Heat Pumps: How cold rivers could heat your home
Heating our homes with cold water! Sounds absurd? It’s not. Heat pumps are revolutionizing the way we heat and cool our homes and cities. We went to the German city of Mannheim to find out how.
#planeta #heatpumps #energy
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Credits:
Reporter: Tim Schauenberg
Camera: Simon Baingo
Editor: Frederik Willmann
Superivising Editors: Joanna Gottschalk, Michael Trobridge
Read more:
IEA: The future of heat pump globally:
iea.blob.core.windows.net/ass...
Heat pumps potential in Germany:
static.agora-energiewende.de/...
Fraunhofer IEG: On large scale heat pumps in Germany:
www.ieg.fraunhofer.de/content...
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:43 What's the problem?
01:04 What my ice bath has to do with heating
01:37 Heat from the river
02:08 This is how it works
04:32 It all started with a fridge
05:40 Substituting coal, oil and gas?
06:30 Environmental risks
08:46 Smaller units and the money question
10:32 Conclusion
Are heat pumps popular where you live? Note: At minute 1:14 it should be +30F, not -30F. Sorry for the confusion✨
No, we burn firewood.
No, but this gives me some hope to have places designed with this in mind, eco friendly, efficient, water powered plants
Yes very much. I live in Sweden. For the last 20 years (at least) some type of heat pump has been the most popular (and goverment supported) solution for regular houses that are outside of district heating coverage.
In the netherlands yes
Nope, in Russia heat pumps are not present at all. Multi-family houses have centralised heating from burning fossil fuels. Single-family ones are relying on burning wood. Of course there's exceptions in regions with nuclear or hydroelectric power.
Just decarbonized the house last October, no longer burning fossil in the house. Enjoying a Daikin heat pump. Neighbours visiting the house and asking many questions. My candid statement is if we can afford one, just do it, it is the minimum we can do for our children and grandchildren.
Spot on Jim, if you can afford to do it then it’s a no brainer. Solar panels, battery, heat pump and you’re good to go. My friend even has some sort of electric water heater too so they’re totally gas free, it should be legally required of every new build.
Well done Jim
🙌
Same at our house ❤ electric car, heat pump and photovoltaic.. Kids were asking me what are petrol stations for and why don't use them :)
All well and good in summer but in peak winter... Best also setup some nuclear power plants... batteries are not exactly clean are they very destructive to the environment when the raw materials are mined
as summers get hotter having a piece of tech that can work for either cooling or heating is quite appealing
Hey Sam! Yes, it is. We also did a video on ways to cool our homes without ACs. You can find it here 👉 kzhead.info/sun/pq-bdbOFeqWnlIE/bejne.html
I have a mini split heat pump and love it! Heads up, -1C is not -30F 😂
I wondered at that, too! Maybe they meant “~” 30F.
I literally had to stop watching after this
Hey there! Thanks for spotting this mistake, it slipped during our process. We meant 30F. Sorry for the confusion ✨ How did you like the video, especially having a heat pump yourself?
Important note is to have good insulation on building before instalation of Heat Pump. My 2023 Air condition has label as "heat pump". Working 20h a day, avarage outside is 8C and I pay for whole electricity bill 60€. Heat pump also on cloth dryer :)
I built a new house with an air source heat pump, well insulated, triple glass windows, everything electric. My electricity consumption is low (>5MWh/year) and cheap, but all of this was not cheap to built, while some of my neighbours still burn lignite or wet wood for heating, which is cheap for them but enough to destroy breathable air for an entire village. They also have parallely installed gas boilers as well, but they want to save some money by rather burning smelly polluting stuff instead of using a bit more expensive natural gas. I am wondering how much money they save by this. I suppose it is not much and it is the cost for clean air in my neighborhood. We live in Czechia, common people are not that wealthy as people from Western Germany. But I must admit that almost all new houses built here in recent years have air source heat pump as their main heating source👍
Hey Matej! Thanks for sharing your experience!✨
01:15 when a minus added incorrectly could change everything: -30°F = -34°C. It's not that cold. But Fahrenheit people might belive you. The correct conversion is -1°C = 30°F
Fantastic video! Having researched this myself I can say the best heat pumps are VERTICAL ground source heat pumps; you have a few bore holes drilled down in you garden, only a few CM wide (so even tiny gardens are enough) and HUNDREDS of meters deep. The temp underground is consistent all year round, so unlike air pumps which ironically become less efficient when they are needed the most on the coldest days (they are less efficient than a normal electric heater if the air drops to around -15C), vertical ground pumps aren't affected by air temperature so are far more efficient. Also, air source heat pumps can be very noisy because of fans, where vertical ground source run silently. Ironically, even though vertical ground source heat pumps take considerably less work and land digging than horizontal ground source heat pumps, the lack of installers with the drilling equipment allows them unethically to charge very high prices for the simple & easy job of drilling the deep bore holes, and they know people will pay more as these are the most efficient type. The more installers that get these drills, the greater the competition and the lower the prices will go.
