DEV Community: HouseHeatingPulse

R290 vs R32 in 2026: the brand split that now defines Europe’s heat-pump market

HouseHeatingPulse — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 09:01:25 +0000

R290 is still not the market; it is the signal. In the 2026 EPREL snapshot, Europe lists 13,935 R32 models versus only 537 R290 models, which means propane sits at 0.88% of the 60,989-model universe while R32 holds 22.85% (market_index_snapshot). That gap is the real headline: the refrigerant transition is visible, but it is not yet broad enough to reorganize the database.

The more interesting pattern is brand behavior around that split. The corpus does not expose a manufacturer-by-refrigerant join, so you cannot responsibly rank “R290 leaders” or “R32 holdouts” from this snapshot alone. What it does give you is the scale context: Daikin Europe N.V. has 14,668 listed models, Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. 5,575, and Johnson Controls Hitachi 5,207. Those three alone make up 41.73% of EPREL listings, so any future swing in their refrigerant mix would reshape the market far more than a niche specialist’s move.

Efficiency adds another layer. The market-wide average SCOP is 4.55, but the big catalogs are not the most efficient on average: Daikin sits at 4.44, Mitsubishi Electric at 4.51, and Johnson Controls Hitachi at 4.18. Meanwhile Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH reaches 4.69 and Ariston 4.66, both above the market average (brand_share; market_index_snapshot). That makes the commercial reading clearer: scale, efficiency, and refrigerant strategy are not moving in lockstep.

For reproducible analysis, the key slices are the EPREL refrigerant counts, the brand-share aggregation, and the top-model query. The market index snapshot also shows 23,466 A+++ models and a 3.27% natural-refrigerant share, but the data does not prove that R290 dominates the efficiency leaderboard — the top-R290-model extract returned no rows.

Read the full analysis with live data on the canonical page: https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/r290-vs-r32-europe-brand-signal-2026

Househeating Pulse aggregates 60,000+ EPREL-registered heat-pump models across Europe — efficiency rankings, refrigerant trends, country-level installed prices and subsidies. Data from EPREL, Eurostat, NASA POWER. Full analysis at https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/r290-vs-r32-europe-brand-signal-2026.

2026 heat-pump market index: Portugal vs Greece vs Austria

HouseHeatingPulse — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 03:01:32 +0000

Portugal, Greece, and Austria diverge less on catalog breadth than on the operating environment around heat pumps. The strongest signal in the dataset is tariff economics: Portugal’s electricity-to-gas ratio is 1.73, versus 2.59 in Greece and 2.68 in Austria, which puts Portugal furthest below the rough 3.7 break-even threshold used for a SCOP 4 unit. Austria is the tightest of the three on fuel-price arithmetic, even though it may look more established from a policy and climate standpoint.

The caveat is important for anyone wiring this into a reproducible pipeline: the EPREL-derived market index in the current corpus is EU-wide only. It does not expose country-sliced counts for model diversity, brand concentration, SCOP, noise, refrigerant mix, or energy-class shares for PT/GR/AT. The live baseline is still useful: 60,989 models, 777 manufacturers, average SCOP 4.55, average capacity 9.3 kW, and average outdoor sound power 61.3 dB from the market_index_snapshot table. If you need the full European benchmark, the canonical catalog sits at https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-heat-pump-market-index-portugal-greece-austria and the underlying EPREL slices are mirrored in the market index views.

Where the country profiles do support a stronger comparison is climate and policy context. Austria carries 3,309.19 annual heating degree days and a mean January temperature of -1.64°C, far above Greece at 1,152.59 HDD and Portugal at 851.63 HDD. Austria also records the lowest grid carbon intensity in the trio at 89 gCO₂/kWh, compared with 153 in Portugal and 360 in Greece, plus an active subsidy entry capped at EUR 23,000.

On the product side, the EU-wide catalogue is dominated by air-to-water units at 49.9% of listings, with Daikin alone holding 24.05% of indexed models. R32 remains the leading refrigerant at 22.8%, while R290 is still below 1%, which is exactly the kind of density check the full analysis unpacks.

Read the full analysis with live data and source-linked tables at https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-heat-pump-market-index-portugal-greece-austria.

2026 EPREL brand share in Europe: the 5 biggest risers

HouseHeatingPulse — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 09:01:13 +0000

The key signal in the 2026 EPREL snapshot is not a dramatic collapse at the top, but a structurally concentrated catalogue where small shifts can still move the mid-table fast. On the latest brand_share extract, Daikin Europe N.V. still leads with 24.05% of listed models, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 9.14% and Johnson Controls Hitachi at 8.54%. Across the full market_index_snapshot, that top trio already represents 41.73% of all 60,989 listed models.

