Comment by hippo22
4 hours ago
It really depends on how well your home is insulated. Heat pumps don’t work well on old, poorly insulated houses in cold climates. If they can keep up, which is a big if, the price of electricity generally dwarfs natural gas, even if the heat pump is running at 250-300% efficiency.
It's not really correct to say that heat pumps don't work well on old, poorly insulated houses in cold climates. That it's a heat pump is not the issue, that it's cold is not the issue, the problem is only that with poor or no insulation in a cold climate you'll need a huge heater (say, 10-15kW just for the living room). And domestic heat pumps are not designed for that range. If you could get one that big then it would work very well indeed.
If you have a poorly insulated house then the fix is to insulate it, which is what a lot of people are doing around here, with very hold houses. My house is less than 60 years old and very well insulated for the time, and it holds up even today - it's always warm, with the heat pump not even close to its max power.