I live in a semi-mountainous area and reading your comment, it just clicked for me now why some people around here say heat pumps don't work. Wonder how much those drills cost and if there aren't diy ways to drill down deep enough..
@@al3xf103 excellent question! If demand increases competition then prices will have to fall. But if you find a DIY solution, I would love the details.
Get a well driller
@@johnransom1146 can they drill holes around 3cm wide that go down 200 to 300 meters?
How deep do you think water can be? Oil? Short answer yes@@TimLongson
I did this with a private lake on my property. Cheap, green, high quality heat year round for my house. It is glorious.
river source heat pumps are alright, but i think the ideal way is cold district heating that way you can connect your industry to the same network as houses and use the heat generated by it to warm houses
You can also connect geothermal heating and heat from waste incineration.
@@anotherelvis yeah, you can also do the opposite and use some of that heat for industries that require heating although heat pumps cant really go above 600c so it limits the number of industires
Industrial scale heat pumps can easily use CO2 gas as refrigerant- GWP is 1. I can not imagine what kind of potential risks of cooling river water by 0,001 oC in far far future the scientist is talking about. Where I live rivers freeze-up every winter, no problems whatsoever. I have installed ground-source heat pump, the house is not very well insulated, but I have opted for underfloor heating on the first floor, and installed oversized radiators on the second- heat pumps work more efficient at low thermal water temperatures. I'm also very happy with summer time cooling from the ground loop- all it takes is just around 50 watts (!) for circulation pump and fancoil fan to keep interior air temperature below 24 oC and r.humidity below 50%.
Hey there! With such a low change in temperature, there is no problem. The expert mentioned that it could be a problem at a certain point when too much cold water is released into the river. Due to a lot of plants using heat pumps. Possible negative effects can arise on fish and plants, the ecosystem of the river.
Might be good to look for upstream partners that have processes making waste heat that they can sink into the river. Basically use the river to transport waste heat to the heat pump.
I was thinking along similar lines, yes! There are a few industries that have to use cooling towers to cool down what is often river water before releasing it back (but still at a slightly elevated temperature). The one example on my mind is nuclear power plants, which of course, uhhh, aren't particularly relevant for Germany any more. But can be elsewhere! Anyway, it does mean you get to actually *use* that heat rather than just waste it!
Terrific commitment on your part. Terrific job and well explained.
Hey there! Thank you ✨ did you know much about heat pumps before? Are they used a lot where you live?
@@DWPlanetA I did not know a great deal about heat pumps but I've definitely heard of them. The people that take care of my heating and cooling have never mentioned them to me, so I don't think they do them. I will ask the next time they come out.
Thank you.
I live where, in the winter, we experience below -30°C temperatures. Most are on electric, lots of Hydro sites, in 300 km radius. There are a few on gas, and or, burn wood. VERY few have air conditioning in their homes, for the three weeks in summer, that are warm enough to possibly require it.
great format. thx. 🌼
Hey there! Glad to hear you liked the video ✨ we post new videos every Friday. Subscribe to our channel to not miss any ✨
Useiing sand to store heat is also a great idea
I think on the topic of cooling your homes in the summer the refrigerants need to be replaced with greener versions that don't ruin the environment like ammonia. Also, I think the cost effective way of introducing something new for heating our homes is to integrate it into existing infrastructure to drive down costs.
