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Tesla heat pump / HVAC (non auto)

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#46
Gigapress said:
Ellie in Space video on Boxabl.


You may have read some of my previous posts on this company. Elon bought one of the initial prototypes and has it in his backyard as a guest unit in Starbase. I still believe Tesla should install their home energy products (solar, powerwall, chargers, HVAC someday) in a factory on an assembly line, which obviously requires someone to solve the problem of building houses in a factory. I think Boxabl has that solution. This shift would radically improve Tesla’s gross margin and scalability.

Boxabl in this video announced they’re already about to lease a third factory with a fourth very big one planned probably for Texas.

Also they’re showing Tesla Powerwall and car charger on one of the new multistory home prototypes. First time I’ve seen that.

View attachment 903017
Click to expand...
 
#51
Buckminster said:
Wow - time for Tesla to enter the market?
Heat pump sales outpaced gas furnace sales in the US in 2022
Click to expand...
Wow, I can see the initial offering: great cost savings over gas, energy efficiency rebates, two-year-long installation waitlists, a new forum, ecstatic campers, and a new set of YouTube “influencers.” Over time, OTA software updates make the units even more energy efficient, enable games to be played on the 12” digital display thermostat, and offer voice command options that work for some but not others. Several more updates disable the user’s ability to control temperatures and mode (heating vs. cooling) and provide only an automatic setting. Later a hardware update is offered installing leftover USS car parts providing no functionality whatever but cost $199 and can be accomplished by a mobile technician. A few OTA updates later FAHC (fully-automated heating and cooling) will be offered for $9000 one-time or $150/month. It will do nothing, but it might in the future. Some updates later and the unit will pair with the Tesla solar roof to only operate when the roof if providing appropriate juice in the amount necessary to keep itself comfortable. At this time, most owners will look to Trane, Lennox, Rheem, others for replacement units.

Aaah, the Tesla life cycle. Hakuna metata.
 
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#55
Saw this with a sprinter van build already. Eventually when solar is efficient/cheap enough it seems like the economics of pulling water from air will change enough to make it worthwhile too. Makes way more sense when you think about it just like distributed energy, it's much simpler to pull water out of air than to build reservoirs and pipe it it all over the place.
 
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#58
Optimeer said:
tl;dr: Tesla‘s heat pump is a marvel imho.

This video was already shared a few days ago (#414’629), but I found only today time to watch it. I looked into installing a heat pump system last year for my house and ended with an offer for CHF 60‘000 = 60’000 USD including installation. Clearly the demand for heat pump was very strong at this time. I decided to not install a heat pump now, despite being legally obliged to install a new heating system within 8 years.

After presentation of master plan 3, I was thinking a bit about how a conventional heat pump system could be improved to increase adoption (if somebody is interested in this topic, please DM me, I won‘t share my ideas here). For that I looked a bit into how conventional heat pumps are designed.

From my analysis, I identified following hurdles for a greater adoption of today’s residental heat pump systems:
- they require a lot of space, so you need to think about where to put them.
- the retrofitting of the piping required for the heat pump system is complex.
- heat pumps are noisy (about 60 dB) which requires permitting to prevent annoying of the neighbours. Reason No 1 for the noise is the compressor and reason No 2 is the fan.
- they also generate vibrations, which complicates the installation since you don‘t want to feel these vibrations in your house.
- the maximal power draw is higher than the standard 230V x 10 A, which means often the electrical panel needs an adjustment and in my case I would end up installing a new electrical panel. A reason for the high max. power draw is the high start-up current, an other the additional resistive heater.
- I wanted to install a heat pump system which is able not only to heat the house but also to chill the house a few degrees in summer by pumping the cooling water a bit warmer than the temperature of the dew point (to prevent condensation of air humidity). My installer refused to install such a system despite in my opinion it would be very easy to implement.

Now Teslas heat pump system is much better than I have expected.
- The generated heat is not specified in the video, but is higher than 6 kW. It may be 7.5 kWh. With this power, you could theorecitally heat a modern, good insulated house. By installing two of these heat pumps you could already heat the great majority of the houses.
- In the video a Coefficient of Performance (COP value) of 5.6 was mentioned. Typical residential heat pump systems have COP-values of between 3 and 4. This means Tesla’s heat pump is 20-30 % more efficient than an average heat pump. One reason seems to be that Tesla uses all available heating sources, 16 in total, as a heat source (different sources of waste heat for example).
- The scroll compressor uses 3x 16 V x 15 A which could be managed by a standard electrical supply in Europe => less electrical work required. By the way, this is a part which will benefit from a future 48 V supply like the cybertruck will have.
- Tesla got rid of the resistive heater which is typically used for very low temperatures and in residential systems during failures to prevent freezing of the cooling water. In a heat pump system, which also heates the warm water of the house, the resistive heater is also used to heat the water from about 50°C to 60°C because conventional heat pumps are not considered being efficient over this temperature difference from 10°C to 60°C, so the heat pump only heats until 50°C. I am not so sure if this is resistive heater (typical power is 6 kW) is really required for this case.
- I don‘t own a Tesla car yet, but I am interested to know the noise a Tesla generates in the outside of the car when A/C is on.
- Tesla uses pressure sensors which also measure the temperature which lowers the amount of requres parts and cabling etc.
- Tesla uses low cost materials such as aluminium while residential heat pump system often use copper. Clearly, Teslas heat pump is optimized for automated mass production.
- Also very important is the amount of refrigerant required, since it has a global warming impact. Concentional residental heat pumps require about 2.5 - 3.5 kg. I would estimate Teslas solution uses 0.5 - 1 kg. I was not able to find any information about this.

If Tesla decides to enter the market for residental heat pumps, they will be competitive.
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#59
UncaNed said:
All videos like this one, and discussions of Tesla's ground-breaking "heat pump", have one thing in common; they have nothing to do with the heat pump, but rather discussions of it's thermal inputs and outputs.

If indeed Tesla COULD make a significantly more efficient heat pump per se (compressor, scroll pump, heat exchangers, and whatever internal magic could make them so efficient, then if they released a standard, popular-sized domestic unit that decreased energy use by, say 25% over other popular models (especially in the hottest countries where summer temperatures are starting to reach 120F), they'd make a bigger worldwide practical decrease in energy use faster by doing that than building complicated systems that integrate many separate appliances into the heat pump system.
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#60
jerry33 said:
I have a mini-split heat pump in the garage but I wouldn't want it for the rest of the house. It doesn't do anything for humidity at all. Now perhaps there are better mini-split heat pumps, but in 2021 it was hard to get anything.
Click to expand...
Why wouldn't humidity condense on the coils like any other air conditioner? All my heat pumps have water drain lines and dehumidifier settings.
 
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