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0 pointsamluto4y ago0 comments

Indeed. To heat your house with hydrogen, you would use a fuel cell to convert it to electricity and use the electricity to power a heat pump.

Heck, to heat your house with natural gas, it would be dramatically more efficient to burn the gas in a small combined heat and power generator and use the power output to operate a heat pump or otherwise do something useful.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

leobg4y ago· 2 in thread

I hadn‘t thought about that. If it‘s more efficient to go the H2 > electricity > heat pump path, then, of course, burning the H2 for heat directly would be a dumb idea.

I also never heard of oil or gas being burned to drive a generator which in turn heats the home using a heat pump. I would have guessed that the losses during conversion are so high, especially when done at the single-home scale, that it isn‘t worth it. Do you know of any such systems as you describe that are in operation?

ephbit4y ago

> ... never heard of oil or gas being burned to drive a generator which in turn heats the home using a heat pump.

I don't think the losses during conversion are the problem. Costs are.

I'd guess until now energy prices simply haven't been high enough to apply this concept to small scale (single home), because compared to just a oil/gas furnace (using relatively cheap fossil energy) the system consists of more and higher-tech components so it costs more to buy and because overall it's a more complicated system it'll likely be more expensive in maintenance as well.

On the large scale you can now read about ideas like replacing gas furnaces at home with heat pumps and instead burning the gas in industrial scale power plants (to generate the required electricity) and also use the "waste" heat.

aaronblohowiak4y ago

You use the waste heat from the combustion to also heat the home

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