It will be interesting to see if he can make his heat pumps work in cold weather. Most heat pumps seem to pretty much fail at single digit temperatures just above the freezing point. And they work worse as the temps get even lower. I was talked out of a new heat pump last summer. I was talked out of another heat pump at the start of this year. I live in USDA Zone 5. If I lived in USDA Zone 6 or 7 then a heat pump probably would make a lot more sense. But Zone 5 the current versions of the heat pumps are marginal and people in my area with heat pumps tend to complain about their performance. And from what I understand Zone 4 and colder they are not commonly recommended.
Interesting. Have you had any experience with a heat pump/ mini split in the last few years? I installed a solar array at my home 2 years ago. Started small and have progressively been adding to the system. I have a 15 k system currently. Needless to say, no electric bill, and have been transitioning shop, house, and garage to electric forms of heating. Our natural gas cost tripled in the last 2 years. I have installed two mini split systems. One heats my 30x36 12' ceiling attached garage. It is a Menards branded Denali Air. It has no trouble pushing 110°F plus air above 0°F. At -38° f it was pushing 85° F air.
Now I did hear from a friend that morning of -38. His Mr. Cool system was throwing a code. The next night at -30 ° f he had no code.
The second system I have heated a 12x40 loft in my shop. It was a Fujitsu unit. I did not go out and check the air temperature but the room has an alarm if it gets too cold and the alarm did not go off. But that evening after work the cat was happy at 70 ° f.
I have been installing cheap electric baseboard heat in the house. Also. It is probably less efficient than the mini split, but is very cheap to install. The more heat I can make with solar, the less my natural gas bill is.
In my opinion, with the 30% rebate from the government, solar is a no-brainer right now. I started out with just a grid tied system and have transitioned into a sol ark battery backup system. Basically provides a UPS to my whole house with 25 KWH of reserve. As long as I can get home in that time and plug my Ford Lightning in it has another 131 Kwh of reserve. Residents is in northern Wyoming.
