this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2026
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Why does no one seem to use peltier elements to heat small greenhouses? (feddit.org)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by viertesauge@feddit.org to c/gardening@lemmy.world
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Genuine question. When I look up options for heating greenhouses its either propane, kerosene or electricity. So if you dont want to use fossil energy for any reason, why not use peltier elements which would boil down to resistive heating and moving heat from the outside to the inside?

Is it because they dont last in the weather? Or because they require a DC source? (couldnt you simply move the PSU inside the greenhouse and use any conversion losses as additional heating?) Or maybe its because you would have to possibly cut a hole in your greenhouse walls so that the peltiers cold side is actually on the outside?

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[–] zarathustrad@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

It's possible future advances in materials science (the conducting alloys and heatsinks) could increase the efficiency but those are the major barriers in my non-expert opinion.

Commercial Bi₂Te₃ modules sit around ZT ≈ 1.0–1.2 at room temperature. Active research is pushing this closer to 2, but not at practical temperatures yet. (ZT is not the same as COP but it does directly relate to it for the purposes here. Even at ZT = 2, the COP gain for a heating application is modest because the device still must reject the pumped heat plus all Joule losses on the hot side.)