Heat pumps

Heat pumps

Technicians from ARC Mechanical installing the outdoor unit.
Photo Credit: Alex Wilson

Heating with electricity makes sense if instead of using that electricity directly to produce heat—through electric-resistance strip heaters—we use a device called a heat pump. For every one unit of energy consumed (as electricity), two to three units of energy (as heat) are delivered. This makes heat pumps significantly less expensive to operate than oil or propane heating systems in terms of dollars per delivered unit of heat.

Heat pumps use electricity in a seemingly magic way, to move heat from one place to another and upgrade the temperature of that heat in the process. Heat pumps seem like magic because they can extract heat from a place that’s cold—like Vermont’s outdoor air in January, or underground—and deliver it to a place that’s a lot warmer.

Very significantly, heat pumps can be switched from heating mode to cooling mode with a flip of a switch. In the cooling mode, they work just like standard air conditioners