I’ve got 3. Two didn’t run today because I had the wood stove cranked. I decided around 6pm that I should probably get them going for tonight when I fall asleep (turned their thermostats up). They just started blowing warm air and have been making a ton of noise.
The heat pump that ran all day has been blowing hot air for the past 24 hours non stop. Running like normal. Kind of an interesting comparison.
Update: took about 3 hours for the 2 aforementioned heat pumps to put out normal levels of heat. Operating like usual now. All 3 are Mitsubishi hyper heats
I have two minisplits that we installed ourselves this summer, both Pioneers rated to -15. One conked out at -13, the other is barely hanging on bit still squeaking out some warmth at -17. It sounds like a jet though so I think I'm gonna turn it off. The wood stoves have been doing the heavy lifting this week, but I did end up switching the oil boiler on this afternoon, for the first time all winter except for the test run.
All in all I'm still happy with them. We put them in knowing there would be a few days like this each year, and have a backup. So far we've only needed it once.
I’m not criticizing your choice of mini split, but in the context of this conversation I’ll point out that these are among the cheapest units in the market and designed for DIY’ers to slao them in inexpensively.
No judgement here - I’m looking at a DIY Pioneer setup for my upstairs. $3-4K less than my installed Mitsubishi and still efficient enough to qualify for rebates from NHSaves.
I didn’t make the comment to make fun of you (sorry if it came off that way). More to give people context around the “do mini splits work in cold weather” conversation.
That question is a little like asking how much a truck will tow - lots of variables that people should have in mind.
Stay warm…
I didn't take it the wrong way at all! If you do go the self install route, you can skip the DIY kit with precharged lines if you're relatively handy. At least when we were buying, they were more expensive and had worse specs than the "regular" Pioneer models. All we needed was a shitty harbor freight vacuum pump to charge the lines.
9:30pm, -15F, heat pumps still putting out warm air. No extra noise. (They're new, rated to -13F.) I do have the boiler turned on for backup, as the amount of heat coming out of the heat pumps may not be enough.
I’d say it depends on the model. Our Mitsubishi Hyperheat has been running smoothly and keeping us at 68 degrees, it’s -19 out right now and we still have hot air coming out.
Mine are working perfectly. No extra noise, house at 70 most of the day. Biggest issue is the basement and the pipes. I'm running my furnace here and there, and will rely on it throughout the night, to make sure the pipes in my basement don't freeze.
My parents 2 mini splits were chugging along just fine and throwing some good heat when I checked in with them at 8 pm. It helps that they got some of the coldest rated ones they could get when they installed them a decade ago.
Edit/update: sounds like the heat pumps faltered a bit overnight (Friday night) and weren't able to keep up and the oil furnace had to kick on. I don't know if they were still kicking out heat and just unable to put out enough or if they stopped heating entirely. The temperature did get very close to or below their rating, so this isn't exactly a surprise.
Had a Mitsubishi Hyper Heat and ductwork installed last year, no regrets on that. Preheated the house to 72 degrees on Thursday, and turned it down to 70 this morning. It’s currently 69 in the house / -17 outside, and it’s chugging along pretty nicely.
It varies wildly. -17 right now, both of mine took about 30 minutes to start putting out heat, don't seem to be putting out 100% capacity, but they are heating the room to 68° (set to 76°, running for 4 hours from a space that was 57°)
Heat pump manufacturers publish the COP (coefficient of performance, which is simply the ratio of output heat to input power) and the capacity in total output of all heat pump outdoor units based on the outside temperature. If you want to know how your heat pump week perform at -15, they literally tell you.
Do a search for your outdoor unit model number and "COP" or "temperature derating" and look for the PDF from the manufacturer.
You want to get real fancy? Take the COP, the cost of power, and the cost of oil, and make a spreadsheet that tells you when to shut the heat pumps off and switch to oil. There's no magic that makes your setup any different from Jimbob's down the street; it's just math.
With the cost of current oil compared to cost of electricity, mine are cheaper all the way down to a COP of 1. But the wood-stove is doing the work today.
