Episode 4 “The Potential of Heat Pump Technology”
Featuring Mike Hassaballa, Francisco Contreras
Kirsten:
Welcome to ‘Expanding the Possible’. This podcast from HH Angus explores how engineering is advancing the built environment from innovations in building systems to the Internet of Things, from digital services connecting the modern workplace to combating the impact of climate change, we delve into the exciting developments in today's and tomorrow's building infrastructure.
Hello, I'm Kirsten Nielsen. In this episode of ‘Expanding the Possible’, we're talking about heat pump technology, and today I'm joined by Mike Hassaballa, a mechanical engineer in our Energy Division and Francisco Contreras, a mechanical engineer and energy analyst in our Knowledge Management team. In their work, both Mike and Francisco focus on energy systems, low carbon energy and decarbonization.
Welcome, gentlemen.
Francisco:
Thank you.
Mike:
Thank you, Kirsten.
Kirsten:
For listeners who are not familiar with the heat pump technology, Mike, in as much detail as you both are obviously, what is a heat pump and how is it different from a furnace or an electric heater?
Mike:
Basically, it's a machine that its whole purpose is moving the heat from one place to another. From a low temperature typically to a high temperature. The main difference between a heat pump and an electric furnace or electric boiler is that this machine is using a certain thermodynamic cycle that is fundamentally different from what an electric boiler or electric furnace would do. An electric furnace or electric boiler would take electricity and use this electricity to heat a medium. The heat pump is doing something fundamentally different. It is just moving energy from one place to another. It's doing this using electricity, so we're just using the electricity to move things. The electric furnace or electric boiler is using the electricity to heat. So that's the fundamental difference between the two machines, which makes a huge impact on a lot of things when you're doing heating or cooling with the heat pump.
Kirsten:
And Francisco, you wanted to add something to that?
Francisco:
So as Mike mentioned, the heat pump moves heat from one place to the other. And the other conventional sources, like electric heater or electric gas boiler generate or produce heat; one way that I find easy to relate and explain what a heat pump is, is to think about an air conditioner. Most people are familiar with how that works, so imagine that you can reverse that process and instead of extracting heat from your space, you're extracting heat from the outdoors, so the heat pump can work in both directions.
Kirsten:
Mike, why does the heat pump have high coefficient of performance compared to electric heat that has 100% efficiency?
Mike:
So first, let's talk about the electric heater. Why does an electric heater have a very high efficiency? 100%, as people many people claim. It's because we're using electricity to generate the heat. Electricity is one of the highest forms of energy out there. It's pure exergy. To produce electricity, we've already lost up to a huge percentage of the original source of energy. If you're using a fossil fuel, if you're using renewable energy, you lose 60% to 80% of the source energy to produce that electricity. For me, it makes total sense that if you're using an electric heater, you should get 100% because you already lost 60 to 80% of the energy to produce this electricity.
Now let's talk about heat pumps. Heat pumps take this electricity that we already spent so much energy and sweat and tears to produce, and we're using this electricity to pump energy from one place to another. Most of the energy that we're using for heating, it's not because of the electricity. It's because we're taking that energy and pumping it from one place to another. To pump something from one place to another, most of the energy is already there. We're just moving it. Moving it with the electricity should not take a lot of energy, so that's how we get this multiplier effect. The coefficient of performance. And we now have 200 percent, 300 percent times the electricity that we're spending. So that's why, when you compare the heat pump to electric boiler or anything electric, yes, it's much better, but you have to remember what are you using for it? And what is the source of this energy?
Kirsten:
There's a lot of considerations that go into choosing a system that's right for your location for example. Francisco, what type of heat pumps are out there available on the market?
