Chapter 103 - 102 Ground Source Heat Pump Technology
According to the law of conservation of energy, generating heat with 1 kW·h of electricity cannot possibly exceed 1 kW·h, but if ground-source heat pump technology is used, it can bring about 4 kW·h of heat or cold with 1 kW·h of electricity.
At first glance, this seems almost magical, like some pseudoscience trickery, but in fact, this is a tangible technology, and devices that achieve this level of efficiency are ubiquitous in our lives, with air conditioners being the most representative.
In thermodynamics, the ratio of energy conversion efficiency is called the coefficient of performance (COP).
Among these, electric heaters, or directly electrically heating devices, have the lowest efficiency, roughly only about 60%, meaning they consume 1 kW·h of electrical energy to produce 0.6 kW·h of heat.
Apart from electric heating, the efficiency of energy boilers varies depending on the fuel, with natural gas and oil boilers having an efficiency of about 0.9, while coal only achieves 0.6.
In contrast, electric boilers have quite a high efficiency, reaching about 0.95, like using electricity directly in an oven, which is not as good as using a kettle to boil water.
Achieving an efficiency of 0.9 is already very high, as the law of conservation of energy limits it to never reaching 1.
However, the efficiency of an air conditioner in cooling mode can exceed 3.
This does not violate the law of conservation of energy because air conditioners use a refrigerant to transfer the indoor heat outside; the heat it moves is not generated by the air conditioner itself but is pre-existing, merely transported by the unit.