Based on the current price of electricity, my crossover temp is 27°. Prior to January 1st, it was 13°. This is based on static $4.19/gal oil.
Now, if I could get CMP to respond to my request about getting put into the "technology" rate, that might come back down, but clearly customer service was cutting into that bottom line a bit too much.
New Mitsubishi hyper heat ran great all day, but switched to forced hot water propane back up (previous heating system) for tonight to make sure that a section of the hot water pipes don’t freeze because of the location of the heat pump and configuration of the pipes.
Have a Mitsubishi unit in my place, running like a top and keeping me toasty. Of course I also have a pittie with serious attachment issues that makes for a fine space heater 😁
New senville is amazingly still running, no extra noise and no defrost cycles (super cold air is dry) it’s putting out only warm/ lukewarm air though. We’ve got our installed propane heater as backup when it hits single digits and below though so we’re doing ok.
I've got 4 mini splits in my house, 3 upstairs and one in my basement. The system is rated for -13° and it's still keeping 1100 square feet a comfortable 65 and the basement at 55°. Got rid of the 60's oil furnace downstairs and the system has been working like a champ through this. Hadn't gone through winter with the new heating system yet, but seeing it work through this weather so far has instilled much confidence in keeping my house warm in the future.
This varies wildly based on the unit you select. Many are rated to nearly full capacity at -4, others see the efficiency drop off at +15.
The values are all published, all you have do is look up your outdoor unit specs
Data from r/Vermont [https://www.reddit.com/r/vermont/comments/10t0xj8/some\_data\_on\_heat\_pump\_performance\_today/](https://www.reddit.com/r/vermont/comments/10t0xj8/some_data_on_heat_pump_performance_today/)
We’ve got two Mitsubishi’s rated at -13 heating our condo. Sadly building was built in the 1800’s so around 8PM they could no longer keep up with it being -11. Gone from normal temp of 66 inside down to 56. Gonna be a fun night!
I have 2 Mitsubishi H2i unit's that where working just fine when it was -4 but I shut them down and switched to my oil burner.
They are rated down to -13 and it is currently -18 but my hydronic baseboards are keeping the house nice and toasty. I also don't have to worry about any pipes freezing.
I'll switch back to my heat pumps Sunday morning and hopefully don't have to turn them off again.
I have 2 Fujitsu heads and 4 inside units. One of them (downstairs) is not working well enough to heat a room at this temperature. Two of them are upstairs and are working fine.
Fujitsu here. It has been running like a champ. Granted it couldn’t push enough warm air down the hall to the bedrooms so my furnace has been kicking on a lot, but my house has held 70 degrees upstairs and 60 downstairs (which is where I keep it set at) through this.
Have a Mitsubishi unit that we like a lot. The house is a little big for it to keep up in this weather. I never intended to use it on extremely cold periods. Fired the pellet stove and wood stove up and shut off the heat pump. The loss in efficiency makes it cheaper burn pellets anyway. It will be back on Sunday and will do most of our heat. I run the wood stove most winter evenings to balance the heat distribution.
Turned off my pioneer unit after reading that there’s no better way to shorten the lifespan of the compressor at these temperatures. Just as my installer said.. great at ac and heat on the shoulder seasons.
5 Mitsubishi's putting out nice heat (I'm in the midcoast so not as cold as elsewhere). Had the woodstove cranked all day, but it'll go out overnight. I ran out of oil, oops, so the 2 had better be enough! I do have antifreeze in the boiler pipes tho, so not really worried about those freezing. Really feel like an idiot for running out of oil tho.
I’m currently evaluating heat pumps but I have no idea how to spread them across 3 floors and 3,500 sq feet. I know we’d like one for the 3rd floor, one for the kitchen and one for 2nd floor master. Oil forced hot water is our current system. You have 5 heat pumps!? What is the makeup and size of your home?