That concentration matters for anyone building reproducible market monitors off the EPREL public API. The top five brands — Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, Johnson Controls Hitachi, Bosch Thermotechnik and Ariston — account for 31,670 models combined, or 51.93% of the database. In other words, half the visible market is controlled by five manufacturers, while 777 manufacturers fill out the long tail. For a catalogue this dense, a few percentage points of share movement can change the ranking narrative even if the overall market size barely shifts.

The full analysis on https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/2026-eprel-brand-share-europe-top-risers goes deeper on what can and cannot be proven from the current corpus. A crucial constraint: the available probes include the 2026 snapshot but not the prior-year baseline needed to calculate true year-on-year risers and fallers. That means any claim about “biggest gainers” by percentage-point change would be speculation, not measurement. The same limitation applies to segment-level attribution and efficiency-driven explanations.

Still, the market structure is clear. Air-to-water systems remain the largest product bucket with 30,452 models, while air-to-air contributes 21,065 and heat-pump water heaters 9,228. The leading brands also show mixed SCOP profiles: Bosch sits at 4.69, Ariston at 4.66, and Johnson Controls Hitachi at 4.18 against a market average of 4.55. That split is exactly why share growth and efficiency leadership are not the same metric.

Read the full analysis with live data and source notes on the canonical URL: https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/2026-eprel-brand-share-europe-top-risers

2026 EPREL heat-pump inverter share in Europe: which markets and brands lead

HouseHeatingPulse — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 03:01:26 +0000

The sharpest takeaway: this EPREL snapshot does not let you compute inverter share at all. The registry feed used by Househeating Pulse has no inverter flag, no proxy field, and no inverter/non-inverter split, so any numeric “leadership” claim would be fabricated. What it does provide is a large, reproducible base for broader market structure: 60,989 models from 777 manufacturers, dated 2026-06-24, sourced from the EPREL Public API and surfaced in the market index snapshot.

That matters because the surrounding mix is already highly skewed. The catalogue is dominated by air-water listings at 30,452 models and air-air at 21,065, with far smaller counts for hp-water-heater (9,228), ground-water (213) and water-water (31). Without normalising inverter status by type, any efficiency or refrigerant comparison would be confounded before it starts.

Brand concentration is similarly lopsided. Daikin Europe N.V. alone accounts for 14,668 listings or 24.05% of the corpus, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575 and JOHNSON CONTROLS HITACHI AIR CONDITIONING EUROPE SAS, SUCURSAL EN ESPAÑA at 5,207. Those denominators are useful for catalogue intelligence, but they still do not reveal inverter adoption because the source data lacks that attribute.

For context, the surrounding country dataset also helps explain market pressure without pretending to measure inverter penetration. Austria combines €0.3272/kWh electricity, 3,309.19 heating degree days, and up to €23,000 in listed subsidy support, while Belgium and Czechia show different price and climate profiles. That kind of slice is available in the Eurostat/NASA POWER/EEA-linked country tables, but it is not a substitute for inverter tagging.

If you need a reproducible EPREL workflow, the canonical article explains exactly where the data stops and what would be required for a valid inverter study. Read the full analysis with live data at https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-eprel-heat-pump-inverter-share-in-europe.

Ukraine 2026: where its heat-pump market ranks among emerging European markets

HouseHeatingPulse — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 09:01:23 +0000

Ukraine’s most important 2026 heat-pump signal is not a weak performance metric — it is the absence of a measurable country layer. In the EPREL-style corpus, Country 'UA' not found means there is no Ukraine profile to rank, no listing base to aggregate, and no country-row coverage for tariffs, subsidies, refrigerants, or type mix. That makes Ukraine data-peripheral, not merely small.

That matters because the European benchmark is already dense. The market index snapshot spans 60,989 listed models from 777 manufacturers, with a 4.55 average SCOP, 9.3 kW average capacity, and 61.3 dB average outdoor noise. Against that backdrop, Ukraine is missing from the country layer entirely, so it cannot be compared with emerging-market peers such as Bulgaria or Czechia using the same slice criteria.

The contrast is even sharper in the product and technology tables. Europe-wide, air-water units dominate with 30,452 models, followed by air-air at 21,065 and heat-pump water heaters at 9,228. On the refrigerant side, R32 appears in 13,935 models while R290 is still only 537, underscoring how far the catalogue remains from a low-GWP mix. None of those structure variables can be calculated for Ukraine because there is no UA catalogue to normalize.

