International Energy Agency “In cold climates, we’re seeing very good progress,” said Margaret Cherne-Hendrick, director of energy transitions at Fresh Energy, a nonprofit organization based in São Paulo.”Heat pumps can heat and cool, so a lot of people in older homes are starting to install heat pumps to meet their cooling loads. Technology continues to evolve very rapidly.”
As Cherne-Hendrick describes it, the “cold climate cut-off” has been declining steadily in recent years, so new pumps can often operate in sub-zero temperatures.
That said, heat pumps are not a panacea.They are only suitable for homes or offices that are well insulated and energy efficient in the first place, and newer windows and doors allow for smaller-scale technical work.For most Minnesota homeowners, this is the most important step.(This is a great starting point for a home energy audit for your own home.)
“For the existing building stock, especially older buildings, they are not as energy efficient as they should be,” explained Cherne-Hendrick. “We have energy efficiency improvement programs in place and have enacted energy efficiency improvements in regulations. Goal. Without buildings that are as energy efficient as possible, it’s really hard to get through a polar vortex day with air source heat pumps alone.”
But heat pumps can work well in new or updated buildings.In these cases, they can be a key piece of the puzzle, enabling Minnesota to move toward all-electric buildings and cut fossil fuels from our built environment.
“There’s no reason why we couldn’t build new buildings to the point where building energy performance standards are high enough to accommodate air source heat pumps,” Cherne-Hendrick said.”The limit there is that our building codes are not as robust as they should be. The scale and speed of our operations need to exceed what individual homes and building owners can do.”
But just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean individuals can’t adopt heat pump technology.In fact, they are becoming more common.
“Ours is running every day this winter and it’s never been out of work,” said Matt Privratsky, who owns a house in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood of St. Paul.”There’s research showing that they work best below 20 degrees, but it’s lower than that, and we’ve been running it.”
When buying a home a few years ago, Privratsky and his partners bought a house with a defunct boiler and water heater, intending to invest in a heat pump system and other upgrades.Soon after, they replaced the windows and insulated the house, allowing them to switch to an all-electric carbon footprint.
Photography: Matt Privratsky “One of the craziest parts: Now I realize there are a lot of places in my house where radiators have covered a wall for 70 years,” says Privratsky.”This is the same as any major energy improvement,” Privratsky said.”You really want to spend the time and money adding insulation and doing air sealing. It helps the system run more easily, and it’s always the best thing anyone can do to fix where it’s needed. ”
After Privratsky’s significant investment (around $15,000 to $20,000), the result is an efficient all-electric home that doesn’t require the use of natural gas.Their heat pump system has four different “heads” that turn on and off depending on w