I'm glad that people are finally starting to realize that it's a lot more efficient to simply run your air conditioner in reverse. Ten years ago people were ripping them out to replace them with a furnace.
this post was submitted on 23 May 2025
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I read that completely differently from how it was meant.
They're pushing out fossil fuel furnaces.
Last I read, which was years ago, was they still struggle under -20C. Which is not abnormal for many places in Canada. How do these perform in wicked cold times?
Mine is rated for -25, which where i live in southern Ontario has been reached 3 times in 50 years (wind chill doesn't count remember). And while I haven't had a heat pump for one of those days I don't think it would be a problem, after all the efficiency doesn't just drop to 0, it just doesn't work as well for that one day and my house could stay a safe level of warm for a day or 2 without heat anyway.
Despite this I am required to have an auxiliary heat source, so I get charged 30 dollars a month just for a gas hook up I haven't used.
A lot of heat pumps have normal electrical heating as a backup as well.
they still struggle under -20C. Which is not abnormal for many places in Canada
Yes, but that's why heat pumps in this country are typically paired with auxiliary electric heat. The heat pumps still contributes some amount, even at -30 or below, but the electric "tops up" the pre-warmed air that the heat pump makes.
And that is only really needed for a couple of months out of the year, even in places like Winnipeg or Edmonton.
20-30 years ago, the heat pump technology wasn't as capable, and couldn't do the job as well, but they have improves quite a lot since then.
Yes, but that's why heat pumps in this country are typically paired with auxiliary electric heat.
Yes, and although it's not very efficient to have auxiliary electrical heat, that's a small percent of the overall year.
If you live in a home that hits -20C for 20 days per year, that's really cold! But you'll probably need the heater on for about 180 days per year at that point. Putting up with less efficiency for 20-30 days per year is still a net gain if the other 150 days of heating makes up for it.
I mean, a resistive electric heater is still ("just") 100% efficient.
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Central heat pumps have built in electric heat in cases the heat pump alone isnt sufficient.
Even if the heat pump isnt enough all the time, its still better than heating with oil, electricity, gas, etc. exclusively.
It isnt an all or nothing situation.
That, and some heat pumps are better than others. The ones that use geothermal (lines run underground below the frost line) are more expensive but don't have much issue with the cold.
Norway has worked it out. I am sure Canada can. Ground source is one option, or a second heater for the few very cold days.
unless I am very much mistaken this is only true for air source heat pumps. If you're in a cold environment I would expect you'd want a ground source heat pump instead, although the installation cost for that will be significantly higher than air source.
Last conversation I had on Reddit years ago a guy in Ottawa had data that showed that he was drawing heat during near -40C.
I have a heat pump and furnace combo. The heat pump works extremely well down to around -10C. Below that it takes a very long time to move the needle by half a degree. The furnace doesn’t kick in until the thermostat sees the house temperature trending in the opposite direction it’s attempting to achieve.
Unfortunately, its method of determining the time gradient of temperature is rather moronic and doesn’t take the temperature schedule into account. This means every morning when the schedule calls for higher daytime temperatures (even by just half a degree) the thermostat freaks out thinking that the house is cooling rapidly and kicks on the furnace to bring up the temperature.
This causes the system to needlessly run the furnace every single morning. It annoys the hell out of me but I don’t know what to do about it. Aftermarket thermostats aren’t very common around here (Canada).
I had a similar problem, fwiw I have an ecobee. I simply added an intermediary step an hour or two before the final temperature so the heatpump has a chance to go. There is also a threshold for auxiliary heat lock in the settings on the thermostat itself that doesn't show up in the app which I increased which helped a lot.
I tried the intermediate step and even the minimum possible temperature increase of half a degree still triggers the bad behaviour. I can’t find any auxiliary heat lock setting. Maybe it’s in the service menu set by the HVAC installers? They set a password on that and won’t tell me what it is.
Have you checked home automation forums? Some users are fanatics about tweaking stuff. Maybe there is a method or override option. Or see if you can get manufacturer on the phone.
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Some heat pump models can work at -30C
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Been a little while since I looked up the utility rates, but last I remember gas is about 1/7 the cost of electricity in Saskatchewan. Makes it hard to justify heat pumps for heating in most places. Hope the technology continues to improve and it’ll be a more sustainable option when we have a more sustainable grid.
Gas furnaces achieve about 96-98% efficiency. Heat pumps achieve 300-400%. So you have to factor that in.
There's still a cost difference but the hope is for governments to start supporting serious nuclear energy to drive down electric costs. It'll take time but natural gas will become less economical as decades go on especially with investments.
start supporting serious nuclear energy to drive down electric costs
Eh, I can see a resilience based argument for why we need nuclear, but building new nuclear is never going to be cheaper than solar or wind.
How does something achieve 300-400% efficiency?
Refrigeration cycle can get crazy efficiencies like that because it is transferring energy from one side of the system (indoor unit) to the other (outdoor unit). The amount of energy that is transfered is greater than the amount of energy required to push the refrigerant through the system.
Its partly due to how you are measuring efficiency. It mainly moves heat rather than creates it.
Another fun way to get more heat is condensing, a dehumidifier gets over 100% efficiency if you were to use it as a heater. Heard of evaporative cooling right? Well condensing is the opposite, you get extra heat from that.
If you take 100 joules of electrical or chemical energy, and then direct them to a heater in a house, it'll create about 100 joules of heat. That's 100% efficiency.
But if you use the 100 joules of energy to run a heat pump, it might bring in 300 joules of heat into the house. That's 300% efficiency, when measured locally at the place you actually care about (inside the house). Zoom out and laws of thermodynamics still make it impossible to create more energy than was put in, but if you look at just the part you care about, it's possible locally.
Ok yeah, so you would consider it as two systems, one being the heat pump and the other being the rest of the world.
And instead of creating heat you’re moving it, so your heat pump is operating at above 100% efficiency while the rest of the world is not.
Thanks for the explanation!
Newly built nuclear would do many things, but it wouldn't drive prices down.
Wind and solar would do that though.
Yeah, depends where you live. Saskatchewan is the worst place, Quebec is the best.
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