It never ceases to amaze me how people don't read past the title 🤦 There are people debating about -10 to -30C when the article clearly states that it works in those temperatures. Not only does it work, it's twice as efficient as electrical heating at those temperatures.
this post was submitted on 01 Nov 2023
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I think it does, and it seems to work because of a defrosting feature that earlier models didn't have. But I wouldn't say it does so very clearly. Unless I missed it.
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Good Lord - $2600 for a whole house system? I think that's what my local (mid-Atlantic US) HVAC shop is getting for a single-room mini-split.
Wait until people find out about ground-source heat pumps and water heater heat pumps. What you get out of those is more consistent year round, too. It's almost like leveraging technology has benefits over just burning carbon and hydrogen to make heat.
2600 is dirt cheap even by Euro standards, trust me.
Here in Italy a single room split would cost you around 1k to 2.5-3k depending on the brand.
A whole house system you're probably looking at 10k and then some.
I got a quote in rural America for a single room minisplit, $10,300.
Absolutely bonkers.
That is absolutely bonkers. I put one in myself for my one room garage that I converted to a place to hang. Cost 720$ after tax for a Pioneer mini split. It's entering its third year in use and I love it. That being said, I wouldn't be so risky as to put my own in when its task was heating or cooling my home. Just my garage is my problem, the rest is my family, and so I paid. But I got a whole home solution, two floors, Carrier units, for about $15k.
I believe what you're looking for is out there and not ridiculous price.
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$2600 is utter bullshit. I had several quotes for a 1000sf house, not a single one was under 16000 installed, after rebates. My payback period was going to be almost 20 years even against a medium efficiency gas furnace.
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Hell yeah, we've got a heat pump and we're in Canada where it can get to -40°C (which is coincidentally also -40°F) and that thing works like a beast. Fortunately we also have the cheapest electricity in North America so the decision was easy.
Electricity monopoly in the US = they can price gouge, and this is literally the only reason I installed a dual fuel system with a less efficient heat pump. The Eversource electricity price hikes last year probably would have meant I couldn't afford to heat my home in the worst parts of winter here in Massachusetts.
This is how policies are killing the planet. Socialize electric utilities, upgrade the electric grid, subsidize the use of electric heat pumps so they're actually affordable for all end users, and of course more people would adopt them.
As it is, I run my heat pump as much as I can, which is like 9 months a year. Better than only having gas heat at least.
The US has some of the lowest electricity prices in the world though. Only a couple pennies per kWh higher than Canada. And MUCH lower than pretty much all of Europe.
In 2020 (last year I could find from Canada specifically) Canada averaged 11.25¢ per kWh. The US averaged 13.04¢. The UK averaged 21.91¢, France averaged 19.91¢, Finland 20.56¢, Spain 28.77¢, and Germany 33.39¢.
https://www.electricity.ca/knowledge-centre/the-grid/customer/electricity-rates/
It’s more that Canada uses a LOT of hydro power which is cheap.
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What's your heat pump? I've been looking into them and I can't find one that's willing to say it works past about -15.
The Mitsubishi Hyper heat can work down to -13F,
The absolutely best resource I’ve found for heat pump research is the NEEP database which will you give you actual BTU outputs at various ambient temperature readings: https://ashp.neep.org/#!/product_list/

Also worth considering a geothermal heat pump depending on your geography, as then you have a guarantee of efficiency all year round
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It depends on the model (and the price), I'm in Québec where we have -30°C (-22F) about every winter, my heatpump is mid-range, and works fine until -20C (-4F) so 95% of the time. It is set to 23C (73F) and it's between 21-23 everywhere in the house. The electric baseboard are set to 21C (70F) as backup.
So yeah, heat pumps can works great in winter, no problem.
Also as written in the article, with defrosting and variable speed compressors, it is very efficient. Mine is Energy Star compliant, and act as air conditionner in summer.
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How is this a myth? Nobody with more than two braincells thinks that heat pump heaters don't work in the cold.
If we start comparing everything that idiots think to a mythological mystery worthy of note, we'll be here for an eternity.
This is not a myth but a fact, heat pumps don't work at extreme cold temperatures.
What temperature exactly depends on the coolant used.
The efficiency also degrades at lower temperatures.
This is a random example of first hit I got on a heat pump.
https://heatnow.dk/produkt/altech-sirius-9-varmepumpe/
Notice the effect drops dramatically below -20 C°.
But this is a pump sold for the Scandinavian market, therefore it is of course designed to work at low temperatures. It doesn't state the minimum, but I'm guessing it would be around -40 C°. Which is very good compared top older models.
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The heat pump I just had installed in SW Ontario hands over heating duty at -10C to the gas furnace
How much did it cost and what rebates are available? I'd love to say fuck Enbridge.
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It's not that people think they don't work in the cold, it's that they are less suited for the areas or days of extreme cold.
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It really depends on the type of heat pump. Air-sourced heat pumps generally don't produce heat below -30C and below -10C they generally lose enough efficiency that you're better off using electric baseboard heating.
My air sourced heat pump keeps my house warm just fine in the Finnish winter where temperatures of -30C aren't unheard of. I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I assume there's coils that'll produce the heat by electricity if nececcary, making it at worst as efficient as direct electric heating, which is what I'd use otherwise. Here like every other house has a heatpump like that and I don't remember hearing anyone ever complaining that they're not working.
The argument is bullshit in totality. But... When the supplemental electric heating coils come on, it is less efficient ON THAT DAY, than the alternative electric options. But, like I said, in totality, it's more effective over a month, and certainly better over the course of a year. It's a matter of people with an agenda cherry picking the 9 days a year in which it is less efficient and pretending that the other 354 days don't count.
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Same with EVs. Don't work in cold weather. Except in the Nordics.
EVs work fine in cold weather. I live in Minnesota and drive an EV. It loses about 10-20% of the total range in the winter, but most of that appears to be from generating heat for the passengers.
I was being sarcastic. I'm from Germany and most "car people" constantly talk about EVs being not reliable, especially during winter ...
Ah yes, that time of year when cars are known to just start right up every time they're cranked over, and gas cars totally aren't still subject to a battery getting cold ...
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The problem isn’t that EVs don’t work in the winter, it’s that their range gets significantly reduced. We had issues with people literally up and abandoning their vehicles because their batteries ran flat.
In these cases the issue is less that the range is lost, and more that with snowy and cold weather traffic gets unpredictable. You can end up in long queues and that’s where the issues start.
When I went on a work trip up in the far north I never saw a single EV. Asked my colleagues about it and none of them thought EVs particularly feasible as a primary vehicle.
All that said, EVs work great for most people most of the time.
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It's not so much a myth as it is old information that is no longer accurate
The heat pumps that were available 20-30 years ago weren't effective/efficienct enough at low outdoor temperatures to be practical.
I mean, it's not about them not working, it's the efficiency. Most models will switch to a normal electric heater, if they can't extract anymore heat from the surroundings. At which temperature that happens, depends on your type of heat pump.
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