Francisco:
There are a few options for people out there, and, before mentioning specific technologies, I want to go back and talk about the buckets and technologies that we have. As we mentioned, heat pumps are about moving heat from one place to the other. They're classified, depending on the source from which you're extracting the heat, in mainly two buckets: air and water. So, you have air source, heat pumps and water source heat pumps, and the other aspect to it is where you’re moving that heat to, so you can move that heat to air directly. Again, you can move it to water or you can move it to a refrigerant. Just to mention a few technologies … we have VRF technologies for example, that's ‘variable refrigerant flow’. That technology specifically moves the heat to a refrigerant and then moves it around the building. And within VRF technology, you have the option of extracting the heat from the air or the water. So, you will have air source VRF and water source VRF. Those are just a few examples, but whenever you are thinking about a type of heat pump those are the two questions you have to ask. Where are you extracting the heat and where you're moving it? And those are the two key things that you need to know.
Kirsten:
Mike, there's a lot of pressure on the electrical grid, a lot of added draw, based on the coming preponderance of electrical vehicles, and people are wondering, “where's all this power going to come from? ”What are the risks to the grid, to the supply of electrifying building heating?
Mike:
As you said, a lot of people are thinking about how to become decarbonized, and building decarbonization. We know that buildings, they emit a lot of emissions globally, more than 40% of global emissions come from buildings. When you look into building heating in certain jurisdictions, it could be more than 20% of the total emissions in certain countries come just from building heating. So what's going to happen when we move away from fossil fuel or try to reduce this fossil fuel heating in the building stock and move into electrified heat? What's going to happen to the grid?
What we know now is that we need to increase the capacity of our clean grid in many parts of Canada, and we think that with the electrical regeneration and distribution and transmission capacity must double, at least, to meet all the electrification demand and transportation, industry, and building. When we dig closer and zoom into buildings, when we start to electrify the heating of the building, you look into the options out there. If you're just going to use an electric heater or an electric furnace or electric boiler, you're looking into substantial electrical upgrades for electrical infrastructure, both from the distribution and from the electrical grid and inside the building. So when you look into what options that you have, a heat pump would not use as much electrical heat capacity as an electric boiler. It would use much less. When you're looking into this, reducing the strain on the grid, I think heat pumps will play a great role for all the local distribution companies and the utilities out there. I think that would be the preferred options for them because the heat pumps will not use as much electricity, and it will not use as much capacity when we hit the grid peak.
Kirsten:
We're located in Canada. We're in Toronto right now having this conversation, but given our climate across Canada, which differs dramatically from the East Coast, for example, to what happens in northern Alberta, what are the systems that work better in Canada than others?
Francisco:
Precisely because of that difference in Canada and around the world, really, the selection of the right heat pump for your application is location dependent, so there's really not a single answer to it and it's a multi-pronged sort of question. But, generally speaking, in the milder climates where the outdoor temperature is not as cold, air source heat pumps will be better. They will lead to a simplified system and, in places where the temperature outside gets too cold, and you need to heat the space, potentially water source heat pumps could be a better option.
Kirsten:
Mike, how does the cost of heat pump technology compare to other forms of heating?
Mike:
When we are talking about an electric boiler, comparing the heat pump with an electric boiler for example, it's more expensive. And if you compare it to even to fossil fuel, natural gas is the most prominent way of heating homes in Canada and many other places in the world. Heat pumps will come at a much higher cost, frankly, and it could be three times more expensive to get a heat pump and install it versus natural gas, but when you think about the whole total cost of ownership of the heat pump over many, many years, you will come to breakeven at a point.We have to remember also that there are many different factors that affect costs.It's not usually just upfront costs that you're paying for.Canadians, over the past year or so, they've been seeing the natural gas prices increase by 20 to 30% on their natural gas bills. We haven't still seen the carbon taxes kick in fully, but with the years, you will see that your operational cost in fossil fuel is going to increase.When you factor in other factors, the total cost of ownership when you do a whole lifecycle analysis for the whole system, they break even.We expect that they will break even very, very soon.
