How Heat Pump Technology will reduce your carbon footprint
Friday, March 28, 2008
The CIOB Essex Centre was fortunate to have Max Halliwell, Product Sales Manager for Mitsubishi Electric UK (www.mitsubishi-aircon.co.uk) speak at their December CPD evening. Max is spearheading Mitsubishi’s sales drive into the UK domestic heating market with their pioneering “Ecodan”, an electric-powered air-to-water heat pump.
His informed and convincing presentation, explaining and justifying the system was backed up by well researched and tested performance data.
The Ecodan provides a viable alternative to all modern boilers and is especially welcome where no natural gas is available. This makes the system very competitive in price. It works on the same principle as a fridge, by removing heat from outside air and transferring this heat into the domestic hot water system.
The astonishing truth about the Ecodan is that every 1kWh of energy used by the system produces in excess of 3.5kWh of energy, as an average thoughout the year. Compare the efficiency rating of the best gas-fired condensing boilers of about 95% with the Ecodan figure of 350% and you can begin to understand what an environmental miracle this system presents.
The Ecodan is differentiated from other systems on the market such as the Daikin “Altherma” (www.spaceair.co.uk) by the fact that the Ecodan is an integrated system. This means the flow and return is brought from the home to the external unit. The Altherma unit is split with an internal unit linked to the external one by refrigerated pipes that require specialist gassing on site, with the main flow and return brought to the internal unit.
The Altherma unit was earlier to the market and is being installed entirely on a 36 home development in Upwell, Norfolk by James Development (www.jdhomes.co.uk). The company has recorded and published all their running expenses with a full fuel comparison at http://jamesdevelopment.org.uk/JDCUpAltherm2.html.
Both the Ecodan and Altherma systems offer similar huge CO2 emission reductions - in excess of 45%. Analysing the cost savings between 23 September 2007 and 20 January 2008, James Development discovered that over £85 has been saved against the cost of oil heating or over £37 against the cost of natural gas, although no natural gas is available.
However, it must be remembered that the colder the ambient air, the less efficient the heat pump will be. As a result, the figures to date relate only to the coldest winter months. The savings for the next eight months should be much higher as the ambient temperature rises.
Max also produced a case history using the Ecodan, which recorded excellent saving on a retro fit case study. All those present at the evening left in the sure belief that we will see much more from these pioneering systems.
