Heat pumps and climate?

[ericmark]

We have been using heat pumps for years, first I got involved with 1980 in Algeria. But walk down the streets in Hong Kong in the town and it is hotter than in the country, the heat pump must have loses, and to heat and cool clearly it needs a fan, as can't really move radiator up and down the wall for winter and summer use.

Many simply but motor in reverse to swap from cooling to heating, but it seems working in only one direction does work better, so many used simple elements for heating, only the cooling used a heat pump.

But if the unit uses 500 watt, then it must produce 500 watt of heat, on top of the heat it transfers. And so on a globule view, one must also include losses. Using 500 watt in the home direct from solar panels the loses would be very low, using it from the grid supply, then also heat given off from the cables supplying the home, and any loses in the generation.

Fact that I don't at moment get paid for power I put into the grid means the simple power produced - power used can't show loses, as no one knows what is produced, so there are simply no actuate figures on losses. All we can do is look at cost to buy power, so if average price is 20p per KWh then we can compare that to cost for oil or gas, both which are cheaper than electric, so either some one ripping us off, or there are massive losses supplying electric.

Oil and gas supplied using road transport is clearly heavily taxed, so we are paying an inflated price.

However the main problem is shortages. We saw the Winter of discontent, and how relying on electric is no good, I had mains gas at the time, and the heater simply would not work without electric, so when we moved, we made darn sure we did not need electric for heating. Last house had a 4.5 kW gas fire, this house an open grate and we can burn any solid fuel, we can also charge the batteries with solar, so even with no grid power we can get some heating.

Lose gas or oil then oil filled radiators can keep the house warm, even if expensive, but for those with heat pumps lose electric and you have also lost the ability to heat the home with oil or gas, OK in summer may still be able to cool the home, with loads of spare solar power, but can't heat the home. So only those already with electric only heating would be really looking at heat pumps.

How much the increase global warming is hard to work out, but how much of a problem we will have with lack of electric we already know, November 1978 to February 1979 James Callaghan and the labour party showed us in no uncertain terms not to rely on electric for heating.

 

[JohnW2]

We have been using heat pumps for years ...

I'm sure we have. Indeed, we've been using fridges and freezers for very many years, as have some people been using AC systems for a long time - and all of those are usually just a type of 'heat pump'.

But if the unit uses 500 watt, then it must produce 500 watt of heat, on top of the heat it transfers. And so on a globule view, one must also include losses.

Sure - but, as far as the atmosphere is concerned, those two heat movements are primarily in opposite directions, particularly if the heat pump is sited outdoors - the 'losses' (primary the energy used by the electrics of the system) going mainly into the atmosphere, but the 'intended' movement of heat coming out of the atmosphere.

However the main problem is shortages .... Lose gas or oil then oil filled radiators can keep the house warm, even if expensive, but for those with heat pumps lose electric and you have also lost the ability to heat the home with oil or gas, .... How much the increase global warming is hard to work out, but how much of a problem we will have with lack of electric we already know, ...

That's an issue which we are ultimately going to have to live with, and find a way of living with. Beyond either of our lifetimes, for sure, but the day will presumably come when electricity (however generated) will essentially be the only type of energy/fuel available - since I find it hard to believe that we will ever engage in large-scale production of liquid or gaseous fuels when the natural reserves dry up.

Kind Regards, John

 

[robinbanks]

Waste heat is generated by the pump itself. So the entire world would be warmer for the pumps running that if they're not.

It's not that simple

The planet has a "jacket" on that keeps it warm (the atmosphere) and it has incident warmth arriving from the sun and a huge nuclear reaction going on at its core that generates heat that filters up through the ground. Let's say that over any particular half million year period these factors are fairly stable

Nowadays it has vast numbers of creatures swarming the surface extracting flammable resources from its surface(wood) and subterra(oil) and setting fire to it in various ways. These actions generate heat that is dumped into the atmosphere somewhere, be that inside a building or outside. It doesn't stay inside if it starts inside so we might as well just consider that it all ends up in the atmosphere

We can ignore heat from existing electrical energy consumption (running the TV, the lights) if we assert that that won't change when we click our fingers and convert every gas/oil/wood burner in the world to a heat pump, and we can similarly ignore heat from eg ICE engines if that also remains constant through the transition.

It looks like the activity these creatures engage in tips the balance towards everything getting hotter; more heat is being generated than escapes to space

The question thus reduces to "does a heat pump generate less heat when it does its work moving heat from one place to another, than a burning device generates?"

