


PowerPedia:Coefficient of Performance (COP)

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Simply, Coefficient of Performance = What you GOT/What you BOUGHT. See also, Thermal Efficiency, or What you GET/What you PAY for.

To see how the COP formula works, go to Wikipedia:Coefficient_of_performance.

COP = Q2 / W

and for a heat pump as:

COP = Q1 / W"



Coefficient of Performance (COP), (total useful output energy divided by energy input by the operator only, and usually expressed as a decimal. If desired, it can also be expressed as a percentage).

It can also be stated as the efficiency ratio of the amount of heating or cooling provided by a heating or cooling unit to the energy consumed by the system. The higher the Coefficient of Performance the more efficient the system. Electrical heating for example has a Coefficient of Performance of 1.0.

A ratio of the work or useful energy output of a system versus the amount of work or energy put in to the system as determined by using the same energy equivalents for energy in and out. COP is used as a measure of the steady state performance or energy efficiency of heating, cooling, and refrigeration appliances. It is equal to the seasonal energy efficiency ratio (EER) divided by 3.412. The higher the COP, the more efficient the device.

Definition and Use with the Free Energy Community

  • What is OverUnity™? - "“The phrase "Over Unity" typically refers to systems in which more energy comes out than was apparently put in. That is most likely a function of a new, unseen input source not yet recognized or measured. Theoretically all energy comes from existing energy and is only transformed from one form to another. Some over-unity claimants purport that the new energy is being generated ex-nehilo (out of nothing). Most would reject that stance and just wait patiently for new discoveries of where that energy is coming from.”

"Steorn is making three claims for its technology:

  • The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%.

The sum of these claims is that our technology creates free energy."



By measuring the power supplied to a compressor motor and by measuring four temperatures within a mechanical vapor-compression system, it is possible to develop a device for measuring and/or displaying the specific coefficient of performance of the mechanical vapor-compression system. The use of the temperatures and power supplied to the compressor motor can be used with information on motor losses and a typical temperature-enthalpy and a typical pressure-entropy diagram to allow substantially instantaneous computation of the actual specific coefficient of performance of a mechanical vapor-compression system as it operates. The measuring device can usually be installed totally external to a building in which the mechanical vapor-compression system is being used as a cooling system, or as a heat pump for heating and cooling. Diagram


See Discussion page

Leslie Pastor wrote;

The conservation of energy law requires that, in any normal (special relativity) situation, the efficiency of the "working system" is never greater than 100%. The total energy flowing through the system (from all sources) does not exceed the total input, and so the available flowing-through energy can be changed in form (which is the rigorous definition of work, and where the energy is still present but is now in different form), but the work done obviously cannot exceed the available energy input that is changed in form.

But that doesn't stop the system from exhibiting COP>1.0, if the environment is freely inputting some excess energy in addition to what the operator is inputting. The common home heat pump, e.g., has an efficiency of only about 50%, and it wastes half of all its energy input (from the operator and from the environment). But it still receives so much excess heat energy extracted from its environment -- and used to change the form of the energy to do useful work -- that its COP = 3.0 to 4.0. In short, the common heat pump still outputs three to four times as much heat energy as the energy that the operator himself pays the power company to furnish. The heat pump's efficiency is only about 50%, but its COP is about 300% to 400%, expressing the COP as a percentage for ease of comparison. This does not violate the laws of physics nor the laws of nonequilibrium thermodynamics.

A typical "good" solar cell panel is only about 20% efficient, in that it only converts into output electrical energy about 20% of the sunlight energy that it actually absorbs. The rest of that input sunlight energy is just wasted. But since the operator himself inputs nothing at all, the solar cell panel's COP = infinity. It's a nonequilibrium steady state system and the operator doesn't have to input any energy into it at all."

Effective COP

On July 11, 2013, Sterling D. Allan wrote:

Something to bear in mind in calculating COP is "actual".

An electric motor running at 100% efficiency is not numerically overunity, but when you consider the ever-present losses in any system: frictional, electric, air, etc; you know that this electric motor is getting "assistance" from somewhere outside of the system as you see it.

Also, in order to get to the "effective" COP, you need to figure out a way to calculate out the start-up energy.

In LENR systems, the start-up requirements are significant, but once the system is at its operational ideal, then the COP should stabilize.

Usually, you should be able to calculate the start-up energy requirement easily thought meters.

In giving metrics on any free energy system, these values need to be presented and weighed to assess the feasibility of a system.

In many technologies, the start-up may be high, but the equilibrium is zero, or close to zero.

In others, the start-up is negligible, but the equilibrium has a significant, continuous energy input requirement.


See also

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