Francisco:
And to add to that, back to the discussion about the dependence on the climate, the cost and the operation cost varies depending on the location. Again, because of the different rates and comparisons between natural gas and electricity cost, that ratio really makes a difference about when exactly that breakeven point is achieved. But again, with carbon pricing coming online and increasing over time, essentially the cost of heating with natural gas is increasing … the point at which it will be equivalent to heating with electricity is going to be reached sooner. Once that's reached, moving forward, heating with electricity and using heat pumps tends to, operationally speaking, be more cost effective.
Kirsten:
And looking at it from a sustainability point of view - they're talking about gas stoves being on the bubble, as it were. People's homes and gas barbecues are now being demonized. So, natural gas furnaces are probably going to be questioned even more as we go forward. Mike, what does the future hold for heat pumps and how are they going to help us decarbonize buildings?
Mike:
When we're looking at what's going to happen in the next 10 to 20 years, we know that we have a goal as a country and as a world to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel. We believe that the heat pumps are going to play a critical role in this. There is a lot of heating equipment stock that's out there that is powered by fossil fuel and natural gas. And we believe in the next 10-20 years, we will start to heavily replace all of this fossil fuel equipment with something else. The question that a lot of building owners, a lot of our clients, are asking right now is “what are the options for me to replace this equipment? Should I go with an electric furnace, electric boiler, or something else? ”And we believe from a pure engineering energy efficiency, that if you have available energy, in terms of air, in terms of water, that you can use and move this energy efficiently, you should be looking into the heat pump. If you don't, maybe you can look into other options. Maybe the solution will be something that's a mix between one technology and another, but at the end of the day, we think that this technology will be very critical, will play a great role in replacing 20 to 30 years’ worth of equipment in the next 10 to 20 years.
Kirsten:
Francisco, what changes in the design process when you're looking at the heat pump installation?
Francisco:
That's something that owners who are looking into this technology should be aware of. Designing a system and selecting equipment when you're considering heat pumps can be somewhat different from your typical and conventional plant design. When you're thinking of conventional plant design, you're thinking of designing for the coldest day and, obviously, the hottest day. And so, you're designing around those metrics, but when you are thinking of heat pumps, now the temperature over the year makes a big difference. So, just to give you an example, when you're thinking and considering geothermal geoexchange heat pumps, your geothermal field has to be balanced over a year, because otherwise, if it's not balanced, you can overheat the ground or you can freeze over the ground, at which point your field is out of operation. It cannot operate anymore; so, now you have to think on what's happening over a time period of a year, even further, to make sure that you're properly designing and also thinking of proper operation of the system to make sure that you have a long-term operation, and your systems won't be compromised. It's a different approach in which we're not only thinking about those coldest days, but we’re also thinking of what's happening across the year. And so, what that means is you need some specialized tools and a bit more investigation to really arrive to the proper design and selection and equipment for your specific application.
Kirsten:
Are there redundancy considerations that you have to take into account?
Francisco:
Yes, depending on the system, I'll give one specific example. If you're considering air source heat pumps, those air source heat pumps have some limitations into how cold they can actually operate, and their capacity can be reduced depending on the temperatures outside, in which case you have to consider a backup source, which could be an electric boiler for example. So maybe this electric boiler will operate a few hours a year and it's only to compensate but, as a package, the system will have a much greater performance over the entire operation of the system. But you have to keep in mind the limitations that you might have in certain conditions of your system and make sure that you have proper redundancy and backup to consider that implication.
Kirsten:
How is designing for heat pumps different than designing for conventional systems? So, I'll ask you both that question, but I'll start with you, Francisco.
Francisco:
Well, it becomes a quite collaborative design process.Again, going back to the example of geothermal exchange, you have to work very closely with your geothermal specialist in understanding the field and the properties of your ground and what's happening over time.So, it becomes a very collaborative environment where there has to be communication both ways.How you're designing your system, how that impacts the geothermal system and vice versa. So, it's a very involved process, but really engaging and interesting and something we're getting more and more into, and has shown to be quite an engaging process from both sides.