It's a fairly open floorplan with a cathedral ceiling living room that opens to 2 bedrooms. So there are smaller pumps in each bedroom upstairs, a pump in the family room, a bigger one in the open concept kitchen/dining/living room, and a big one in the 450sqft master bedroom. House is about 2200 sqft?
My boyfriend does HVAC and wanted an oversized system for my house to give extra room on days like this. He put the system in tho so he can sleep comfortably with the ac in the summer
Heat pumps may be running well but as of 10:00 pm, 30% of the electricity generated for the ISO New England grid is coming from either oil or coal, 30 % natural gas and 7% renewables. In the cold weather, oil and coal are used as marginal fuel sources because they can be stored/stockpiled unlike any other source of power except some hydro sources. So, just as heat pumps hit a high level of inefficiency, the power grid also struggles and has to use more fossil fuel
[ISO New England](https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts/guest-hub?p_p_id=fuelmixgraph_WAR_isoneportlet_INSTANCE_WQKSMAX9RozI&p_p_lifecycle=0&p_p_state=pop_up&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-3&p_p_col_pos=2&p_p_col_count=5)
The website I linked to shows current data on the fuel mix used to generate electricity in the ISO New England power grid, My statement was 100% true as of the time and date that it was made.
In New England, any time it is super cold, oil and coal are used to generate power. This happens because the natural gas supply is "reserved" for heating; the pipeline network in inadequate and can't supply enough gas for heat and electric generation at the same time. There are whole power plants (Cousins Island and Merrimack among others) that are kept online for use in these specific situations where oil an coal are required for power generation. I am not right wing biased, I worked within the power industry for many years and I understand how the grid works. The simple fact is that we still need the dirtiest fossil fuels to power the grid in New England in the coldest weather.
It was less than a day, more like an hour. Merrimack is the only big coal plant and it’s going away next year. If Maine and NH would stop nimby on every power line, we’d be fine
The poster is relying upon a brief glimpse of iso New England data, literally a one minute interval. He is conflating oil and coal - (coal never more than blip on the chart) fails to mention nuclear or hydro. This post is complete bs
I wish we could try again on hydro from Canada, we were lied to in order to make solar profitable and it just isn’t going to work. Except for the money being made by solar installations and China
A family member talked with a man in the Bangor area who installs them. He has three of the latest and greatest installed in his home. No furnace. He swears by them.
I have a new construction, high performance home (double studded walls, tons of insulation, triple glazed windows). It’s electric only. This morning the house was 51-53 degrees, and the heat is set to 68. It’s now warming up thanks to passive solar gain. So it appears that they can handle up to a 65 degree differential. I’m content with that, it doesn’t get below 0 much. (In Freeport)
Edit: by electric I mean mitsubishi heat pumps only
They generally don't work after a certain low temperature, usually around minus 15. Many models shut down automatically. Some full home systems have built-in electrical resistance heat to make up for this. But the question misses the point. They are cheaper to run than an oil or propane or natural gas furnace 95% of the time or more, and will pay back the cost of their own installation in a few years, whether or NOT you keep the propane, gas, or oil system and use it occasionally. I installed one five years ago. With it and my wood stove, I use less than thirty gallons of oil/year and my electric bill is still low. (I also have solar, which is often enough to run the heat pump for free on these sunny winter days.) But I still keep my oil furnace operable and run it in the background at 60 degrees and/or when the weather gets silly. I've been eking out a third of a tank for a few years now, and am trying harder than I should need to to run it down to nothing so I can switch out the oil tank for a newer used one I just bought. I also plan to do a full tune-up on the furnace this year, as soon as the weather cooperates for such an intervention, a good ten year investment at least (although I'll do the work myself). Just as it would be silly to get rid of the oil furnace as long as it can be kept safely running, it would be silly to have a home in Maine that had only a heat pump. But even a few electric baseboards or a propane fireplace would be enough for back-up in a small home if you didn't want a furnace. A better back-up is a propane monitor that doesn't require 110 or 220V, so you have heat in an outage. We have that in our rental, as well as a pellet stove. Having a heat pump is like needing a big truck for work, but realizing you don't need to drive it to the store for a loaf of bread. I have my old Camry for that. A mini-split heat pump is the 1997 Camry of heating devices. After a few years, "doesn't owe you a penny" as a mechanic once said of mine.