In my corner of the UK, they've only recently started installing gas pipes and gas boilers etc. by default 🤦🏻 it used to be all oil heating. Basically no heat pumps. Also insulation of houses in the UK is absolutely abysmal. Most windows have double glazing by now, but wall insulation is horrible. And no ones ever heard of triple glazing. So.... we're lagging behind quite a lot, which is really annoying (read: expensive) if you want to have those things work for you.
It was a great video and let me understand the logic of heat pump. But just wondered to know on hiw much energy needed to run the heat pump?
Well...The energy needed to run a heat pump varies based on factors like its size, efficiency, and the temperature difference between indoor and outdoor spaces. Consulting an HVAC professional is best for accurate information tailored to your needs and circumstances ✨
Thanks for the video, I loved it 😊
Great to hear! 🥳 You should make sure to subscribe to our channel not to miss any videos!
That's right, in the latitudes where the G7 countries are located, fossil fuels are overwhelmingly used for heating. At COP28, it seems that capital will be invested in construction using passive construction methods, but if the airtightness is poor, energy will be wasted in the winter. Therefore, the conclusion is to improve insulation, and insulation traps the heat energy taken in in the summer, so before using the cooler, make sure to thoroughly exhaust the heat with wind. We have been focusing on energy saving for decades, so please take a look at the products in the icon for reference. I think it's quite interesting.
Informative video as always
Glad you liked it! Consider subscribing to our channel. We release new videos every Friday ✨
-1C is 30F not -30F.
i caught that just now. wanted to know if someone else saw that.
Otherwise, water would be in solid phase. 😂
Hey there! Thanks for commenting. We meant to put 30F. Sorry for the confusion ✨ How did you like the video overall?
@@DWPlanetA Nice video and idea.
We are loving our Vaillant heat pump that was installed in November. We've been sharing our journey on our KZhead channel!
A good idea for the summer in Argentina. The problem: where do we access to water?.. i live in Chivilcoy and there are not big rivers near.
Is there also a possibility to store summer heat and use it in winter?
Definitely, in the Netherlands there are a lot of them. You have 2 underground water reservoirs, separated by a couple of hundred meters so they don't mix. One is filled with warm water during the summer and used as the source for heat pump in the winter. After heating the now cooled water is stored in the cold reservoir. During summer the cold reservoir is used for cooling and the heated water is stored in the hot reservoir.
Kann man die "Thermoskanne" auch als Energiespeicher nutzen? Also in Zeiten von überschüssiger grüner Energie auf eine höhere Temperatur bringen um später dann weniger Energie zu verbrauchen?
Hey! Ja, die Thermoskanne funktioniert als Energiespeicher. Das heiße Wasser wird gespeichert und kann dann bei Bedarf abgegeben werden.
Couldn’t the chilled water be used for refrigeration even in winter? Connect everybody’s fridges and freezers to a central cold water line?
Hey John! That is a big advantage of certain heat pumps. A lot of heat pumps have a cooling function, too. Through a reversing valve, the flow of refrigerant can be changed.
My point was if you want to warm water back up so you’re not cooling the water in the river, use the cold water in winter for fridges and freezers. @@DWPlanetA
A fridge is a heat pump. It moves heat from the inside to the outside. So a fridge contributes to heating your home. On the contrary a cold water pipeline would contribute to cooling down your apartment, so it may hurt more than it helps.
Read it again . A cold water line TO THE FRIDGE @@anotherelvis
Mansplaining to another guy? @@anotherelvis
I've been wondering if it's possible to attach a device that turns heat into electricity for the summer months... is it?
Hey Amy! Theoretically, a thermoelectric generator could be attached to air source heat pumps. However, if this would make economic sense would need to be decided on a case-by-case base. TEGs are currently not super efficient therefore it would probably not generate much electricity.
