Resistive heaters use energy to create heat. Heat pumps use energy to move heat.
For a resistive heater, its taking 1 energy unit from the wall and putting 1 energy unit into the air.
A heat pump will use one unit of energy from the wall to take 3-5 units of energy from one side of the system and dump that 3-5 units of energy to the other side of the system.
I see. Heat pumps must move existing heat from somewhere though. Won't those come from burning fuels?
I have a lot of solar panels in my home. I'm generating more energy than I'm using. I don't consider efficiency to be a significant concern at the moment.
There's plenty of available heat outside, even when its somewhat cold outside. This breaks down when it gets really cold, like arctic kind of cold, but most places where lots of people live don't get that cold for very long. Its the same principle as how even when its hot outside your AC unit can still manage to dump some heat out there. Its because of the latent heat of the refrigerant and the phase change induced by the changes in pressure from the compressor. Its kind of hacking the physics of phase changes to move energy from one place to another.
> I'm generating more energy than I'm using. I don't consider efficiency to be a significant concern at the moment.
I also produce a surplus and I sell it (for more than the local utility charges to boot). More efficiency is more money in my pocket, is it not for you?
> More efficiency is more money in my pocket, is it not for you?
Unfortunately, it isn't. I also inject surplus energy into the local power distribution network. In my country, I don't actually get paid for that. They give me "kWh credits" that I'm supposed to spend whenever I generare less energy than I consume. These credits will expire if unused, I can't accumulate them.
So it is simply not viable for any home or business to generate more power than they consume. I have space for more solar panels but I'd be giving the power companies free energy if I installed them.
Cryprocurrency is the perfect solution for my problem. Instead of giving them my energy surplus, I sink it into my computers instead so they can mine cryptocurrency. If the waste heat could be reused somehow, it would be even better...
It moves existing heat from the outside to the inside of the house. It works exactly like an air conditioner, but in the other direction. (And some heat pumps are reversible so they can be used as both)
You drill very deep shafts and move refrigerant up and down. It’s efficient but capital costs are huge. Usually it does not make sense economically without government regulations.
A heat pump is more than twice as efficient as direct heat.