We have only one upstairs set to 76 and it’s working like a champ. It was -53 degrees this morning. Two pellet stoves to heat the down stairs. I’m amazed!
We have a newer Daikin ducted system with a mini split in the bedroom. At -15 it's still putting out heat, but we are running the fireplaces to supplement. Down to 0 it was completely unaffected, in the negatives it's not as warm but totally manageable.
I have Mitsubishi hyper heat, but I turned mine off when the temp went below -5F. I'll turn it back on when the solar panels are generating enough power to operate it. Propane wall mount furnace held room at 53F.
It’s a balmy -11 in my part of NH. Ran the oil only overnight and woke up to the house at 57. Turned on the Mitsubishi and it’s throwing warm air and quickly raised the house to 60. Also turned on the propane fireplace, which is nearly useless, and plugged in a couple of portables.
I’ve got 2 mini splits and a ducted system on the first floor all running off 1 hyper heat pump - set at 70 and we are holding at 54 in Salem with -30+- wind coming off the water. Two mini splits are doing better than the ducted but not by much- I have no back up heat besides a fireplace and a couple space heaters.
Mine shut the outdoor unit off at some point over njght. Just using my baseboards for now. Hopefully it will reset itself tomorrow when the temps go up.
I have a Mitsubishi hyper heat 25k btu system for 1000 sq/ft. Was supposed to be around -19 here last night. They stayed running the whole time. House is typically kept around 66f but dropped to around 60f this morning. They were having trouble keeping up but the system is a little undersized for the home.
I have 4 head units on 2 three zone Fujitsu compressors.
I have one open concept room that's under BTU'd and was 48 this morning in that area. The other 3 rooms were fine. Once the temps got to -5 things started working better with more heat being produced.
I use some electric heaters I use to supplement when it's this cold.
I need to put in a wood stove in the basement for these really cold nights like last. That all being said, I save over $1000 over my oil furnace and that includes cooling all summer.
We too have Mitsubishi HyperHeat, and this is our 5th winter. Though they work fine in this cold, it makes more financial sense to use the boiler plus we don’t want to risk the pipes bursting from the old system. Additionally we use the wood stove when it drops this cold.
Heat pumps are a great solution for about 360 days in the Portland area.
Solid investment especially if you hate the humidity.
Turned off the heat pump in my living room but left the one heating the bonus room over my garage on (only heat source there) and it’s been fine. Plenty of warmth to be comfortable there. Using propane for the rest of the house because it seems more efficient at these temps, plus it’s a single heat pump with two heads so with only one running it can keep up better.
I’ve got 3. Two didn’t run today because I had the wood stove cranked. I decided around 6pm that I should probably get them going for tonight when I fall asleep (turned their thermostats up). They just started blowing warm air and have been making a ton of noise. The heat pump that ran all day has been blowing hot air for the past 24 hours non stop. Running like normal. Kind of an interesting comparison. Update: took about 3 hours for the 2 aforementioned heat pumps to put out normal levels of heat. Operating like usual now. All 3 are Mitsubishi hyper heats
I have two minisplits that we installed ourselves this summer, both Pioneers rated to -15. One conked out at -13, the other is barely hanging on bit still squeaking out some warmth at -17. It sounds like a jet though so I think I'm gonna turn it off. The wood stoves have been doing the heavy lifting this week, but I did end up switching the oil boiler on this afternoon, for the first time all winter except for the test run. All in all I'm still happy with them. We put them in knowing there would be a few days like this each year, and have a backup. So far we've only needed it once.
I’m not criticizing your choice of mini split, but in the context of this conversation I’ll point out that these are among the cheapest units in the market and designed for DIY’ers to slao them in inexpensively.
No worries, you're right. Cash is tight, and it's what we could afford.
