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Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by jandrese on Wednesday August 29, 2018 @10:55AM (#17868648)
The downside of electric heat pumps is that they simply don't work when it gets too cold outside. They can't push the thermal gradient hard enough and end up switching to inefficient resistive heat. Go far enough north and even the resistive heat doesn't work very well and everybody uses gas.
Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by hvidgaard on Thursday August 30, 2018 @03:09AM (#17874646)
When the correct gas is used, they are more efficient than resistive heating down to -20-30 C. Very few places in the world get that cold. That said, and as I mentioned, using wood or district heating, is far more common in those parts of the world. At least in Europe.
Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by jandrese on Thursday August 30, 2018 @10:32AM (#17877029)
Very few places, like all of Canada, parts of the northern US, Alaska, most of Russia, etc...

Even then you have to be willing to keep the thermostat set at 55F/13C or the resistive heaters are going to kick in.

Re:Air-conditioners do great good, but at a high environment... by hvidgaard on Monday September 03, 2018 @09:56AM (#17902590)
I'm unsure if you know how cold -20C actually is. At -20C outside you can still get an efficiency of 2.0. The majority of Canada does not reach that temperature outside of a few cold spells. Only two handful of cities in Canada have nights with less than -30C. In other words, the majority of time it will be more efficient than resistive heating. The north or interior of Alaska is typical mainland climate and very cold, and same goes for Russia. In both countries a non trivial part are not that cold. The majority of the world are simply not so cold that resistive heating is better than an ASHP system.

That is not to say gas isn't cheaper.