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Heat pumps are air conditioners that are run in reverse, ie, you are air conditioning the outside. Another way to think of any AC/heat pump/refrigerator is as a heat mover, you can move (or pump) heat from one place to another. So in the summer you move heat from inside to outside, and in the winter you move heat from outside to inside. ACs/heat pumps are over 100% efficient (in terms of joules of heat energy moved/joules of electrical energy consumed), because they aren't turning electrical energy into heat, but rather using electrical energy to move existing heat. So, a heat pump should always be more efficient than normal resistive electrical heating, because that is just converting just about 100% of the electrical energy into heat energy. Heat pumps may or may not be cheaper than gas/oil/whatever fossil fuel based heat, depending on fuel and electric prices in your area, and that will likely change over time. The reason that AC is seen as wasteful/inefficient, I think, is just because historically most places people live, you can get away with just opening windows and being a bit uncomfortable during the warmest parts of the year. The opposite isn't really true, it's not really feasible to live without heat in most places people live. Additionally, heating or cooling in any form is just very energy intensive. So, any "optional" form of that can be seen as a luxury. To be clear, I'm a big fan of AC, and am not suggesting people should go without it if they need it, just trying to answer the question of why it was seen as inefficient when it is technically very efficient. |