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"We had seen considerable growth in residential and commercial heat pumps. At colder temperature these units stop producing heat efficiently and switch to resis
by mcguire 6y ago
"We had seen considerable growth in residential and commercial heat pumps. At colder temperature these units stop producing heat efficiently and switch to resistance heating which causes a spike in demand."
That was my first thought on hearing about Texas' problems. Air source heat pumps don't like cold temperatures outside---I've noticed ours here hitting the resistance heat when the outside temps were in the 20Fs and the indoor setting was 65F. With the population growth and all of the infrastructure using air-sourced pumps (once we got rid of the swamp cooler), cold temperatures mean a step change in energy usage.
- tzs 6y agoThere are residential air source heat pumps that can work well at those temperatures. Mitsubishi has some [1] that provide 100% capacity down to 23 F and then fall off fairly linearly to 76% capacity at -13 F. Fujitsu has some [2] that go down to -15 F. It's probably a good as people's existing systems reach replacement age to replace them with that kind of system. [1] https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/technology/keep-warm-this-winter-inverter-technology-for-any-climate https://www.mitsubishicomfort.com/articles/technology/keep-w... [2] https://www.fujitsugeneral.com/us/residential/technology/xlth-low-temp-heating.html https://www.fujitsugeneral.com/us/residential/technology/xlt...