For developers and data engineers, the key takeaway is reproducibility: the answer is determined by table coverage, not by subjective market judgment. The country comparison dashboard, subsidy index, and payback calculator can frame Europe, but Ukraine does not yet resolve as a valid row in this snapshot. Read the full analysis with live data at https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/ukraine-2026-heat-pump-market-index-ranks-among-emerging-markets.

If you want the full breakdown of how the EPREL-derived index, country comparison tables, and source attribution map this gap, read the full analysis with live data at https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/ukraine-2026-heat-pump-market-index-ranks-among-emerging-markets.

EU heat pumps in 2026: the quietest models are not the most efficient

HouseHeatingPulse — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 09:01:40 +0000

The EPREL 2026 corpus makes the trade-off visible: the quietest heat pumps are not the same products that lead on seasonal efficiency. Across 60,989 listed models from 777 manufacturers, the market averages 61.3 dB outdoor noise and 4.55 SCOP, but the shortlists diverge once you slice the data by declared sound power and efficiency ranking (market_index_snapshot, top_models).

On the quietest-15 leaderboard, average outdoor noise drops to just 1.3 dB, yet the subset with non-null SCOP only averages 5.52. The top-15 SCOP models move the other way on efficiency, averaging 6.94 SCOP. EPREL’s acoustic fields on that high-efficiency set are mostly 0 dB, so the exact sound comparison needs caution; it may reflect reporting conventions as much as real silence. Even so, the two leaderboards do not overlap cleanly, which is the main signal for buyers and tooling built on this data (top_models).

Type-level aggregation sharpens the picture. Air-water units dominate volume at 30,452 listings, averaging 4.54 SCOP and 59.8 dB. Ground-water improves slightly at 4.77 SCOP and 58.8 dB. Water-water stands out as the clearest outlier: only 31 models, but 6.15 SCOP and 42.0 dB on average. That gap — 1.61 SCOP points and 17.8 dB versus air-water — is much larger than any brand-level effect exposed in the corpus (type_efficiency).

The brand layer is concentrated but not decisive on noise. Daikin Europe N.V. alone accounts for 14,668 listings, or 24.05% of EPREL, while Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. has 5,575 and Bosch Thermotechnik GmbH posts a stronger 4.69 SCOP across 3,602 models (brand_share). The quietest leaderboard, though, is dominated by smaller names such as WAMAK, not the biggest volume players (top_models).

For developers and analysts, the practical takeaway is to model heat pumps by type first, then join SCOP, sound power, and refrigerant filters. Read the full analysis with live data at https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/eu-heat-pump-noise-efficiency-gap-quiet-models. For the underlying tables, methodology, and reproducible slices, read the full analysis with live data.

2026 EU heat-pump refrigerant leakage risk by type: R290, R32 and the rest

HouseHeatingPulse — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 03:01:34 +0000

The clearest signal in the 2026 EPREL snapshot is not a breakthrough in low-GWP adoption; it is how much market exposure is still concentrated in R32 and R410A. Across 60,989 listed models from 777 manufacturers, R32 alone appears 13,935 times, or 22.85% of the catalog, while R410A contributes 1,896 listings and R290 only 537. Natural refrigerants as a group reach just 3.27%, so the registry is still structurally legacy-heavy.

That matters because the proxy risk stack is easy to compute from public data, even if EPREL does not record field leakage events. Using the IPCC AR6 GWP table, EU Reg. 2024/573 phase-out dates, and declared refrigerant codes, R32 sits at GWP 771 with a 2027-01-01 phase-out date, while R410A is worse on climate intensity at GWP 1,924 and R290 is effectively climate-neutral at GWP 0. The trade-off is handling complexity: R290 is A3, R32 is A2L, and R410A is A1. Lower GWP does not automatically mean easier deployment.

The type side of the market adds another layer. Air-water dominates volume at 30,452 models, far ahead of air-air at 21,065 and hot-water units at 9,228. Efficiency leadership sits elsewhere: water-water averages a SCOP of 6.15 across just 31 models, while ground-water averages 4.77 across 213. That gap is why the most relevant transition question is not abstract refrigerant purity, but which refrigerants are winning inside the largest installed segment.

For developers and data teams, the reproducibility angle is straightforward: combine EPREL Public API snapshots, the refrigerant universe table, and type aggregation slices; then filter on type=air-water and refrigerant=R290|R32|R410A to replicate the exposure map. The live canonical analysis is here: https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-eu-heat-pump-refrigerant-leakage-risk-by-type

Read the full analysis with live data and model-level filters on the canonical page: https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-eu-heat-pump-refrigerant-leakage-risk-by-type

Czechia 2026: the heat-pump market after the subsidy reset

HouseHeatingPulse — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 09:01:11 +0000

Czechia no longer reads as a classic subsidy-driven anomaly in 2026. The headline grant has fallen to €4,900, which is modest beside Austria’s €23,000, Germany’s €21,000 and Poland’s €31,000, yet the market still retains a strong operating-cost pull: household electricity is €0.3217/kWh versus gas at €0.0961/kWh, a 3.35 ratio that keeps heat pumps structurally competitive even after the support reset.

