Comment by loandbehold
Comment by loandbehold 2 months ago
Cooling takes less energy per BTU moved vs heating. In AC/heat pumps that's represented by SEER rating for cooling and HSPF rating for heating (heat pumps). Modern ACs have SEER ratings for 20+ and HSPF ratings for 8+. What it means is that on average, spending 1 BTU equivalent of electrical energy cools down the house by 20 BTU. Similarly for heat pump it means spending 1 BTU of electricity heats up the house by 8 BTU. Electric resistive heating is equivalent of HSPF 1.
Also in sunny climates it's easy to use solar energy for cooling making it carbon net-zero. Cold places typically burn natural gas for heating, it's much harder to make heating carbon net-zero.
You can use a heatpump for heating as well. Then not only do you get all the energy moved by the heat pump to warm a space. But you can also use the waste heat created by the heatpump for heating as well.
In a cooling scenario, all waste heat is just that, waste. But in a heating scenario, waste heat isn’t waste, it’s additional heat you can use, and reduces the total amount of energy you need to inject into the system.