I’ll chime in here since I own 2 heat pumps and live in a cold climate (often below 20C). Our house is heated with 100% electricity and after installing heat pumps our power bill dropped by about 18%. That includes all electricity, not just heating, so the gain in heating efficiency was very considerable.
Generally, cold climate heat pumps are an efficient source of heat down to -15 degrees Fahrenheit
“Generally” is the wrong way to approach this. What you should be looking at is the specific capabilities of the actual system that you are considering installing. Some of them can go much colder.
If the Mitsubishi FE18 isn’t efficient in your climate… then don’t buy that unit. Simple.
If it’s really cold where you are… then you could consider a ground source heat pump instead one that uses air as a heat source. The ground doesn’t get anywhere near cold to have efficiency issues no matter where you are in the world and ground source heat pumps don’t cost all that much… though they do require a bit of digging.
Also, if your heat pump is inefficient for a couple really cold weeks a year… oh well. You’re still coming out ahead because it’s very efficient the other 50 weeks a year. It’s not like they stop working at extremely cold temperatures, they just produce a bit less heat than you might like for the amount of power consumed. Maybe they’re “only” 80% efficient instead of 600% efficient… you know what else is 80% efficient? Heating with gas.
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I’ll chime in here since I own 2 heat pumps and live in a cold climate (often below 20C). Our house is heated with 100% electricity and after installing heat pumps our power bill dropped by about 18%. That includes all electricity, not just heating, so the gain in heating efficiency was very considerable.
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The Guardian is a UK publication.
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“Generally” is the wrong way to approach this. What you should be looking at is the specific capabilities of the actual system that you are considering installing. Some of them can go much colder.
If the Mitsubishi FE18 isn’t efficient in your climate… then don’t buy that unit. Simple.
If it’s really cold where you are… then you could consider a ground source heat pump instead one that uses air as a heat source. The ground doesn’t get anywhere near cold to have efficiency issues no matter where you are in the world and ground source heat pumps don’t cost all that much… though they do require a bit of digging.
Also, if your heat pump is inefficient for a couple really cold weeks a year… oh well. You’re still coming out ahead because it’s very efficient the other 50 weeks a year. It’s not like they stop working at extremely cold temperatures, they just produce a bit less heat than you might like for the amount of power consumed. Maybe they’re “only” 80% efficient instead of 600% efficient… you know what else is 80% efficient? Heating with gas.