Mike:
The way that these systems are different from a conventional system is that first, Canada specifically, it's very important to find the source. As Francisco said, for these heat pumps they just move energy, so finding that source is critical. In a normal building, your source of heating is natural gas. You get natural gas from the utility. You're burning this natural gas, or you have fuel oil. You're burning that diesel. You're heating the building. And a heat pump, we need to find the source. If we can drill into the ground, we will consider this as a source. We have, for example, the ability to reclaim heat from somewhere. That will be a source people look into; for example, industrial waste heat, can we see this as a source; can we reclaim heat from municipal sewers?That could be a source, so it's not as easy as just ‘we're going to plug into that utility and we're going to go ahead and heat the building’. So that's one thing that's very different from a conventional system. The other thing that is different is that we have to think about the technology itself. Currently the heat pump technology has some limitations. As Francisco said, there is a limitation on the air source heat pump when they are at a very low temperature. We have to think about what the performance looks like. Maybe we need a backup system, but there's also limitations on what temperatures they can produce heat at. So sometimes we have to look into the design of the building itself, how good is the building envelope, for example? How much are we investing into surface area for coils to heat that building? Where else can we make the building more energy efficient? And I'm sure that Francisco can also highlight this specifically.
Francisco:
And to add to that point, I want to make it clear that technology is advancing very quickly. We are seeing how rapidly cold climate heat pumps are being developed and they're able to deal with colder and colder temperatures. There are also changes that are happening due to refrigerant limitations and phase-outs. So, the technology is advancing very quickly, but we're seeing the industry pushing forward and making sure that these heat pumps are more widely available and also capable of dealing with a wider range of climates.
Kirsten:
I want to ask you both, because you're both passionate about decarbonization and low carbon energy, did you start out being supportive of heat pump technology or is it something you came to over the course of your career? I'll start with you, Francisco.
Francisco:
It was a technology that I was aware of from my background in school looking at thermodynamics and refrigeration cycles and so on. So, I had some exposure to it, but it's really interesting. It's definitely a very engaging field and it's very evolving and it has so many aspects to it that make it very engineering-like when you're working with these systems, because you really have to think about them and there are very creative ways, and you can set up your systems and come up with solutions that are very unique and very tailored. Again, it's very climate dependent, location dependent, and utility cost dependent. Every time you get into a project, it's a brand-new project. You have multiple options you can go through and it's a customized system and since I've started working on them, I've been quite happy to see how the technology and the field is evolving, client and owners becoming more aware of them and understanding them and being implemented. We are seeing many, many projects, they're almost becoming the conventional thing now we're seeing in a lot of our projects, so very exciting to what's coming with those.
Kirsten:
And you, Mike?
Mike:
For me, as many of you have heard, if you've ever studied mechanical engineering or mechanical engineering student for me, besides thermodynamics and heat transfer, refrigeration systems is one of the most intense courses that I took. So that was my exposure to refrigeration and heat pumps or reverse refrigeration systems, but also in my home, when my parents bought an air conditioner, they chose the option to get a reverse air conditioner. We bought this air conditioner that's in the summer, could cool down the house, but in the winter, we could reverse it and it could produce a high temperature. That was my first exposure even before I go into engineering. But when I came to HH Angus, my first project was just a normal reefer refrigeration machine 2400-ton water chiller machines. So that was just the traditional refrigeration. But then afterwards, with increased focus on using energy more efficiently, we moved into other projects that were using water source heat pumps doing heat recovery. Now, we're expanding to do three times more capacities and much bigger projects across Canada using this technology. I could see it over the years, but I would never have expected it to be that one thing or one technology that is becoming very important to us in the future.
Kirsten:
Well, I think you must be having success here at the company because I was recently speaking to a couple of our senior managers for our career section of our website. And when I asked them what are the exciting new trends that you're really interested in following, they both said independently, heat pump technology. So I think the inroads are definitely being made there and people are becoming more aware. I want to thank you both - Mike Hassaballa and Francisco Contreras. Today, we've been talking about heat pump technology and if our listeners have any questions about that, they can always send an e-mail to lowcarbon. Thank you very much for joining us today.
