How Energy-Efficient Are Heat Pumps?

How Energy-Efficient Are Heat Pumps?

In addition to heating, heat pumps provide air conditioning and humidity management. Heat pumps operate like refrigerators or air conditioners, employing electricity and refrigerant to pump or transfer heat from one place to another. Unlike furnaces, a heat pump doesn’t produce heat but instead carries energy that can be found in the air, ground, or water origins around your house. Even in winter, this source of heat energy is still there, and the heat pump operates to drag and transfer this heat to your house. When it’s hot outside, the same directions use, but in reverse. A heat pump removes heat from your home and transfers it outside, creating an air conditioning result.

Heat pumps are an energy-efficient alternative to furnaces and air conditioning systems for all weathers. Like refrigerators, heat pumps utilize electricity to transfer heat from a cool area to a warm area, making a cool area cooler and a warm area warmer. During the warm season, heat pumps transfer heat from the cool outside to your warm home. During the freezing season, heat pumps transfer heat out of your home. Since they move heat rather than yield heat, heat pumps can efficiently supply the right temperature for the house.

The main kinds of heat pumps

There are three major types of heat pumps linked by ducts: air-to-air, water source, and geothermal. They gather heat from the air, water, or ground outside your house and focus it on inside usage.

1. Ducted air source heat pumps

The most typical kind of heat pump is the air source heat pump, which moves heat between the home and the outdoor air. This type of heat pump can decrease energy bills and decline energy consumption for heating by almost 50% compared to electric resistance heating like furnaces and baseboard heaters. High-efficiency heat pumps provide better dehumidification than traditional central air conditioning systems, resulting in lower energy consumption and greater cooling convenience in the summer. Air source heat pumps have long been utilized everywhere, but until lately were not employed in regions that encountered long periods of sub-freezing temperatures. Nevertheless, in current years, air source heat pump technology has progressed so that it now presents a viable option for space heating in colder areas.

2. Ductless air source heat pumps

For ductless homes, air source heat pumps are correspondingly functional in a ductless performance named a mini-split heat pump. Additionally, a special class of air source heat pump named a “reverse cycle chiller” produces hot and cold water instead of air, permitting it to be utilized with radiant floor warming systems in a warming state.

3. Absorption heat pumps

Another heat pump for use in residential houses is an absorption heat pump (AHP), which is also named a gas-fired heat pump. Absorption heat pumps utilize heat or thermal energy as their fuel source and can be caused by a wide variety of heat sources such as natural gas explosions, solar-heated water vapor, air, or geothermally heated water. Thus, they are different. Compression heat pumps are driven by mechanical energy.

However, AHPs are more complicated and need larger units compared to compression heat pumps. Due to liquid pumping, electricity consumption in these pumps is low.

4. Geothermal heat pumps

Geothermal heat pumps reach higher efficiency by transmitting heat between the home and the ground or surrounding water source. Although they are more expensive to establish, geothermal heat pumps have low working expenses as they take benefit from the somewhat steady temperature of the ground or water. Geothermal heat pumps have a wide range of benefits. They have the ability to reduce energy consumption by approximately 30 to 60% and control humidity.

Also, they are strong and trustworthy and can be used in a wide range of houses. To determine whether a geothermal heat pump is suitable for the house or not, you should pay attention to the size of the land, the soil, and the landscape of the house. Ground-source or water-source heat pumps can be used in more severe temperatures than air-source heat pumps and customer pleasure with the systems is very high.

Advanced characteristics in heat pumps

Traditional compressors can just work at total capacity, while two-speed compressors permit heat pumps to work near the required heating or cooling ability at any given outdoor temperature, decreasing on/off and compressor wear. Two-speed heat pumps even operate satisfactorily with zone management systems. Zone management systems, usually found in bigger houses, employ automatic dampers to let the heat pump maintain various spaces at diverse temperatures. Also, some models of heat pumps have variable-speed or two-speed engines on the internal fans, external fans, or both. Variable speed controls for these fans work to maintain air driving at a satisfactory speed, reducing cool drafts and increasing power savings. It also minimizes the sound of the blower operating at full velocity. In some high-efficiency heat pumps, there is a de-superheater that rescues the wasted heat from the cooling mode of the heat pump and utilizes it to heat water. A heat pump supplied with a desuperheater can warm water 2 to 3 times better than a conventional electric water heater.

Another improvement in heat pump technology is the scroll compressor, which has two helical scrolls. Compared to conventional piston compressors, scroll compressors have a more prolonged life and are more silent. Many heat pumps employ electric resistance heaters as a backup for cold air. However, heat pumps can be supplied in a mixture with a gas furnace, occasionally referred to as a dual-fuel or hybrid system, to complement the heat pump. This allows solving the trouble of the heat pump being less efficient at low temperatures and decreases power usage. There are very infrequent heat pump factories that put both types of heat in the same package, so these arrangements are usually two smaller, side-by-side, traditional systems that share the same duct. Compared to a traditional combustion fuel furnace or heat pump alone, this type of system can also be more thrifty.