China heat pump industry goes into rapid developing chunnel

In the past couples of years, heat pump industry in China has been developing rapidly: annual growth rate above 50% in 2009, and the total output value 1.5 billion RMB in that year. The fact told us that the prosperity of heat pumps as energy efficient products has coming, not only in western developed countries like Europe countries, but also in developing ones, like China.

Let us go back to almost ten years ago. At the beginning of 21 century, little Chinese people knew the name of "heat pump", in fact, I belive the rate of those knew it will less than 1%. From 2001-2005, the market of heat pumps was in a starting period, when people began to knew the concept of what these products were and what was their usage. In the latter half of 2000's heat pump market is rising apparently. The signal is there are more and more heat pump companies, including munafacutrers and marketers. The other signal is that more and more heat pumps have been installed for buidings for heating and cooling.

So far the most popular products are air source heat pumps. Most of them are designed and produced to supply hot water. So they are air water heat pumps in most of the cases. They are installed as the substitutes for electric water heaters and boilers in hotels, schools, factories, shops and residential houses.

Compared with air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps have more installation difficulties. So there are less of this kind of heat pumps currently. While, the potential of ground source heat pumps is huge. They are installed for large buildings, providing stalbel and much heating or cooling energy.

Other kind of products, such as heat recovery heat pumps and brine heat pumps are not so popular as the mentioned two. They are at researching and starting stage yet. Their values are being discovered.

Most of heat pump manufacturers are centered largely in South China and East China, like Guangdong province and Zhejiang province. For the reason of climate difference between two regions, Zhejiang's products can be used in the ambient temperature of -5 to -10 C above, while Guangdong's only 0 C above.

For readers' reference: heat pump applications