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Adoption of innovative heating systems—needs and attitudes of Swedish homeowners

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Abstract

Questionnaire surveys of Swedish homeowners of detached houses were carried out in 2004 and 2007 to understand their needs and attitudes towards attributes of innovative heating systems (IHSs) comprised of a bedrock heat pump, district heating, or a wood pellet boiler. In each occasion 1,500 homeowners were randomly selected. The response rate was 42% in 2004 and 48% in 2007. Results showed that the majority of the respondents were satisfied with their existing heating system and did not intend to install new systems. Economic factors and functional reliability were the most important factors in the respondents’ choices of heating system, while environmental factors were of lower importance. Among the IHSs, respondents had the most favorable attitude towards bedrock heat pumps followed by district heating and pellet boilers. But the attitude was more favorable towards electric boilers than for pellet boilers. The least favorable attitude was towards oil boilers. Between 2004 and 2007, there was a positive change in respondents’ attitude towards IHSs and electric boilers, and a negative change in attitude towards resistance heaters and oil boilers.

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Notes

  1. The European standard EN14511 defines a heat pump as “an encased assembly or assemblies designed as a unit to provide delivery of heat. It includes an electrically operated refrigeration system for heating. It can have means for cooling, circulating, cleaning, and dehumidifying the air. The cooling is by means of reversing the refrigeration cycle”. Two basic configurations of geothermal heat pumps are ground source heat pumps and bedrock (or rock) heat pumps. In case of the former, heat is extracted from pipes laid horizontally or vertically in the soil, while bedrock heat pumps extract heat from the bedrock through pipes placed in boreholes of 100–200 m (see http://www.heatpumpcentre.org for more).

  2. Assuming that a house has a water-based heat distribution system with a chimney installed and space for fuel storage, the investment cost would be about SEK 20,000–30,000 to retrofit an existing oil boiler with a pellet burner, about SEK 55,000–70,000 for an automatic pellet boiler, about SEK 120,000–160,000 for a bedrock heat pump, and about SEK 50,000 for connection to a district heating system (STEM 2006).

  3. This is the maximum sampling error (SE) for simple random sampling. Stratified samples can produce SEs lower than those associated with a simple random sample of the same size, for variables that differ (on average) by stratum, if rates of selection are constant across the strata (Fowler 2002).

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the European Union, Jämtland County, the Swedish Association of Pellet Producers (PiR), and Sveaskog AB.

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  1. Ecotechnology, Mid Sweden University, 831 25, Östersund, Sweden

    Krushna Mahapatra & Leif Gustavsson

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  1. Krushna Mahapatra
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  2. Leif Gustavsson
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Correspondence to Krushna Mahapatra.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 9 Comparison of the proportion of respondents in the original sample (to whom questionnaires were sent) and in the response category (those who returned the questionnaires) with respect to NUTS regions, age, and household income; for specific heating systems, comparison is between national level and our surveys
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Mahapatra, K., Gustavsson, L. Adoption of innovative heating systems—needs and attitudes of Swedish homeowners. Energy Efficiency 3, 1–18 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-009-9057-7

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