Mike:
Thank you.
Francisco:
Thank you.
Welcome to ‘Expanding the Possible’. This podcast from HH Angus explores how engineering is advancing the built environment from innovations in building systems to the Internet of Things, from digital services connecting the modern workplace to combating the impact of climate change, we delve into the exciting developments in today's and tomorrow's building infrastructure.
Hello, I'm Kirsten Nielsen. In this episode of ‘Expanding the Possible’, we're talking about heat pump technology, and today I'm joined by Mike Hassaballa, a mechanical engineer in our Energy Division and Francisco Contreras, a mechanical engineer and energy analyst in our Knowledge Management team. In their work, both Mike and Francisco focus on energy systems, low carbon energy and decarbonization.
Welcome, gentlemen.
Francisco:
Thank you.
Mike:
Thank you, Kirsten.
Kirsten:
For listeners who are not familiar with the heat pump technology, Mike, in as much detail as you both are obviously, what is a heat pump and how is it different from a furnace or an electric heater?
Mike:
Basically, it's a machine that its whole purpose is moving the heat from one place to another. From a low temperature typically to a high temperature. The main difference between a heat pump and an electric furnace or electric boiler is that this machine is using a certain thermodynamic cycle that is fundamentally different from what an electric boiler or electric furnace would do. An electric furnace or electric boiler would take electricity and use this electricity to heat a medium. The heat pump is doing something fundamentally different. It is just moving energy from one place to another. It's doing this using electricity, so we're just using the electricity to move things. The electric furnace or electric boiler is using the electricity to heat. So that's the fundamental difference between the two machines, which makes a huge impact on a lot of things when you're doing heating or cooling with the heat pump.
Kirsten:
And Francisco, you wanted to add something to that?
Francisco:
So as Mike mentioned, the heat pump moves heat from one place to the other. And the other conventional sources, like electric heater or electric gas boiler generate or produce heat; one way that I find easy to relate and explain what a heat pump is, is to think about an air conditioner. Most people are familiar with how that works, so imagine that you can reverse that process and instead of extracting heat from your space, you're extracting heat from the outdoors, so the heat pump can work in both directions.
Kirsten:
Mike, why does the heat pump have high coefficient of performance compared to electric heat that has 100% efficiency?
Mike:
So first, let's talk about the electric heater. Why does an electric heater have a very high efficiency? 100%, as people many people claim. It's because we're using electricity to generate the heat. Electricity is one of the highest forms of energy out there. It's pure exergy. To produce electricity, we've already lost up to a huge percentage of the original source of energy. If you're using a fossil fuel, if you're using renewable energy, you lose 60% to 80% of the source energy to produce that electricity. For me, it makes total sense that if you're using an electric heater, you should get 100% because you already lost 60 to 80% of the energy to produce this electricity.
Now let's talk about heat pumps. Heat pumps take this electricity that we already spent so much energy and sweat and tears to produce, and we're using this electricity to pump energy from one place to another. Most of the energy that we're using for heating, it's not because of the electricity. It's because we're taking that energy and pumping it from one place to another. To pump something from one place to another, most of the energy is already there. We're just moving it. Moving it with the electricity should not take a lot of energy, so that's how we get this multiplier effect. The coefficient of performance. And we now have 200 percent, 300 percent times the electricity that we're spending. So that's why, when you compare the heat pump to electric boiler or anything electric, yes, it's much better, but you have to remember what are you using for it? And what is the source of this energy?
Kirsten:
There's a lot of considerations that go into choosing a system that's right for your location for example. Francisco, what type of heat pumps are out there available on the market?
