Technology of Business reporterIf for some reason you wanted to bring it from a pleasant 20C to boiling point, German firm MAN Energy Solutions has a heat pump that could do it. And it would take less time than Kenneth Branagh's film version of Hamlet.
Heat pumps require electricity to work but can produce around three or four kilowatts of heat for every kilowatt of power they consume, making them highly efficient. Plus, some designs can provide cooling as well.but domestic devices are relatively small and tend to have outputs of several kilowatts or so. MAN Energy's biggest commercial heat pump is thousands of times more powerful - with a total heating capacity of 48 megawatts .
"The demand for district heating is exploding," says Mr Decorvet. An urgency to move away from fossil fuels is leading to a rush - particularly in Europe - for bigger and beefier heat pump systems that can power entire towns. But who has the biggest, megawatts-wise? This is probably true, it has a maximum capacity of 215MW - but that total is the sum of seven heat pumps, two 40MW and five 27MW devices, a spokesman for energy provider Stockholm Exergi explains.that consists of four units. Two of them are actually bigger than those in Stockholm, with capacities of 50MW each.
Size isn't necessarily everything, notes Dave Pearson, group sustainable development director at Star Refrigeration. Efficiency matters and he argues that ammonia - his firm's choice of refrigerant - helps to make heat pumps particularly efficient. There are many other examples of heat pump-powered district heating systems springing up. In Vienna, a 55MW system using three heat pumps is due to go live this autumn.