Heat pumps serve a dual purpose - they cool your home during the sweltering summer months and provide a warm sanctuary during the winter. With superior efficiency over traditional furnaces or baseboard heaters, heat pumps are a smart choice for potentially lowering your energy costs in transitional seasons. Moreover, they offer a greener alternative to conventional electric resistance heating methods, such as baseboards or electric furnaces, by using less electricity and improving your home's energy efficiency.
A heat pump works by moving thermal energy from the outside air into your home. This is the mechanism that allows heat pumps to achieve a 100% - 500% coefficient of performance (COP). But what does that mean exactly?
The COP is a measurement of efficiency that represents how many units of heat a system is able to produce compared to how many units of energy it takes to produce that heat. The most efficient natural gas furnaces can achieve COP of 0.95, meaning for every 1 unit of energy burned, you get 0.95 units of heat energy inside your home.
For heat pumps, the energy used is electricity from your home, but instead of using that electricity to create heat through resistance (the way your oven works), it moves heat from the outside air using a complex system of compressors and evaporators. This system works so well that you end up with enormous efficiency improvements over traditional methods.
