A heat pump is, in essence, an extremely energy efficient heating and/or cooling technology that can make a substantial contribution towards reducing your energy consumption residential homes or commercial and industrial buildings.

When used for heating water on a hot summer’s day, an Enerflow heat pump has an efficiency of 66% to 75%. The efficiency or performance of a heat pump is normally expressed by a single numerical value called the Coefficient of Performance (COP)*. The efficiency of 66% to 75% can be expressed as a COP value of 3 to 4, whereas a typical electrical resistance heater has a COP of 1. The savings from a heat pump is only dependent on the latent or sensible heat in the atmosphere and not from direct sunlight as with solar water heaters. The advantage of this is that it’s able to operate efficiently during the night and even during cold winter conditions.  Heat pumps also have numerous installation advantages as one is not restricted to a certain roof orientation, costly strengthening of roof trusses, unsightly structures and damage due to freezing.

*COP:

The term Coefficient of Performance (COP) is used to describe the performance of a heat pump. To try and explain the COP value it can be compared to a vehicle’s “kilometres travelled per liter of fuel used”; and with heat pumps, the COP or “fuel efficiency” can vary dramatically from one brand to another. For example:

If a car can only drive 1 kilometer for every 1 liter of fuel used, his owner will pay three times more to drive his car than an owner driving a car that can do 3 kilometers for every 1 liter of fuel used.

Now to get back to energy; a standard geyser element uses 1 kilowatt of electricity to generate 1 unit of heat in the water; however, a heat pump uses 1 kilowatt of electricity to generate between 3 and 4 units of heat. This implies that the owner of a heat pump will pay 3 to 4 times less to heat the water in his home, building or factory compared to the owner using standard electrical resistance heating elements. This saving can be obtained because a heat pump uses latent heat in the air to heat the water rather than using the electricity directly.

For more information on how a heat pump works, please see “What is a Heat Pump/ how does a heat pump work?”.