We already have such devices, we call them thermal generators, we burn something (fossil fuels, uranium, gaz, whatever) and boil water, and that water turns a turbine. Converting heat directly into electricity however is a novel concept, and some universities may have found such solutions, but they are for the moment unscalable, inefficient and too costly. But the question you need to ask yourself is, do you actually NEED that electricity? Electricity is energy, but so is heat, and it just so happens that more than two thirs of the energy we require is for heat. So why not look for a heat source instead? Thermal power plants are very inefficient, they usually only convert about 33% of the heat they produce into electricity, the rest is lost due to friction of the turbine, the release of the hot exhaust gases and the steam. If however, you were to use that same plant to heat water at 90 degrees instead, and used hot water pipelines to transport that hot water to homes, the energy efficiency of thermal power plants could reach in the near 90%, effectively dividing by 3 your emissions for heating even without using renewables.
This is really a story of district heating. Once you have a working network with a centralized heat source, then you can change the heat source without having to visit each persons home. So you can switch back and forth between heat pumps and waste incineration.
Heat pumps are quite popular for new houses even with them costing 3 times more initially than a gas heating. If you got the money for a new house the adding another 10k euros isn't that big of a deal but if you have an old house and want to renovate, a heat pump probably won't be the best solution.
Furthermore, heat pumps won't work if you have an old house, this is because teh heat provided by heat pumps is relatively low (approx 40 degrees celcius). So they only work well in well insulated homes. But perhaps we should start with this first?
It would be correct to use word compressor for compressing gas rather than pump. Video is good. ❤.
Make new videos about solid waste management!
What was the point of him going into the cold river?! 🤔🤷♂
Hey there! Our reporter gave his all to show you how cold that river water is.😄 And that water cold like this can still be used for heating.
Gibt es das auch auf deutsch?
Hey! Leider nicht. Wir können dir die automatische Übersetzung von KZhead empfehlen. Du kannst sie bei den Untertiteln aktivieren und so alle Videos mit deutschem Untertitel ansehen ✨
@@DWPlanetA Okay danke
We have a ground source heat pump
Is the “waste” water going to end up on the rivers? Cause if they do, how catastrophic would it cause ecologically speaking?
The waste water would just be normal water but 3 degrees colder
@@grafity1749and if you think about all the other warm industrial water dumped in the river, heat pumps kind of offset the effect of heated water.
Hey Leonardo! Yes, the waste water would just be water 3 degrees colder. Right now, this is even beneficial as most of our rivers are overheated. However, as our expert explains, it has to be closely monitored as it could lead to problems in large quantitites.
heat pumps have starting comes since covid in India for water heating application as better alternative to solar water heating.
What do you mean heat pumps are more efficient than air conditioners? Air conditioner IS a heat pump. Maybe more efficient working fluids can be invented, but the device still works in same way
Hey there! Air-to-air heat pumps are very similar to air conditioners. However, there are different kind of heat pumps. Regarding efficiency: Heat pumps are more efficient than air conditioners as they pump out more cool and warm air by volume than the energy it takes to run them.
Oil here is so expensive now. We are low income and our government plan allowed us to switch to a heat pump. It is extemely helpful and produces a more consistent heat
Hey Jeremy! Nice to hear that your government supports the switch. Which country are you living in? ✨
@@DWPlanetA Canada, but people might feel more comfortable answering a question like that in a poll.
You guys need to get with the editing department. It's not negative 30° f equals -1° c. It's positive 30° f equals -1° c
I love Heatpumps and I hope they will get cheaper and better
Can you dub the contents of this channel for DW Turkish channel?
Hey there! You can use the automatically translated subtitles in KZhead. They work quite well and like this, you can easily watch all of our videos in Turkish. Hope this helps ✨
Liquid Ammonia could also be used for Heating Homes.
Hey there! Ammonia is often used as refrigerant. Do you refer to that?
