Re:No, you can’t save £30 per year by switching off your “st...
by Sohcahtoa82 on Wednesday April 27, 2022 @06:14PM
(#31186502)
> It doesn't feel right to talk about the "efficiency" of a heat pump system; talk of "1W in gets you 3W out" isn't right, because you didn't magic those 3W out of thin air. It's more like "4W in gets you 4W out". It seems wrong to say that a heat pump system is "400% efficient".
Those 3W didn't come out of thin air, it came from outside air.
1W of energy going into the heat pump causes 4W of heat energy to get moved from outside your house to the inside of your house.
That's the key thing to take note of. Traditional resistive heating works by turning electrical energy into heat energy directly. Heat pumps move heat energy the same way an A/C unit does, it just moves it the other way.
Essentially, a heat pump is just an A/C unit with the evaporator and the condenser flipped.
Those 3W didn't come out of thin air, it came from outside air.
1W of energy going into the heat pump causes 4W of heat energy to get moved from outside your house to the inside of your house.
That's the key thing to take note of. Traditional resistive heating works by turning electrical energy into heat energy directly. Heat pumps move heat energy the same way an A/C unit does, it just moves it the other way.
Essentially, a heat pump is just an A/C unit with the evaporator and the condenser flipped.