Francisco:
There are a few options for people out there, and, before mentioning specific technologies, I want to go back and talk about the buckets and technologies that we have. As we mentioned, heat pumps are about moving heat from one place to the other. They're classified, depending on the source from which you're extracting the heat, in mainly two buckets: air and water. So, you have air source, heat pumps and water source heat pumps, and the other aspect to it is where you’re moving that heat to, so you can move that heat to air directly. Again, you can move it to water or you can move it to a refrigerant. Just to mention a few technologies … we have VRF technologies for example, that's ‘variable refrigerant flow’. That technology specifically moves the heat to a refrigerant and then moves it around the building. And within VRF technology, you have the option of extracting the heat from the air or the water. So, you will have air source VRF and water source VRF. Those are just a few examples, but whenever you are thinking about a type of heat pump those are the two questions you have to ask. Where are you extracting the heat and where you're moving it? And those are the two key things that you need to know.
Kirsten:
Mike, there's a lot of pressure on the electrical grid, a lot of added draw, based on the coming preponderance of electrical vehicles, and people are wondering, “where's all this power going to come from? ”What are the risks to the grid, to the supply of electrifying building heating?
Mike:
As you said, a lot of people are thinking about how to become decarbonized, and building decarbonization. We know that buildings, they emit a lot of emissions globally, more than 40% of global emissions come from buildings. When you look into building heating in certain jurisdictions, it could be more than 20% of the total emissions in certain countries come just from building heating. So what's going to happen when we move away from fossil fuel or try to reduce this fossil fuel heating in the building stock and move into electrified heat? What's going to happen to the grid?
What we know now is that we need to increase the capacity of our clean grid in many parts of Canada, and we think that with the electrical regeneration and distribution and transmission capacity must double, at least, to meet all the electrification demand and transportation, industry, and building. When we dig closer and zoom into buildings, when we start to electrify the heating of the building, you look into the options out there. If you're just going to use an electric heater or an electric furnace or electric boiler, you're looking into substantial electrical upgrades for electrical infrastructure, both from the distribution and from the electrical grid and inside the building. So when you look into what options that you have, a heat pump would not use as much electrical heat capacity as an electric boiler. It would use much less. When you're looking into this, reducing the strain on the grid, I think heat pumps will play a great role for all the local distribution companies and the utilities out there. I think that would be the preferred options for them because the heat pumps will not use as much electricity, and it will not use as much capacity when we hit the grid peak.
Kirsten:
We're located in Canada. We're in Toronto right now having this conversation, but given our climate across Canada, which differs dramatically from the East Coast, for example, to what happens in northern Alberta, what are the systems that work better in Canada than others?
Francisco:
Precisely because of that difference in Canada and around the world, really, the selection of the right heat pump for your application is location dependent, so there's really not a single answer to it and it's a multi-pronged sort of question. But, generally speaking, in the milder climates where the outdoor temperature is not as cold, air source heat pumps will be better. They will lead to a simplified system and, in places where the temperature outside gets too cold, and you need to heat the space, potentially water source heat pumps could be a better option.
Kirsten:
Mike, how does the cost of heat pump technology compare to other forms of heating?
Mike:
When we are talking about an electric boiler, comparing the heat pump with an electric boiler for example, it's more expensive. And if you compare it to even to fossil fuel, natural gas is the most prominent way of heating homes in Canada and many other places in the world. Heat pumps will come at a much higher cost, frankly, and it could be three times more expensive to get a heat pump and install it versus natural gas, but when you think about the whole total cost of ownership of the heat pump over many, many years, you will come to breakeven at a point.We have to remember also that there are many different factors that affect costs.It's not usually just upfront costs that you're paying for.Canadians, over the past year or so, they've been seeing the natural gas prices increase by 20 to 30% on their natural gas bills. We haven't still seen the carbon taxes kick in fully, but with the years, you will see that your operational cost in fossil fuel is going to increase.When you factor in other factors, the total cost of ownership when you do a whole lifecycle analysis for the whole system, they break even.We expect that they will break even very, very soon.
Francisco:
And to add to that, back to the discussion about the dependence on the climate, the cost and the operation cost varies depending on the location. Again, because of the different rates and comparisons between natural gas and electricity cost, that ratio really makes a difference about when exactly that breakeven point is achieved. But again, with carbon pricing coming online and increasing over time, essentially the cost of heating with natural gas is increasing … the point at which it will be equivalent to heating with electricity is going to be reached sooner. Once that's reached, moving forward, heating with electricity and using heat pumps tends to, operationally speaking, be more cost effective.
