I don’t get it. How is cold, even freezing air turned into heat? How is it less energy consuming than other heating systems?
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My understanding is that it doesn’t work on freezing air, just cold air. At or below zero, there will be no energy left to transfer.
But above that temp, it works just like an air conditioner, only in reverse. The air conditioner works by giving the heat in your house a path of least resistance to the outside, and then releasing it.
A heat pump will create the opposite conditions, creating an area where heat will naturally be drawn along a path of least resistance, into the house.
To know physically how it does that you have to start getting into chemistry and material science. But that’s the gist – it gives the desired temperature a path of least resistance to follow, either towards or away from you depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.
It’s less energy consuming because it’s taking advantage of natural conditions – Instead of using electricity to heat up a bank of coils in a heating unit, it’s just moving some liquids around. You can probably tell just from that sentence how much less electricity we’re talking about.
The science behind what those liquids do is complicated, but the process itself isn’t particularly complex or energy consuming.
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