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Guys with hair like this have a 300% chance of explaining why heat pumps are the superior mode of household heating to your girl:
Below are six heavily cropped pictures of Alec Watson’s hairline (the host of Technology Connections channel on Youtube).
I hate that this became a part of the marketing. It’s not more than 100% efficient. It’s more than 100% efficient if you compare how much energy the pump uses to heat a room (electric energy) to how much energy it takes to heat that room (heat energy). But those aren’t the terms that we use to determine efficiency. Efficiency is determined by how much energy it takes to perform the task using the same method we’re currently using in some “perfect” system (no energy loss due to friction, heat transfer, etc) and dividing that by how much energy we actually used.
A heat pump isn’t heating the air, so it’s unfair to determine efficiency by how much energy it takes to heat the air. It’s moving heat energy from a low energy area (outside) to a higher energy area (inside) and that heat energy, plus some waste heat from running the compressor, is what’s actually heating the room. But that isn’t more than 100% efficient. In fact, heat pumps have grown in efficiency significantly over the last few decades because they haven’t reached 100% efficiency.
It is accurate to say that any heat pump is going to be more energy efficient than any other type of furnace, but that’s because they’re doing different things. Just like an LED is going to be more efficient than any other lighting in terms of energy use. Again, different things. Though the heat pump and LED are pretty similar in what they’re doing.
You’re choosing to interpret “300 % efficient” under the very narrow definition used in thermodynamics.
Then you acknowledge that it is “more energy efficient” than a (almost) 100 % (thermodynamically) efficient furnace, completely contradicting yourself. Pick a lane and take a breath, outside of academic contexts people will “misuse” technical terms (such as equating COP to efficiency) and it does not matter one bit because it is very clear contextually what they mean.
I mean, isn’t the colloquial use of efficiency mean “the best you can do”? I openly admit, I’m splitting hairs over a technical term being misused and that shit usually doesn’t matter in the world. But in this case, isn’t it also incorrect from the most common understanding of the term?
And I obviously disagree with the statement that it’s very clear contextually what they mean. Every time I hear it said it makes my brain break as to how that’s even possible. It’s cause it’s not possible, it’s relating two terms that aren’t related to get an impossible answer.
That being said, I’m autistic so I might be making a mountain out of a molehill. In fact, I’m certain of it. So, it’s completely cool that you disagree, it just irks me.
I have a room that I want to add 1000w per hour of heat energy to
I have the options of:
Sure, the gas is combusting, the resistive is radiating, and the pump is moving the heat, but functionally they’re all trying to add that 1000W to the room continually for an hour. One of them is doing it a whole lot more efficiently.
It’s 300% efficient in terms of if you could convert electricity at 100 percent efficiency to create heat, you can m9ve it from outside by using like 1/3 the amount.
So yeah, really the definition holds up well.
This is nonsense. When we say the COP is greater than 1.0 that is rigorously definined in terms of energy inputs.