Cutting back on oil, gas and coal will inevitably reduce the total amount of electricity needed. - One pumpjack consumes 9800 MWh/month of electricity. - Oil Refineries consume 15-20% of annual electricity consumption for the whole continent (just in the US). - Offshore platforms burn 20-30 tons of diesel per day for their generators. - Thousands of kilometers of pipelines. Each section with a pump consuming 50-250 kW and working 24/7. - Tankers, each of them burning 200-250 tons of fuel oil per day. - Land transport with semi trucks - ~ 40 liters of diesel / 100 km. - Gas stations with all their pumps and energy consumption. ... and we haven't touched on shale gas and coal mining yet. ... nor have we paid attention to oil spills, vented gas, pollution of rivers and groundwater, deforestation and wars for resources. On top of that it will reduce the waste of taxpayer money: - The petrol industry generates $10 Billion in profits per DAY and receives $11 Million in subsidies per MINUTE globally.
This is not new 20 years ago I installed a GSHP which runs off my well water even a -40f it works as my well water is always 50f I just take out 3 degrees and put the water back in the ground where it warms up again. 8 years ago I added solar now I have no utility cost at all or very small in winter.
Hey there! Wow, that sounds awesome. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. ✨
3-400% efficient sounds good but I wonder if that means that less coal will be burnt to heat the water by using heat pumps rather than heating the water directly with the coal in the first place? My guess is that at 300% efficient, more coal will be burnt to make the electricity than to heat directly. Maybe at 400% you could make a slight improvement over directly burning the coal, but is that slight improvement worth all the trouble? I am much more impressed with Sweden and Japan burning garbage to create district heating. No coal or cooling the river involved
Hey Tom! Even when the electricity for the heat pump comes from fossil fuels, it is more efficient than heating with fossil fuels. However, the goal is to generate the electricity for the heat pump with renewable energy sources.
Why not use head producing industries as the (very) hot water sources? You circulate pipes through the city, so add a circuit to an iron manicure factory.
This is also possible, and is also being done. However, industries are private enterprises, and they aren't usually very keen on investing money on machines and pipes that would profit of their waste heat, and would be free to charge as much money for their heat as they want.
In my suburb in the inner city of a 5.2 million metropolis still the most popular heaters are... woodburners!
I want the reverse. I want cheaper cooling in the tropics.
Hey there! Heat pumps can also be used for cooling. We also did a whole video on air conditioning and natural ways of cooling. You can find it here 👉kzhead.info/sun/pq-bdbOFeqWnlIE/bejne.html
It should be noted that in the case of a larger number of such heating plants on one river, there would be greater cooling of the river downstream. That the heat exchanger will receive heat from the river also means that it will surrender its lower temperature. So every other heating plant downstream of the same river could have a slightly lower efficiency.
Unless they put it downstream of industrial production and power plants. Inefficient ones, meaning those that don't recover heat in their own facilities, would have some heated wastewater dumped into the river, right? So, at a certain point it helps offset the effect of heated wastewater?
And cooling as well.. World is not just Europe and America. There are other parts of world which need cooling as well
Hey there! Yes, you are right! Cooling is a huge and important topic. Last summer, we did a video on ways of cooling without ACs. You can find it here 👉 kzhead.info/sun/pq-bdbOFeqWnlIE/bejne.html
I pray for the day when heat pumps are the default choice and used for everything they can be applied to.
Heating homes accounts for Half, cars make up 1/3 shipping make up other 1/3 we're already at 110% and we haven't even talked able cow farts! The math ain't mathing. This is my problem with this whole thing
-1c is not -30F haha!
i doubt you save with heat pumps, like air conditioning are ripoffs, 900 saved in a year, ? check those bills, on 5'000 invenstments, my neighboor got a double heat pump, but had to install 5kw of solar panels, it looks very ineficient, on the side of the invenstment, and bills.
> global warming < we need to heat our homes, I see a bright future in front of us!
Domestic heat pumps are great, but if you’re home is badly isolated, it’s not really helping. Isolating homes should be the priority!
