nowadays, a skilled layperson can probably set up an air conditioner with quick-connect couplings by themselves, but they aren't legally allowed to. These cost something like 500 EUR, contain less than 1 kg of R32 with a GWP of 675, so let's say 500 kg CO2e of harm if it leaks. If you passed a law that landlords cannot prohibit installation, and any electrician that passes a quick online training can install them, you could have them all over the place very quickly.

These could then be used for covering some or all of the heating load in winter, but they'd also alleviate suffering in summer, and that's luxury, and we can't have that (especially as it uses energy to provide the "needless" luxury!)

ericd6• 3 months ago

Well, there are heatpumps made to slot into a window frame (ex: https://www.mideacomfort.us/packaged.html ). The ones I'm familiar with are made for double hung windows, which are more common in the US, though. But might be worth a look?

shellfishgene2• 3 months ago

Germany just enacted a law that makes landlords pay part of the heating bill to change the incentives for upgrading the equipment.

EdwardDiego• 3 months ago

As an owner, I have no incentives to make my apartment/house better because I don't live in it and I don't pay the energy bills.

In a rental market with more supply than demand, having more efficient / cheaper heating is an advantage to attract tenants - but this kind of market in residential housing is typically rare these days.

Which is why governments need to enforce this by regulation, e.g., in my country landlords are required to meet insulation / heating / ventilation standards that often end up with their rental housing being better insulated and heated than the homes that the landlords live in themselves.

https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/healthy-homes/

If you own an older home and are renting it out, you'll often find that the heating capacity is too low for the modern standards, and in that case, a heat-pump is usually the most cost effective solution.

What also makes these standards work is that a lot of banks offer cheap loans for energy efficiency upgrades: for example https://www.anz.co.nz/personal/home-loans-mortgages/loan-typ...

JoelJacobson• 3 months ago

Shame on The Netherlands: ~89% of homes still use natural gas in some way for heating [1], and their government are now "scrapping the obligation to purchase a heat pump in 2026" [2].

[1] https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2025/50/ever-more-gas-free-hom... [2] https://www.abnamro.nl/en/personal/specially-for/preferred-b...

bouke• 3 months ago

Yeah big surprise that the populist government didn’t achieve anything and rolled back green initiatives. Good thing that they fell, sad that it took so long.

enaaem• 3 months ago

Stupid symbolic politics to own the greens. Good thing is that heatpumps are the most rational choice for new homes, so I don’t think much damage was done.

ericd6• 3 months ago

As a PSA, mini splits are pretty easy to self-install, and it can save you a bundle, even when buying all the equipment new. Lots of youtube videos on how to do it, though I'd add that most of them show using a manifold with analog gauges to do a vacuum test. You should really get a digital micron gauge and pull a deep vacuum.

rokkamokka• 3 months ago

Also, make sure that's actually legal in your jurisdiction. It is not legal here (primarily due to handling of coolant)

bombcar• 3 months ago

Even where it's not legal you can often do much of the work and hire a licensed contractor for the "final step". It can be worth asking around.

ericd6• 3 months ago

Good point, though you generally don’t really have to handle coolant for mini splits, they come precharged. You mainly have to add more if you have a longer lineset.

I’ve heard the online EPA course/test for coolant cert is pretty easy, though.

The main thing is just making sure you test the lineset well, including deep vacuum decay, and ideally a nitrogen high pressure test.

carlosjobim• 3 months ago

A significant proportion of the European population will only ever talk about heat pumps when they are in a social setting which allows for free conversation. And they haven't shut up about it for about 20 years now. It used to bore me to death.

pbreit• 3 months ago

“ A total of around 575,000 residential heat pump units were sold across 11 European countries from January to March 2026, up from 494,000 in the same period in 2025”

Not a big increase on a relatively small base. What is the takeaway here?

adgjlsfhk1• 3 months ago

2.3 million a year for something with a 20-30 year lifetime is a lot. It's not quite enough for "in 20 year everyone will have one", but you only need another 5 or 10 years of similar 15% growth to get there.

toasty2283• 3 months ago

with a 20-30 year lifetime

More like 15-20, if you find a proper maintenance guy who won't scam you into buying another one because "yours is dead" even though it isn't

mostafo• 3 months ago

They’re pretty efficient

AtlasBarfed• 3 months ago

Governments should have been full bore pushing subsidies and cost breaks for phevs, home solar, evs,and hear pumps for the last decade.

Covid was the wakeup call that globalization was dying a slow death, and the first trump that world cop America was also on the way out.

Oil dependence in a top level national security concern of the last 150 years (hey, what really triggered WW1?), yet the primary means for independence has been politically suppressed for 50 years.

How soon would we have has better PV, better batteries, better heat pumps with proper subsidies and research starting with the 70s oil shocks?

secretsatan• 3 months ago

Reading comments here i think many are missing something, all of our summers are getting longer and hotter, we didn’t need air conditioning before.

It’s not just heating anymore, now places need active cooling too.

thrownthatway5• 3 months ago

If governments would get their act together and build nuclear power…

End users could have simple resistive heating.

But no, in the name of invitation and net zero, end user are forced to bear the cost and maintenance burden of much more complicated equipment systems.

It’s all arse-backwards.

merb• 3 months ago

The latest nuclear reactor built in Europe was in France and took 17 years and its costs were 23 billion euro (roughly 27 billion $) with this amount of money you can basically install around 750000 heat pumps costing 30000€. So no it is probably not arse-backwards. (Germany alone would need 20-25 of them and it is unlikely that we can build more than 3-4 at the same time and even that is unlikely…)

thrownthatway5• 3 months ago

Now pick the best (least costly / swiftest build) new power reactor build in the last ten years anywhere in the world.

And anyway, your numbers are disingenuous, because it ignores the fact that heat pumps need electricity to power them, and that nuclear power reactors can provide district heating and that, and that the mean time between failures for the average split system heat pump is 7 to 10 years and that heat pumps sometimes fail in ways that the ozone depleting refrigerant to escape.

It’s evident the average commenter on this subject hasn’t run the numbers on a full cost benefit of the various options.

A mix of nuclear / hydroelectric / combined cycle gas turbine power plants provided ample electricity for end-users to make use of cheap to manufacture heating technology (resistive), low maintenance, low replacement costs.

Well, that’s my argument anyway.

pjc503• 3 months ago

Nuclear promised "too cheap to meter" in the 1960s and never delivered on that.

apexalpha• 3 months ago

Remember: every heat pump is a semi-permanent move to electricity over other fuels.

People almost never go back. This isn't just a temporary improvement.

pojzon6• 3 months ago

Interesting looking at how EV sales plumented.

ProllyInfamous19• 3 months ago

how EV sales plummeted

This was because the US federal rebate disappeared, mostly (no?).

----

IMHO, hybrid electric vehicles make much more sense (range, refueling, infrastructure) – unless your local-only.

rsynnott2• 3 months ago

... They didn't. Globally, and in the EU and China, they're rising fairly healthily (the EU did have a ~flat year in 2024, but 2025 and so far '26 have resumed growth). They're down a little in the US, but the US is a particularly awkward market for them (preference for large cars, and domestic manufacturers are rather behind the curve).

eigenspace• 3 months ago

1. EV sales are skyrocketing in most of the world.

2. EV sales going down does not contradict what that person said, unless you have data about people who already own EVs are suddenly switching back to combustion, which is not observed.

If you have any data contradicting those, I'd love to see them, otherwise I think you're just spouting rot.

eur0pa• 3 months ago

Must be nice having more than 3kW available at the breaker

Heat pump sales rise across Europe

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