Robin, you link to an article by Willis Eshenbach, a pseudo-scientist employed at South Pacific Oil ltd. A known global warming denier. Try again, please.

Heat pump technology has come a long way since they became popular in the 1980s. Properly sized, applied and installed, heat pump systems can be a wonderful heating and cooling source. I only install conventional heat pump systems that utilize a variable speed indoor blower. For my area, which is humid but not constantly hot, the VS blower can be set up for really good dehumidification while providing conditioned air at lower, quieter speeds.

I hope you guys are correct in what you choose to believe. We’ve been stung too many times by those who simply want to wipe out the oil, coal and gas industries. Time will tell.
Have you looked into this? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/06/25/the-real-cost-of-wind-and-solar/

Allison, looking forward to the emissions side article.

Thanks for posting that link Paul – good myth-busting. There is SOOO much misinformation flying around about renewables – much of it developed and forwarded by the heavily subsidized fossil- fuel industry. They are not our friends.

Robin, the arguments you list are urban legends. Solar PV energy generation cost is already one of the lowest, if not the lowest. I encourage you to page through this report: https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

And decades of subsidies for fossil fuel industries?

Two states with combined population of 60 million, CA and NY, will ban sales of ICE cars by 2035. Apparently, their respective utility commissions are not panicking about it.

Robert, it is a heat pump. The unit in the video example was coupled with a ducted AH indoor unit. Oh, and you should hear the AH, except you almost couldn’t standing right next to it.

You are very correct about “the crap we have been manufacturing here in the US for many decades”. For some industries in this country, if they could keep producing Ford Model T for half a century, they would.

While we should strive for the cleanest energy possible, we also must be practical, so we do not create a situation where we do not have enough affordable energy to handle the required usage of energy. Wind and solar energy is currently a lot more costly than are fossil fuel energy sources, most of the cost is being absorbed through government subsidies using tax dollars. That additional cost is paid for by all taxpayers, regardless of how much clean energy we may use. If we reduce the amount of fossil fuel energy being produced at a higher rate than we are able to produce more clean energy, we are not going to be able to meet the demand for energy usage. This is already being seen in areas of the world that are having to reduce the amount of EV’s added to the electric grid in order to have enough energy to provide more base needs for heating, cooling, cooking etc. We can’t just turn off one source of energy when we don’t have the capability to replace that energy with at least a like amount of cleaner energy. A slower transition to a cleaner energy source will prevent massive issues from occurring. There are cost, availability and environmental issues for every type of energy source available. All factors for all types of energy sources need to be fully addressed before making any drastic changes that may well turn out to be worse than what we are currently dealing with.
For the reasons mentioned, if a fairly new fossil fuel heating system is already in place, I usually recommend installing a heat pump for the primary heat source, using the fossil fuel system for auxiliary heating due to the fact that using electric resistance heating for auxiliary heating will be more costly to operate while putting a lot more stress on the electric grid. We need to be sensible and rational about how we utilize energy sources so we don’t end up not having enough energy to satisfy the needs of everyone.

A Btu of heat is the same regardless of how it is produced or moved. If oversizing a heat pump causes short cycling, that heat pump would be more effective properly sized. Since heat pumps have lower temperature rises than fossil fuel heat systems, the air is moving more with heat pumps. This allows for a more even distribution of heat, even in a drafty home. Before sizing any type of heating system, air infiltration and exfiltration should be addressed. It is a lot less costly to prevent air infiltration and exfiltration while controlling proper ventilation than it is to just add more heat to counter the effects of a drafty house.
Once air movement into and out of the house has been addressed and ventilation is controlled, the proper amount of heat should be installed, regardless of the source of that heat. We should never shy away from heat pumps based on the amount of heat required. Heat pumps do have different distribution needs to prevent them from creating drafty conditions within the heating system. In general, we want the least amount of distance from where a heat pump system supplies heated air to an area and where that air is allowed to return to the blower.

I do like the relative quietness of the mini-splits, but we’ve been using heat pumps at all of our houses since the 1980s. In fact, the Trane 3-ton unit that we installed in suburban Philadelphia in the late 1980s for our 3500 sq ft house was still in use by the new owners almost until their recent resale of the house. You know their motto, “It takes a lot to stop a Trane.” While all of the Carrier units we’ve used since then have been noisier than modern mini-splits and don’t work as well at very cold temperatures as those newer designs, including the one we’ve had here for almost 10 years, they’ve worked well enough and quiet enough that we’ve been comfortable keeping them. When our neighbor recently installed a gas-fired backup generator, we discovered what a lot of noise is, when they tested it: it sounded like the truck from a full-sized tractor-trailer had pulled up next to our house and revved the engine for the full time it was on. It was noisy on the far side of our house, 100 feet away…inside the house! The heat pump is silent, in comparison.