Heat Pumps Too Costly and Complex for Ukraine’s Urban Apartments, Expert Says

Air-source and geothermal heat pumps are not a realistic option for individual apartment heating, according to Oleh Popenko, head of the Union of Public Utility Services Consumers. He argued they should be removed from comparisons with other heating alternatives altogether, citing costs two to four times higher than comparable inverter air conditioners and the need for large external units or boreholes — factors that make installation in a typical apartment practically impossible.

For a standard two-room apartment, Popenko put centralized heating at 1,650–2,000 hryvnias a month. An inverter air conditioner could theoretically cost 860–1,730 hryvnias monthly, depending on heat loss and conditions. That gap, however, narrows or disappears in practice due to several constraints:

• Aluminium wiring in older housing stock typically handles only 1.5–2 kW, leaving powerful appliances at risk of tripping breakers or causing short circuits.
• One unit cannot adequately heat a three-room apartment; a multi-split system or three separate units raises the cost to 2–3.5 times that of a single unit.
• Electricity supply in Kyiv was running to just 2–2.5 hours per day at the time of the interview — not enough, Popenko said, to fully heat a home using an air conditioner.

Centralized heating has its own shortcomings: weather-regulation systems cover only 5–7% of the housing stock, and in 85% of buildings heating cannot be regulated at the level of an individual apartment.

Source: УНІАН