Yes. The moving of the heat is immaterial; it was in the atmosphere before and it is in the atmosphere after. All that matters is the extra heat that was added to the atmosphere in getting the desired result. Generating less-than-X units of new heat to move X units of heat generates less new heat than burning something to generate X units of new heat.

Whether or not this would cause global cooling in the present context is more difficult to ascertain; swapping all boilers for heat pumps would reduce the rate at which new heat is added to the atmosphere but for cooling to occur the rate of heat loss from the atmosphere needs to be greater than the rate at which new heat is added to the atmosphere

We could still achieve global cooling using boilers, by not adding heat to the atmosphere. If insulation was near perfect then one could get away with burning to generate the desired X units of heat and trap it in a building. Indeed if insulation was near perfect then supplemental heat might not be needed at all (human body heat and incident solar would make the building warm enough) but the academic exercise is about needing supplemental heat. So, insulate right, burn a tiny amount, it's an improvement. All is better if you can switch to a heat pump because you add less new heat to the environment to achieve your desires. But then you start adding more and more people, who (even individually with this reduced generation requirement) as a whole cause more heat to be added. Would heat pumps solely be the magic bullet that brings generation below the tipping point? Highly unlikely. But they represent a way to make better use of existing resources rather than generating new replacements

The contributory factors are legion, but everything we do has classically been too little, too late. Regulations are slow to respond to demand good air tightness and insulation, lower emissions from boilers, switching to alternative energies.. Mentally, people are traditional and change resistant; we're all slowly swimming in more and more of our own excrement and adding more organisms that add more excrement. You can make the demands on resources as lean as possible, but ultimately one has to say "these are the resources we have and the rate at which they renew; our total consumption from all individuals cannot go above this without consequences. When we run out of ways to lean the process out to support more individuals, we need fewer individuals"

 

[ericmark]

The gases we use to produce which attacked out ozone are clearly bad, but the natural cycle, a tree grows, it falls, is compressed by earth moment, then we dig it up and burn it is part of the natural cycle, as is global warming and cooling. We one compares the energy released by one volcanic eruption compared with what man releases, what man releases is nothing.

Anyone with a little bit of brain can see the adverts lie, no way clapping your hands will turn lights on/off after fitting a smart meter, so one must regard the rest in the same light. Yes we have global warming at the moment, but not due to man, it is a natural thing which has always happened.

And if we take an area which should be under the sea, and we pump out the sea to make it dry land, then clearly that water must go some where, so Hollands gain is our loss.

 

[robinbanks]

Yes we have global warming at the moment, but not due to man

Really surprised that, as someone who is demonstrably more perceptive and able to think things through than average, you took that particular stance

Here's a graph

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

A graph which shows the earth's atmosphere warming, but warming is something it has done for thousands of years.

 

[robinbanks]

I think you missed the point about the rate of change being made at the bottom

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

I think you missed the point about the rate of change being made at the bottom

The climate has always changed, change is the norm. A static climate would be abnormal.

 

[Northman]

Not sure what the source of the diagram above is, but it appears to be splicing low-resolution proxy temperature estimates with modern day high resolution temperature measurements. In laymans language - apples and oranges.

 

[JohnW2]

Really surprised that, as someone who is demonstrably more perceptive and able to think things through than average, you took that particular stance ... Here's a graph

I'm certainly no 'denyer' (how does one spell that? ) of climate change, nor of human responsibility for what has happened in the past 100-150 years, and I don't dispute anything the in the 'timeline' you posted.

However, it's probably worth noting that, at least one sense, we have been rather 'unlucky' (in the timing of our 'industrial revolution').

Your timeline only goes back about 20,000 years,which is peanuts in terms of the history of our planet. If one looks over a much longer time-span,one sees that there has been a pretty regular cyclic change in global temperature,with a cycle length of roughly 100,000 years (see typical graph below).

Unfortunately,human 'industrial' (etc.) activity started having its 'dramatic' effect at the very time when ('as expected') the natural cycle had risen close to its historical highest point. Had the 'due to humans' changes happened just a few tens of thousands of years earlier, we probably would not be at all concerned (might even 'welcome') the increase in global temp created by man!

As a final observational, whilst I do not deny what has happened, nor who/what has been largely responsible, although I don't really understand why this was the case (lack of decent data?), when I was at school (in the 1960s), there was a lot of discussion amongst 'experts' about a concern that we were 'fairly rapidly' heading for a new 'ice age'!" Times, and opinions, change !!

Kind Regards, John