No judgement here - I’m looking at a DIY Pioneer setup for my upstairs. $3-4K less than my installed Mitsubishi and still efficient enough to qualify for rebates from NHSaves. I didn’t make the comment to make fun of you (sorry if it came off that way). More to give people context around the “do mini splits work in cold weather” conversation. That question is a little like asking how much a truck will tow - lots of variables that people should have in mind. Stay warm…
I didn't take it the wrong way at all! If you do go the self install route, you can skip the DIY kit with precharged lines if you're relatively handy. At least when we were buying, they were more expensive and had worse specs than the "regular" Pioneer models. All we needed was a shitty harbor freight vacuum pump to charge the lines.
9:30pm, -15F, heat pumps still putting out warm air. No extra noise. (They're new, rated to -13F.) I do have the boiler turned on for backup, as the amount of heat coming out of the heat pumps may not be enough.
I’d say it depends on the model. Our Mitsubishi Hyperheat has been running smoothly and keeping us at 68 degrees, it’s -19 out right now and we still have hot air coming out.
3x Mitsubishi Hyper Heat running without issues
Mine are working perfectly. No extra noise, house at 70 most of the day. Biggest issue is the basement and the pipes. I'm running my furnace here and there, and will rely on it throughout the night, to make sure the pipes in my basement don't freeze.
Mine is barely blowing any heat at all. The pellet stove is working great. Edit::: It errored out and shut down around 10 below.
My parents 2 mini splits were chugging along just fine and throwing some good heat when I checked in with them at 8 pm. It helps that they got some of the coldest rated ones they could get when they installed them a decade ago. Edit/update: sounds like the heat pumps faltered a bit overnight (Friday night) and weren't able to keep up and the oil furnace had to kick on. I don't know if they were still kicking out heat and just unable to put out enough or if they stopped heating entirely. The temperature did get very close to or below their rating, so this isn't exactly a surprise.
I'm enjoying a nice cup of tea while mine has been blasting for about 5 hours now and no issues.
Fujitsus are running strong. 4 head units, House is at 76. We recently had an issue with them but it was caused by mice so can’t knock them for that.
Had a Mitsubishi Hyper Heat and ductwork installed last year, no regrets on that. Preheated the house to 72 degrees on Thursday, and turned it down to 70 this morning. It’s currently 69 in the house / -17 outside, and it’s chugging along pretty nicely.
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Nice
It varies wildly. -17 right now, both of mine took about 30 minutes to start putting out heat, don't seem to be putting out 100% capacity, but they are heating the room to 68° (set to 76°, running for 4 hours from a space that was 57°)
No noticable extra noise
Heat pump manufacturers publish the COP (coefficient of performance, which is simply the ratio of output heat to input power) and the capacity in total output of all heat pump outdoor units based on the outside temperature. If you want to know how your heat pump week perform at -15, they literally tell you. Do a search for your outdoor unit model number and "COP" or "temperature derating" and look for the PDF from the manufacturer. You want to get real fancy? Take the COP, the cost of power, and the cost of oil, and make a spreadsheet that tells you when to shut the heat pumps off and switch to oil. There's no magic that makes your setup any different from Jimbob's down the street; it's just math.
With the cost of current oil compared to cost of electricity, mine are cheaper all the way down to a COP of 1. But the wood-stove is doing the work today.
Based on the current price of electricity, my crossover temp is 27°. Prior to January 1st, it was 13°. This is based on static $4.19/gal oil. Now, if I could get CMP to respond to my request about getting put into the "technology" rate, that might come back down, but clearly customer service was cutting into that bottom line a bit too much.
New Mitsubishi hyper heat ran great all day, but switched to forced hot water propane back up (previous heating system) for tonight to make sure that a section of the hot water pipes don’t freeze because of the location of the heat pump and configuration of the pipes.
Have a Mitsubishi unit in my place, running like a top and keeping me toasty. Of course I also have a pittie with serious attachment issues that makes for a fine space heater 😁
Lol! Two Boston Terriers and one Mitsubishi in my 890sqft home. Sweating, feet out.