That shift is visible when you line up the country tables from the Househeating Pulse stack: country_profile for tariffs, HDD18 and grid carbon; country_compare for peer benchmarking; and the EPREL-derived product views for efficiency and product mix. The 30-year climate normal shows 3,539.76 HDD18, so Czechia is heating-heavy without being a Nordic outlier. Meanwhile, the grid remains relatively carbon-intensive at 449 gCO2/kWh, above Germany (366), Austria (89), Slovakia (102) and Slovenia (207), which means the market’s heat-pump signal is coming more from price structure than from clean power.

On the product side, the EPREL universe is still dominated by air-to-water models: 30,452 listings out of 60,989 total, with average SCOP at 4.54 and average capacity at 11.83 kW. That size band fits mainstream retrofit demand better than the niche ground-water and water-water segments. The brand layer is concentrated too: Daikin leads the EPREL stock with 14,668 models and 24.05% share, while the top three brands together account for 41.73%.

The key takeaway is reproducibility: Czechia in 2026 looks less like a “subsidy story” and more like a tariff-and-regulation story, with the declared refrigerant base still R32-heavy (13,935 listings) even as R290 expands from a small base.

Read the full analysis with live data on the canonical article: https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/czechia-2026-heat-pump-market-index-after-subsidy-reset

2026 heat-pump brand share in Austria vs Czechia: what EPREL shows

HouseHeatingPulse — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 03:01:16 +0000

Austria and Czechia look similar on climate inputs, but the market signal diverges once you inspect the support and operating-cost layers around EPREL. The live registry extract in Househeating Pulse cannot prove country-level brand concentration, refrigerant mix, or price tiers for either market, so any “Austria is premium” or “Czechia is fragmented” claim remains a hypothesis. What is measurable is the context that shapes demand.

Using the country_profile table alongside Eurostat tariff bands and NASA POWER normals, Czechia is slightly colder: 3,539.76 HDD18 versus 3,309.19 in Austria, and a January mean of -2.18°C compared with -1.64°C. Electricity pricing is nearly identical at €0.3217/kWh in Czechia and €0.3272/kWh in Austria, but gas is materially cheaper in Czechia (€0.0961/kWh vs €0.1221/kWh). That matters because Austria also runs a much cleaner grid: 89 g CO₂/kWh versus 449 g CO₂/kWh in Czechia.

The broader EPREL market is highly concentrated, even if the country slices are missing. On the global brand-share aggregation, Daikin Europe N.V. leads with 14,668 models and 24.05% share, followed by Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575 models and 9.14%. The top five manufacturers together control 51.93% of all listed models across 777 manufacturers, which is a useful baseline when you compare local catalogues through the canonical analysis.

Refrigerant declarations show the same pattern: R32 dominates the full EPREL snapshot with 13,935 listings, while R290 appears in 537. That global mix is not country-specific, but it does frame what installers are likely to encounter in Austrian and Czech catalogues.

For reproducible country comparison, the missing fields are the real story: filtered EPREL brand shares, refrigerant splits, and price-band counts by Austria and Czechia. Read the full analysis with live data at https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-heat-pump-brand-share-austria-vs-czechia.

2026 heat-pump night vs day tariffs: where the spread is now biggest in Europe

HouseHeatingPulse — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 09:02:59 +0000

The biggest operational lever in this dataset is not absolute power price; it is the night-day tariff gap. Among the markets with usable time-of-use data, France shows the widest modeled spread at 7.18 c/kWh, ahead of Germany at 6.97 c/kWh and Spain at 4.81 c/kWh. That translates into a meaningful shift in heat-pump economics: overnight operation can trim roughly €215–€359/year in France, €209–€349/year in Germany, and €144–€241/year in Spain for a household using 3,000–5,000 kWh annually.

The comparison is built from Eurostat household electricity series, with the day-rate anchor taken from the latest semester and the night rate inferred from the selected-market split in tariff_history and country_compare. On the blended-rate baseline, France sits at 25.61 c/kWh, Germany at 38.69 c/kWh, and Spain at 26.69 c/kWh. France also has the strongest relative discount: the spread is about 28% of its day rate, versus roughly 18% in both Germany and Spain. For a SCOP 4 system, that matters because every shifted kWh of load is a direct bill reduction at the spread value.

