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Heat Pumps
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Mod, 1.4
File Size
Posted
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11.283 MB
13 May, 2023 @ 10:44am
13 May, 2023 @ 2:39pm
2 Change Notes ( view )
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pineapple
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Heat Pumps

Description
This mod adds two new temperature-related buildings based on modern real-world technology, each of which must be unlocked via newly-added research projects.

Each of these buildings is more expensive to build than a Heater or a Cooler, and each one requires its own research project to unlock. However, they are more versatile, more space-efficient, and generally more power-efficient than a Heater and Cooler combo.



Heat pump: A reversible heat pump. It functions similarly to a Cooler, but it can either cool a room and exhaust hot air, or warm a room and exhaust cold air, whichever is needed to achieve the target temperature. It is more power efficient than either a Heater or Cooler, but it requires more resources to build.

Be aware that, similar to their real-life equivalents, a heat pump will not operate at optimum efficiency when trying to keep a room cooled below 0°C, or when trying to heat a room while the outdoor temperature is below 0°C. The lower the temperature, the more efficiency will suffer. At -50°C, it will not be able to draw heat out of the air at all.



Geothermal heat pump: This more advanced temperature control building is more expensive to research and to build than a normal reversible heat pump. Because it uses an underground heat exchanger instead of an exhaust fan, it is placed within a structure instead of on an exterior wall. And because it draws heat from the ground instead of the exterior air, it remains an efficient source of heat even in the most lethally cold climates.
22 Comments
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pineapple  [author] 1 Mar @ 2:28am 
@radioastronomy I don't think that should make a difference. This mod uses the same internal game functions for handling temperature as the vanilla heater and AC just with different math for how much heat or cooling to output and when. So however those work in terms of heating and cooling with adjacent objects, the heat pumps in this mod should work the same. And since RimWorld tracks temperature only on a room-by-room basis indoors, I am pretty sure the only thing that matters is what room a heat pump's output or exhaust is in, and not whether there are any other objects nearby.
radioastronomy 28 Feb @ 5:48pm 
Love this mod. Just wondering, does the number of sides that are unblocked make a difference? For example if the Geothermal heat pump was surrounded by walls on three sides would it still give as much heat to the room as a unit that was freestanding with no walls on any side?
Also, can they be grouped together without blocking each other. For example, if nine of them were placed in a 3x3 layout would they give the same result as nine units with empty space between them?
Shabazza 16 Jan @ 8:14am 
Can confirm now. Works.
Dima 🥔 11 Jan @ 6:29am 
@Shabazza Don't seem to be any.
Shabazza 11 Jan @ 6:06am 
Issues with 1.5?
Miss Vaya 31 Oct, 2024 @ 3:29pm 
@Qwer The reason for the inefficiency I believe is because below 0 C the condensation in the air begins to coat the evaporator coil with frost, insulating it from the air it needs to use to absorb and release heat. There are also issues with phase changes occurring earlier at "refrigerator temperatures" (0-10 C) in the fluids used in them, i.e. turning to liquid before it should, resulting in further inefficiencies. There are tricks IRL to get around this, like installing a heater to periodically heat the coils when they start to frost over.
pineapple  [author] 26 Oct, 2024 @ 9:26am 
@Qwer I'm also definitely not an expert! But the information I was able to find when deciding efficiency numbers for the mod suggested that, with contemporary heat pumps, BTU (heating capacity) does in fact go down as the source temperature goes down, and then there also comes a point where it's too cold for the heat pump to operate at all.

If you're curious about the specifics, or if you want to make changes, the source code for the mod is included in the workshop download (and also available at the ludeon forum post linked a few comments ago). The math that controls heat output and power consumption is in a file named "Building_ReversibleHeatPump.cs".
Qwer 26 Oct, 2024 @ 4:38am 
Pardon my layman's understanding, but I don't think the outdoor temperatures matter so much as the difference between the drawing temp and the feeding temp does, and that difference in temperatures is roughly what leads to calculating the heat pump's coefficient of performance, which in standard practice is never below 1. This is an amazing concept for a mod though and I'll definitely be adding it to my mod list just for the fact that heat pumps are overpowered in real life, especially geothermal ones.
The Wizard of Nova Scotia 29 May, 2024 @ 9:50am 
it works fine in 1.5 but may we have it updated for the tag?
meow 16 Apr, 2024 @ 1:32am 
That's the thing though, isn't it..? A "cooler" IS a heat pump.