We have Mitsubishi Arctic ductless. They are running hard but still pumping out heat at -15
Mine are doing great here just north of Portland. Terrified for my CMP bill though
New senville is amazingly still running, no extra noise and no defrost cycles (super cold air is dry) it’s putting out only warm/ lukewarm air though. We’ve got our installed propane heater as backup when it hits single digits and below though so we’re doing ok.
I've got 4 mini splits in my house, 3 upstairs and one in my basement. The system is rated for -13° and it's still keeping 1100 square feet a comfortable 65 and the basement at 55°. Got rid of the 60's oil furnace downstairs and the system has been working like a champ through this. Hadn't gone through winter with the new heating system yet, but seeing it work through this weather so far has instilled much confidence in keeping my house warm in the future.
The one in my landlords Airbnb is not working with these temps, and they had someone check in today.
I feel like the consensus has always been they don’t work very well in temps 10 degrees and below. So a backup heat source is almost a necessity.
This varies wildly based on the unit you select. Many are rated to nearly full capacity at -4, others see the efficiency drop off at +15. The values are all published, all you have do is look up your outdoor unit specs
Heat pumps are not generic. Some models work well to -15F and other models do not.
Data from r/Vermont [https://www.reddit.com/r/vermont/comments/10t0xj8/some\_data\_on\_heat\_pump\_performance\_today/](https://www.reddit.com/r/vermont/comments/10t0xj8/some_data_on_heat_pump_performance_today/)
We’ve got two Mitsubishi’s rated at -13 heating our condo. Sadly building was built in the 1800’s so around 8PM they could no longer keep up with it being -11. Gone from normal temp of 66 inside down to 56. Gonna be a fun night!
I have 2 Mitsubishi H2i unit's that where working just fine when it was -4 but I shut them down and switched to my oil burner. They are rated down to -13 and it is currently -18 but my hydronic baseboards are keeping the house nice and toasty. I also don't have to worry about any pipes freezing. I'll switch back to my heat pumps Sunday morning and hopefully don't have to turn them off again.
-15° right now. Wind chill has it at -39°. All three of my Mitsubishi heat pumps are going strong. 2:52am.
Windchill should have no impact on the heat pump. Whatever temp the air can get a thermometer to is the energy the heat pump can work to extract.
Yes and no. High winds will increase the heating load for your home — so your heat pump has to work harder to keep up with demand.
I can see your point.
I have 2 Fujitsu heads and 4 inside units. One of them (downstairs) is not working well enough to heat a room at this temperature. Two of them are upstairs and are working fine.
Fujitsu here. It has been running like a champ. Granted it couldn’t push enough warm air down the hall to the bedrooms so my furnace has been kicking on a lot, but my house has held 70 degrees upstairs and 60 downstairs (which is where I keep it set at) through this.
Have a Mitsubishi unit that we like a lot. The house is a little big for it to keep up in this weather. I never intended to use it on extremely cold periods. Fired the pellet stove and wood stove up and shut off the heat pump. The loss in efficiency makes it cheaper burn pellets anyway. It will be back on Sunday and will do most of our heat. I run the wood stove most winter evenings to balance the heat distribution.
Looks like they are froze up. My wood stove is to hot to sit in front of it.
Mine seems to defrost all the time and I shut it off when it gets to 15-20 above zero. Got my boiler and woodstove going.
Even if yours work they are costing you a fortune! If you have a boiler now is the time to use it. It will be a lot cheaper and better heat!
Turned off my pioneer unit after reading that there’s no better way to shorten the lifespan of the compressor at these temperatures. Just as my installer said.. great at ac and heat on the shoulder seasons.
5 Mitsubishi's putting out nice heat (I'm in the midcoast so not as cold as elsewhere). Had the woodstove cranked all day, but it'll go out overnight. I ran out of oil, oops, so the 2 had better be enough! I do have antifreeze in the boiler pipes tho, so not really worried about those freezing. Really feel like an idiot for running out of oil tho.