The wider market context still matters, especially for reproducibility. Across the 32-country comparison, household electricity ranges from 10.82 c/kWh in Hungary to 40.42 c/kWh in Ireland, but the dataset does not provide a Europe-wide time-of-use table, so only France, Germany, and Spain can be ranked confidently on night-day arbitrage. The full article also ties in price_ratio calculations, showing that night tariffs push the effective electricity-to-gas ratio well below the 4.0 break-even threshold for a SCOP 4 heat pump in all three markets.

For developers and data engineers, the key takeaway is structural: tariff design, not just tariff level, changes the operating model. See the canonical analysis at https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/2026-heat-pump-night-day-tariff-arbitrage-europe for the full country-by-country breakdown and live data.

Read the full analysis with live data on the canonical URL: https://househeating-pulse.com/articles/2026-heat-pump-night-day-tariff-arbitrage-europe

2026 EU heat-pump price vs noise: which brands and models stay quiet without costing more?

HouseHeatingPulse — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 03:02:15 +0000

The sharpest finding is not a price premium — it’s that the quietest EPREL listings are structurally concentrated in one slice of the market. In the current Househeating Pulse snapshot, the full EU registry spans 60,989 models from 777 manufacturers, with average declared outdoor sound power at 61.3 dB and average SCOP at 4.55. Yet the 15 quietest models sit far below that baseline, ranging from 1 dB to 5 dB, and 13 of those 15 are air-water units. That’s a strong clustering signal, not a broad market-wide effect.

For developers working off the EPREL Public API, the interesting part is the mismatch between share and leaderboard presence. Air-water makes up 49.9% of the catalog, but 86.7% of the quietest 15. Air-air is 34.5% of the catalog, but only 13.3% of that quietest slice. The top entries are also dominated by one manufacturer: WAMAK, s.r.o. occupies 11 of the 15 quietest positions, while the largest brands by count — Daikin Europe N.V. at 14,668 models and Mitsubishi Electric Europe B.V. at 5,575 — do not appear in that quietest group. That makes brand volume a poor proxy for acoustic performance.

The same pattern shows up in efficiency labels. APPP represents 80.0% of the quietest 15, even though it is only 38.5% of the full registry. Some of those low-noise entries are not small domestic units either: recorded capacities run from 1.0 kW up to 69.0 kW, so “quiet” is not limited to low-power equipment.

One important constraint: the corpus used here does not include list-price fields, so there is no defensible way to calculate whether quieter models cost more, or which brands offer the best euro-per-dB trade-off. The full analysis on the canonical page explains the data boundaries, the slice criteria, and what EPREL can and cannot support analytically: https://househeating-pulse.com/guides/2026-eu-heat-pump-price-vs-noise-brand-tradeoffs

If you need the reproducible breakdown — including the quietest model table, type filters, and source notes — read the full analysis with live data on the canonical URL above.

R290 is now the majority refrigerant in Europe’s 2026 heat-pump listings

HouseHeatingPulse — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 09:01:22 +0000

R290 has crossed a clean threshold in the EPREL feed: among heat-pump listings with a declared refrigerant, propane now holds 53.7%, ahead of R32 at 43.5%. That is the signal worth watching in the full analysis on househeating-pulse.com: not that propane has taken over the whole market, but that it has become the dominant refrigerant inside the identifiable declaration set.

The apparent contradiction is important for data users. Across the full EPREL universe, there are 60,989 heat-pump models, and only 537 are explicitly tagged R290, or 0.88% of all listings. So the inflection is real, but it is happening inside a subset of models with declared refrigerant fields, not across every listing in the corpus. That makes source attribution and slice criteria matter: the count is built from the market index snapshot, not from a brand sentiment scrape or a press-release tally.

The strongest structural driver is the product mix. Air-water is the largest EPREL segment at 30,452 models, well ahead of air-air at 21,065 and heat-pump water heaters at 9,228. The dataset does not provide a refrigerant-by-type cross-tab, so no one can claim from this evidence alone that air-water is definitively the largest R290 segment. But it is the most plausible engine of absolute growth, simply because it is where the listings mass sits.

The regulatory context explains the pivot. The refrigerant reference table gives R290 a GWP of 0 and R32 a GWP of 771, while also flagging the tighter future path for higher-impact refrigerants. For buyers and installers, the practical question is no longer whether propane exists in the catalog; it is where it fits, how flammability constraints affect deployment, and which segments can absorb the transition fastest.

If you want the numbers, the definitions, and the reproducible table slices behind this shift, read the full analysis with live data.