Here in the mid-Atlantic, my air-air heat pump struggles once things get well below freezing. Which it does a few days a year.
On those days, there's a backup resistance heater. Which is vastly more expensive, but since it's only run on occasion, it wouldn't be worth it install a geothermal heat pump.
I would love to, but the additional cost is tens of thousands of dollars. The since the alternative costs perhaps a couple of hundred dollars per year, the time to breakeven is many decades.
It's still quite clear that a heat pump is a very good all-electric option, especially since it provides cooling in the summer. Which is absolutely mandatory around here, and will get more and more so over the years. Which, ironically, will also reduce the use of the resistance heater from "very rare" to "practically never".
The units we use up here will work flawlessly down to about 10f, and keep working until approximately -20f. Thanks to climate change, I haven't seen -20f at night in several years, but the last time it happened, the heat pump struggled to keep my house warm but still managed to do it.
"Most" of Canada only gets about this cold, where "most" is the majority of the population that lives near the border.
THere's something wrong with your heat pump, or you needed/need a different unit.
I live in New Mexico @ 6000', I have Mitsubishi Hyper units, and it has to get down to below 10 degrees before you can even see any difference in the heat pumps' operation. Even so, they still get the house up to temperature, just takes a bit longer. The difference in cost over regular Mitsubishi's was low single digit thousands.
What type of heat pump do you have? I have a ducted split system with a HSPF of 9.5, and I'm actually pretty disappointed with how it performs. In our new-ish, better-than-average insulated house, we've had some insane electrical bills over the last couple winters compared to the gas bills we had in previous years (prior to renovating).
Sometimes I wonder if the installer didn't really know what he was doing.
It's an air-air ducted system. I live in the North East US, so winters are generally cold, with a few days around 0F/-17C. During heating season we keep it at 67F/19C.
That's a COP of 2.8. You have to check the efficiency graph and your mean winter temperatures, because I suspect it operates fully resistive at below -10°C or so. I also noted underwhelming performance and increased faulty compressor incidence for air source heat pumps with the external unit mounted on Northern walls (in the Northern hemisphere). I suspect it doesn't get sunshine and the defreezing resistive element is operating a lot, driving up energy costs.
How old is your aircon? I bought some cheap Chinese "mini split" 3.5kW units locally for about 350 euros that go down to about -15 at about 2.5x effective heating to input (watts). They're closer to 4x at higher temps. Cooling runs at about 7x.
Aircons have become much cheaper and more effective over time. It might be worth looking at replacing your unit, assuming it's not something much more elaborate.
Old enough that I'm not gonna say out of sheer superstition. Old enough to raise eyebrows on the repair guy.
When it finally has to be replaced the new one will assuredly be more efficient. But since it's already quite cheap to run (the very most expensive bill is perhaps $200 during a very hot August with me working from home), I'd love for this one to keep going as long as possible.
I'm cooling an approx 30m2 apartment with brick (cinder block) walls that are not insulated and I run the aircon continuously 24/7 all summer and use about 200kWh per month (approx $35 for me). Daytime temps are usually between 31 and 37 celsius and nighttime around 21 to 25.
The new propane or CO2-based pumps the temperature it keeps working is also lower so it isn't much of a problem for most places if you are in market for one currently.
On those days, there's a backup resistance heater. Which is vastly more expensive, but since it's only run on occasion, it wouldn't be worth it install a geothermal heat pump.
I would love to, but the additional cost is tens of thousands of dollars. The since the alternative costs perhaps a couple of hundred dollars per year, the time to breakeven is many decades.
It's still quite clear that a heat pump is a very good all-electric option, especially since it provides cooling in the summer. Which is absolutely mandatory around here, and will get more and more so over the years. Which, ironically, will also reduce the use of the resistance heater from "very rare" to "practically never".