[estiaan]

I’m always so confused when I read about heat pumps online. In Australia we’ve had heat pump based air conditioning for like decades as far as I understand. Using them to cool indoor spaces is almost essential given how hot it gets in some parts of Australia. However I’ve never come across such a system that isn’t what we call a reverse cycle aircon, that is, it can also heat an indoor space. We do have evaporative coolers in places that experience dry heat, those cannot work in reverse of course, but they are not heat pumps either.

What confuses me is that, I could understand if this is uniquely an Australian experience to have this in your home, office and shops, but don’t all modern cars have heat pump air conditioners? They usually don’t reverse to heat the inside space, the car instead just dumps the engine’s heat into the interior space and/or uses resistive heating, but still the technology is exactly the same! It’s just missing one component and configuration that makes it reversible.

Maybe I’m way wrong and it’s a completely different thing but idk

Do you guys have… fridges? Freezers?

[hinkley]

> The first mini-split systems were sold in 1954–1968 by Mitsubishi Electric and Toshiba in Japan,

- Wikipedia

Carrier and friends were already getting huge by this time in North America, and we were still decades away from any Asian imports being seen as anything more than bottom of the barrel goods.

The shittiest VCR you could buy at Best Buy in the early 1990’s in the US was produced by Goldstar, a Korean manufacturer, which today sells some of the very most expensive home electronics options. A change like that calls for a rebranding, which is why you and I know the company by a different name: LG.

Australia seems to have a more direct line to Asian manufacturers, particularly before shipping improved, so it’s not surprising you all ended up with mini splits. Also old American cooling loops are bulky, making them less efficient to ship that far.

[nikau]

You don't need a split system for reverse cycle - my parents had a 70s window unit aircon with a reverse cycle switch behind the front panel.

They never used it as gas heating was cheaper to run back then.

[pathartl]

There are parts of the US that widely use your standard heat pump such as Florida. Here in the Midwest most single family homes use central air which is a combination of an outdoor air conditioner unit and a natural gas furnace. Heat pumps are a topic here because the natural gas furnace is just so prevalent.

There was a lot of lobbying by the natural gas companies in the 80's, so there's a pretty significant group of people that write off heat pumps not realizing that yes, fridges, freezers, air conditioners are all single-direction heat pumps.

[nikau]

Its just become trendy to call them heat pumps, none of the technology is new.

Previously electricity and gas was so cheap it wasn't worth the cost of a heat pump, now its worth considering even for things like clothes dryers.