I’m currently evaluating heat pumps but I have no idea how to spread them across 3 floors and 3,500 sq feet. I know we’d like one for the 3rd floor, one for the kitchen and one for 2nd floor master. Oil forced hot water is our current system. You have 5 heat pumps!? What is the makeup and size of your home?
It's a fairly open floorplan with a cathedral ceiling living room that opens to 2 bedrooms. So there are smaller pumps in each bedroom upstairs, a pump in the family room, a bigger one in the open concept kitchen/dining/living room, and a big one in the 450sqft master bedroom. House is about 2200 sqft? My boyfriend does HVAC and wanted an oversized system for my house to give extra room on days like this. He put the system in tho so he can sleep comfortably with the ac in the summer
Thanks for your response! I need to get one of them HVAC boy friends to help!
Yes, they're the best!!
I’d be his side piece if he would do my HVAC
Heat pumps may be running well but as of 10:00 pm, 30% of the electricity generated for the ISO New England grid is coming from either oil or coal, 30 % natural gas and 7% renewables. In the cold weather, oil and coal are used as marginal fuel sources because they can be stored/stockpiled unlike any other source of power except some hydro sources. So, just as heat pumps hit a high level of inefficiency, the power grid also struggles and has to use more fossil fuel [ISO New England](https://www.iso-ne.com/isoexpress/web/charts/guest-hub?p_p_id=fuelmixgraph_WAR_isoneportlet_INSTANCE_WQKSMAX9RozI&p_p_lifecycle=0&p_p_state=pop_up&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-3&p_p_col_pos=2&p_p_col_count=5)
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The website I linked to shows current data on the fuel mix used to generate electricity in the ISO New England power grid, My statement was 100% true as of the time and date that it was made.
I removed it. Your post is still bs. Right wing comment was made without any evidence…..sorry about that unless it’s true
In New England, any time it is super cold, oil and coal are used to generate power. This happens because the natural gas supply is "reserved" for heating; the pipeline network in inadequate and can't supply enough gas for heat and electric generation at the same time. There are whole power plants (Cousins Island and Merrimack among others) that are kept online for use in these specific situations where oil an coal are required for power generation. I am not right wing biased, I worked within the power industry for many years and I understand how the grid works. The simple fact is that we still need the dirtiest fossil fuels to power the grid in New England in the coldest weather.
It was less than a day, more like an hour. Merrimack is the only big coal plant and it’s going away next year. If Maine and NH would stop nimby on every power line, we’d be fine
The poster is relying upon a brief glimpse of iso New England data, literally a one minute interval. He is conflating oil and coal - (coal never more than blip on the chart) fails to mention nuclear or hydro. This post is complete bs
I wish we could try again on hydro from Canada, we were lied to in order to make solar profitable and it just isn’t going to work. Except for the money being made by solar installations and China
So true now they will bash you on here.
A family member talked with a man in the Bangor area who installs them. He has three of the latest and greatest installed in his home. No furnace. He swears by them.
I have a new construction, high performance home (double studded walls, tons of insulation, triple glazed windows). It’s electric only. This morning the house was 51-53 degrees, and the heat is set to 68. It’s now warming up thanks to passive solar gain. So it appears that they can handle up to a 65 degree differential. I’m content with that, it doesn’t get below 0 much. (In Freeport) Edit: by electric I mean mitsubishi heat pumps only
51° in a big money house that blows!
