@starkatt @Felthry

Heater would win that every time, assuming equal thermal power

Air conditioners produce a staggering amount of heat as a byproduct of cooling, and an appreciable amount of that heat radiates into the room being cooled.

All a heater has to do is what all other electrical appliances try their best to avoid: allow that energy to leak out as heat

@mawr @Felthry Exactly.

Now, if the AC were a split unit with the hot side located outside, then I'd give it my confidence.

@starkatt @Felthry

Now if that's the case, external factors become extremely relevant! Like: what's the base temperature? If it's 0ºC, the heater's going to have a really hard time, but the air conditioner might freeze up...

Factors!!

@mawr @starkatt Heaters don't do well with high temperatures either though! They can overload and have the heating element break

@Felthry @starkatt

Yeah!! Factors!!

@mawr @Felthry I mean, if the thing held constant was electrical power consumption.

Heat pumps can have efficiencies of greater than one :p

@starkatt @mawr which makes me wonder why more buildings don't use a heat pump for heating as well as for cooling.

@Felthry @mawr FWIW in all the new construction, I was installing split units for AC and resistive heaters for... heat.

@Felthry @starkatt

There's a lot of reasons for that, too! First being that it's (relative to other options) basically brand new tech that only started gaining popularity in the past 10 years.

It's also only as good as the climate allows it to be. A good heat pump can make a difference of +/- ~30 degrees from outside temp, which means it's not very useful in super hot places like Arizona, nor in super cold places like Minnesota

@mawr @starkatt how cold does it get in minnesota that 30° differential isn't enough?

@mawr @starkatt @Felthry Relevant video on this I just watched today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-mBeYC2KGc

@tastymochafox @mawr @Felthry yep!

@tastymochafox @mawr @starkatt that was what got me thinking about that kind of stuff actually!