Kirsten:
And looking at it from a sustainability point of view - they're talking about gas stoves being on the bubble, as it were. People's homes and gas barbecues are now being demonized. So, natural gas furnaces are probably going to be questioned even more as we go forward. Mike, what does the future hold for heat pumps and how are they going to help us decarbonize buildings?
Mike:
When we're looking at what's going to happen in the next 10 to 20 years, we know that we have a goal as a country and as a world to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel. We believe that the heat pumps are going to play a critical role in this. There is a lot of heating equipment stock that's out there that is powered by fossil fuel and natural gas. And we believe in the next 10-20 years, we will start to heavily replace all of this fossil fuel equipment with something else. The question that a lot of building owners, a lot of our clients, are asking right now is “what are the options for me to replace this equipment? Should I go with an electric furnace, electric boiler, or something else? ”And we believe from a pure engineering energy efficiency, that if you have available energy, in terms of air, in terms of water, that you can use and move this energy efficiently, you should be looking into the heat pump. If you don't, maybe you can look into other options. Maybe the solution will be something that's a mix between one technology and another, but at the end of the day, we think that this technology will be very critical, will play a great role in replacing 20 to 30 years’ worth of equipment in the next 10 to 20 years.
Kirsten:
Francisco, what changes in the design process when you're looking at the heat pump installation?
Francisco:
That's something that owners who are looking into this technology should be aware of. Designing a system and selecting equipment when you're considering heat pumps can be somewhat different from your typical and conventional plant design. When you're thinking of conventional plant design, you're thinking of designing for the coldest day and, obviously, the hottest day. And so, you're designing around those metrics, but when you are thinking of heat pumps, now the temperature over the year makes a big difference. So, just to give you an example, when you're thinking and considering geothermal geoexchange heat pumps, your geothermal field has to be balanced over a year, because otherwise, if it's not balanced, you can overheat the ground or you can freeze over the ground, at which point your field is out of operation. It cannot operate anymore; so, now you have to think on what's happening over a time period of a year, even further, to make sure that you're properly designing and also thinking of proper operation of the system to make sure that you have a long-term operation, and your systems won't be compromised. It's a different approach in which we're not only thinking about those coldest days, but we’re also thinking of what's happening across the year. And so, what that means is you need some specialized tools and a bit more investigation to really arrive to the proper design and selection and equipment for your specific application.
Kirsten:
Are there redundancy considerations that you have to take into account?
Francisco:
Yes, depending on the system, I'll give one specific example. If you're considering air source heat pumps, those air source heat pumps have some limitations into how cold they can actually operate, and their capacity can be reduced depending on the temperatures outside, in which case you have to consider a backup source, which could be an electric boiler for example. So maybe this electric boiler will operate a few hours a year and it's only to compensate but, as a package, the system will have a much greater performance over the entire operation of the system. But you have to keep in mind the limitations that you might have in certain conditions of your system and make sure that you have proper redundancy and backup to consider that implication.
Kirsten:
How is designing for heat pumps different than designing for conventional systems? So, I'll ask you both that question, but I'll start with you, Francisco.
Francisco:
Well, it becomes a quite collaborative design process.Again, going back to the example of geothermal exchange, you have to work very closely with your geothermal specialist in understanding the field and the properties of your ground and what's happening over time.So, it becomes a very collaborative environment where there has to be communication both ways.How you're designing your system, how that impacts the geothermal system and vice versa. So, it's a very involved process, but really engaging and interesting and something we're getting more and more into, and has shown to be quite an engaging process from both sides.
