A feature of the heat pump market in Finland is the growing popularity of ground-source installations - 14,000 units sold in 2011 compared with 8,000 in the previous year. Air-source units accounted for a further 55,000 installations.
The Finnish heat pump association SULPU estimates the current value of this sector as around 370 million. Almost half of the houses now being built in Finland are designed for heat pump space heating rather than the traditional alternatives of oil fired boilers or electric radiators. In the total stock of dwellings some 220,000 still use boilers and half a million some form of direct electric heating. The EU’s renewable energy directive for Finland will give more incentive to switch to heat pump based solutions.
