The Technology Fueling the Heat Pump Boom

By: Brian Sodoma, for Service Experts

When considering a new HVAC system, you’ve likely come across heat pumps. While they’ve been around for more than a century, in 2020 they officially surpassed gas furnaces in sales. Distinct from traditional heaters, which depend on natural gas, propane gas or oil for heating and electricity for cooling, heat pumps are fully electric.

Heat pumps are enticing because they are very energy efficient and environmentally friendly; they don’t use fossil fuels like natural gas. Heat pumps are considered a key solution for cutting carbon emissions and studies indicate that heat pumps are a better option for the environment for home heating. At the same time, doubts about their effectiveness in cold weather have held back some consumers. But that’s no longer an issue—thanks to advances in technology.

Find out how heat pump technology improvements are making these HVAC systems more attractive than ever for a comfortable, energy-efficient home.

Why Heat Pumps

Capable of generating quadruple the amount of energy than it takes, a heat pump is much more efficient than conventional gas furnaces and can even be better than a high-efficiency make/model. And while coal-based power plants still function today, new renewable energy sources including wind and solar are growing, making all-electric heating and cooling systems even more enticing to today’s green-minded consumers.

On top of that, federal tax credits of up to $2,000 for qualified heat pumps are another reason for the increasing demand of heat pumps. When added to other state and local rebates, homeowners can further increase their total savings.

“Heat pumps are increasingly more energy efficient than typical gas heaters, and they can help you substantially cut your power bill—and in some cases, by $500 or more annually,” said Cary Reed, a Service Experts heating and cooling pro.

How It Works

When it’s cold outside, heat pumps extract heat from the outside air to increase indoor temperature by transporting it through coils. The heat is released indoors, raising the home’s temperature. The star of the show here is the refrigerant, which changes from liquid to gas–and then back to liquid–as it gathers and releases heat during the heating cycle.

When it’s hot, the process is flipped. Heat is taken out of the home and pumped outside through the refrigerant coils.

This is how the cycle works:

• When it’s cold, a coil heat exchanger paired with a metering device extracts heat from the outside air to the liquid refrigerant inside the coil. Even at low outdoor temperatures, there is still heat available in the outside air. As the heat is absorbed by the refrigerant, it increases its temperature to its boiling point and turns it from liquid to gas.

• Next, a compressor moves the gas refrigerant throughout the system, increasing the pressure of the gas where the heat is emitted into the house by a fan or blower. As the heat is emitted, the refrigerant turns back into a liquid. The process repeats until the home’s thermostat is reached.

• A reversing valve is used to flip the system from heating to cooling. The reversing valve is regulated by the thermostat and will reverse the cycle during the summer, transferring heat from indoors to outdoors.

New Technology to the Rescue

Once the outdoor temperature falls, heat pumps become less effective and have less capacity for heating. But manufacturers have introduced new advancements in the technology to enhance the capacity AND efficiency of heat pumps in the winter.

For starters, the top heat pump manufacturers are designing systems to reach higher SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) rating standards. A higher SEER rating means lower operating costs for the system. While SEER mostly applies to cooling, the heat pump’s energy and cost savings throughout the summer rise considerably as minimum SEER standards do the same.

And in regards to heating capacity, leading brands have developed systems capable of maintaining optimal efficiency and heating capacity even once temperatures drop as low as -15 degrees. This is a dramatic 20- to 30-degree improvement compared against standards just five years ago.

“How are they making this happen? They have access to upgraded variable-speed compressors to more quickly change power levels while using less of it overall. In addition, the heat exchangers used in modern units are much larger, which explained. In case of extreme cold weather, the systems also employ secondary heaters that kick in below certain temperatures.

This new technology has been partly spurred by the Department of Energy’s Residential Climate Heat Pump Technology Challenge, a federal program focused on advancing heat pump innovation.

“The heat pump boom is actually an ideal situation,” Reed said. “People want to do their part for the climate while cutting costs on monthly bills, and there are strong incentives. We are even seeing some customers, who purchase a heat pump, will also upgrade their insulation to maximize their energy efficiency and savings.”

For details about our available heat pumps, stop by serviceexperts.com/heat-pumps. To set up an appointment with an Expert heat pump installer, visit our scheduling page.