Mike:
The way that these systems are different from a conventional system is that first, Canada specifically, it's very important to find the source. As Francisco said, for these heat pumps they just move energy, so finding that source is critical. In a normal building, your source of heating is natural gas. You get natural gas from the utility. You're burning this natural gas, or you have fuel oil. You're burning that diesel. You're heating the building. And a heat pump, we need to find the source. If we can drill into the ground, we will consider this as a source. We have, for example, the ability to reclaim heat from somewhere. That will be a source people look into; for example, industrial waste heat, can we see this as a source; can we reclaim heat from municipal sewers?That could be a source, so it's not as easy as just ‘we're going to plug into that utility and we're going to go ahead and heat the building’. So that's one thing that's very different from a conventional system. The other thing that is different is that we have to think about the technology itself. Currently the heat pump technology has some limitations. As Francisco said, there is a limitation on the air source heat pump when they are at a very low temperature. We have to think about what the performance looks like. Maybe we need a backup system, but there's also limitations on what temperatures they can produce heat at. So sometimes we have to look into the design of the building itself, how good is the building envelope, for example? How much are we investing into surface area for coils to heat that building? Where else can we make the building more energy efficient? And I'm sure that Francisco can also highlight this specifically.
Francisco:
And to add to that point, I want to make it clear that technology is advancing very quickly. We are seeing how rapidly cold climate heat pumps are being developed and they're able to deal with colder and colder temperatures. There are also changes that are happening due to refrigerant limitations and phase-outs. So, the technology is advancing very quickly, but we're seeing the industry pushing forward and making sure that these heat pumps are more widely available and also capable of dealing with a wider range of climates.
Kirsten:
I want to ask you both, because you're both passionate about decarbonization and low carbon energy, did you start out being supportive of heat pump technology or is it something you came to over the course of your career? I'll start with you, Francisco.
Francisco:
It was a technology that I was aware of from my background in school looking at thermodynamics and refrigeration cycles and so on. So, I had some exposure to it, but it's really interesting. It's definitely a very engaging field and it's very evolving and it has so many aspects to it that make it very engineering-like when you're working with these systems, because you really have to think about them and there are very creative ways, and you can set up your systems and come up with solutions that are very unique and very tailored. Again, it's very climate dependent, location dependent, and utility cost dependent. Every time you get into a project, it's a brand-new project. You have multiple options you can go through and it's a customized system and since I've started working on them, I've been quite happy to see how the technology and the field is evolving, client and owners becoming more aware of them and understanding them and being implemented. We are seeing many, many projects, they're almost becoming the conventional thing now we're seeing in a lot of our projects, so very exciting to what's coming with those.
Kirsten:
And you, Mike?
Mike:
For me, as many of you have heard, if you've ever studied mechanical engineering or mechanical engineering student for me, besides thermodynamics and heat transfer, refrigeration systems is one of the most intense courses that I took. So that was my exposure to refrigeration and heat pumps or reverse refrigeration systems, but also in my home, when my parents bought an air conditioner, they chose the option to get a reverse air conditioner. We bought this air conditioner that's in the summer, could cool down the house, but in the winter, we could reverse it and it could produce a high temperature. That was my first exposure even before I go into engineering. But when I came to HH Angus, my first project was just a normal reefer refrigeration machine 2400-ton water chiller machines. So that was just the traditional refrigeration. But then afterwards, with increased focus on using energy more efficiently, we moved into other projects that were using water source heat pumps doing heat recovery. Now, we're expanding to do three times more capacities and much bigger projects across Canada using this technology. I could see it over the years, but I would never have expected it to be that one thing or one technology that is becoming very important to us in the future.
Kirsten:
Well, I think you must be having success here at the company because I was recently speaking to a couple of our senior managers for our career section of our website. And when I asked them what are the exciting new trends that you're really interested in following, they both said independently, heat pump technology. So I think the inroads are definitely being made there and people are becoming more aware. I want to thank you both - Mike Hassaballa and Francisco Contreras. Today, we've been talking about heat pump technology and if our listeners have any questions about that, they can always send an e-mail to lowcarbon. Thank you very much for joining us today.
Mike:
Thank you.
Francisco:
Thank you.