Do you think we can cool down buildings using a similar method? Yes, 100% possible. The real question is why it's not being done in Germany where we suffer from heatwaves every year?
Because waste heat produced cooling down buildings in summer can't be dumped in an already overheated river. It's also a matter of the amount of water flowing during the summer: if it's small, its temperature will be significantly affected and so aquatic life. They also had this kind of issue with nuclear power plants: too much heat and too little, too hot water.
@@lorenzoventura7701 that’s why I wrote a similar method. Heat pumps can go directly under each building (after analysing the soil and all). No river needed.
Ironically, if we continue to heat our homes then eventually we won't have to worry about heating our homes. 😂
In my country I though we cause emissions by cooling
Hey there! Yes, emissions from ACs are a big problem, too. We did a video on ACs and better ways of cooling 👉 kzhead.info/sun/pq-bdbOFeqWnlIE/bejne.html Let us know what you think!✨
Another important thing: almost 100% of all heat pumps are made in Asia…
That is correct. China is the biggest manufacturer by 40%, and mostly exports to Europe. 🔥
❤🎉
And yet, all people move to Heat Pump, Germans have Coal power plants as the Serbia does, so bada bum coal to heat pump=grean? And in the next phase, when eclectic grid goes down. what then!? How much power can you store? So Battery, Solar Panels and heat pump is like 100k Euro. So too much money to make Banks more profitable. The only visible solution is something else....
Germans still have coal because you don't phase out in just one day, smartpants. Also, when electricity grids go down, the well insulated homes of Germany can still make it livable for over 24 hours after an outage. And electricity outages are solved in less than a couple of hours. Repairing a burst gas pipeline however... Well that's a tad bit more complicated.
@@texanplayer7651 I was thinking having gas tank 4 tons or 2x4T (4-8k m3) plus power generator. That heat isolation depends upon area of country. If you have like few weeks with under -10, than isolation without heat system doesn't help as much. But my point wasn't on gas, it was forcing to another source and then getting dependent upon it or sky rocketing prices (example of Italy). As far as i Know, Germany imports a lot of electricity from France.
Your can't even correctly convert Celsius to Fahrenheit 🤦
Hey there! The - slipped during our review process. How did you like the video overall? Are heat pumps used a lot where you live?
This will help Europe get rid of russian gas
You cannot heat your home with cold water. You can heat some homes with a gigantic, complex, electrically powered machine as in this video.
There are smaller water sourced heatpumps of course. They aren't much more complicated than your fridge.
@@MyReetkever And it still would not be true to say that you can heat your home with cold water.
@@Withnail1969 fair.
@@Withnail1969 With your logic cars don't run on petrol but on wheels actioned by an engine.
@@texanplayer7651 Petrol is an energy source. Cold water is not.
I'm from Kuwait no need for this
Just build nuclear power plant...
Maybe, but you still need heating. If we all switch to (inefficiënt) resistive electrical heating from nuclear power we need a lot more cables in the ground, especially in inner city's.
all the while china is building hundreds of coal power plants, lol,
Instead of burning gas for heat, you use electricity for heat pump. That electricity still comes from the gas. or you just try so hard to shift the crowd from directly using Russia's gas to the more subtle electricity, and pump up the electricity price along the way?
It comes from gas - partially, yes. Just like it comes from coal, wind, hydroelecteic and solar. Still the efficiency is way higher than burning the gas directly in the house to heat it. By electryfying heating and mobility, primary energy use goes down, not up.
A modern Gas Power plant has an efficiency of 60%. Combined with a heat Pump with a average cop of 3.5, thats still more than twice as efficient than a Gas heater. And thats not including that it can Run with Wind power as well.
Where I live, in Canada, more than 90% of our electricity comes from either nuclear or hydroelectricity. We have no coal on our electricity grid. Gas is used for about 5-10% but that is being phased out over the coming years.
A lot of German homes rely on local gas burners for heating, and they stopped importing Russian gas, so now they need another solution. Right now the gas price is fairly low, but in the long run they need to switch to centralized district heating and and/or privately owned heat pumps.