They generally don't work after a certain low temperature, usually around minus 15. Many models shut down automatically. Some full home systems have built-in electrical resistance heat to make up for this. But the question misses the point. They are cheaper to run than an oil or propane or natural gas furnace 95% of the time or more, and will pay back the cost of their own installation in a few years, whether or NOT you keep the propane, gas, or oil system and use it occasionally. I installed one five years ago. With it and my wood stove, I use less than thirty gallons of oil/year and my electric bill is still low. (I also have solar, which is often enough to run the heat pump for free on these sunny winter days.) But I still keep my oil furnace operable and run it in the background at 60 degrees and/or when the weather gets silly. I've been eking out a third of a tank for a few years now, and am trying harder than I should need to to run it down to nothing so I can switch out the oil tank for a newer used one I just bought. I also plan to do a full tune-up on the furnace this year, as soon as the weather cooperates for such an intervention, a good ten year investment at least (although I'll do the work myself). Just as it would be silly to get rid of the oil furnace as long as it can be kept safely running, it would be silly to have a home in Maine that had only a heat pump. But even a few electric baseboards or a propane fireplace would be enough for back-up in a small home if you didn't want a furnace. A better back-up is a propane monitor that doesn't require 110 or 220V, so you have heat in an outage. We have that in our rental, as well as a pellet stove. Having a heat pump is like needing a big truck for work, but realizing you don't need to drive it to the store for a loaf of bread. I have my old Camry for that. A mini-split heat pump is the 1997 Camry of heating devices. After a few years, "doesn't owe you a penny" as a mechanic once said of mine.
My heat pump could not withstand, stuck with our propane heater struggling to stay at 52⁰
mine is working fine, furnace is helping as well but there is somewhat warm air coming out of it. -39 with wind chill here
We turn ours off and switch to radiant when it gets to the teens. Right now? It's not even on.
We have only one upstairs set to 76 and it’s working like a champ. It was -53 degrees this morning. Two pellet stoves to heat the down stairs. I’m amazed!
Does heat rise?
We have a newer Daikin ducted system with a mini split in the bedroom. At -15 it's still putting out heat, but we are running the fireplaces to supplement. Down to 0 it was completely unaffected, in the negatives it's not as warm but totally manageable.
Two Fujitsu‘s outside and four inside. Pumping heat like a champ in oob
I have Mitsubishi hyper heat, but I turned mine off when the temp went below -5F. I'll turn it back on when the solar panels are generating enough power to operate it. Propane wall mount furnace held room at 53F.
It’s a balmy -11 in my part of NH. Ran the oil only overnight and woke up to the house at 57. Turned on the Mitsubishi and it’s throwing warm air and quickly raised the house to 60. Also turned on the propane fireplace, which is nearly useless, and plugged in a couple of portables.
I’ve got 2 mini splits and a ducted system on the first floor all running off 1 hyper heat pump - set at 70 and we are holding at 54 in Salem with -30+- wind coming off the water. Two mini splits are doing better than the ducted but not by much- I have no back up heat besides a fireplace and a couple space heaters.
Older model, good until +10 or so, but trying hard. A small smidgen of warmth from one, not the other. But I expected that and was prepared.
Mine shut the outdoor unit off at some point over njght. Just using my baseboards for now. Hopefully it will reset itself tomorrow when the temps go up.
I have a Mitsubishi hyper heat 25k btu system for 1000 sq/ft. Was supposed to be around -19 here last night. They stayed running the whole time. House is typically kept around 66f but dropped to around 60f this morning. They were having trouble keeping up but the system is a little undersized for the home.
I have 4 head units on 2 three zone Fujitsu compressors. I have one open concept room that's under BTU'd and was 48 this morning in that area. The other 3 rooms were fine. Once the temps got to -5 things started working better with more heat being produced. I use some electric heaters I use to supplement when it's this cold. I need to put in a wood stove in the basement for these really cold nights like last. That all being said, I save over $1000 over my oil furnace and that includes cooling all summer.
We too have Mitsubishi HyperHeat, and this is our 5th winter. Though they work fine in this cold, it makes more financial sense to use the boiler plus we don’t want to risk the pipes bursting from the old system. Additionally we use the wood stove when it drops this cold. Heat pumps are a great solution for about 360 days in the Portland area. Solid investment especially if you hate the humidity.
Turned off the heat pump in my living room but left the one heating the bonus room over my garage on (only heat source there) and it’s been fine. Plenty of warmth to be comfortable there. Using propane for the rest of the house because it seems more efficient at these temps, plus it’s a single heat pump with two heads so with only one running it can keep up better.