Heat pump air conditioning: how it works and the advantages

It is customary to think that with the arrival of winter, air conditioners should no longer be used. However, more and more families are also choosing heat pump air-conditioning models to heat their homes - in short, the perfect all-weather solution.

In fact, with just one product, it is possible both to heat the house during the colder seasons and cool it during warm weather. All this while optimising consumption and saving money, which is precisely the advantage of a heat pump air-conditioner.

These appliances offer significant savings compared to conventional heating systems. For example, by replacing a condensing boiler with a heat pump air conditioner with hot/cold function to heat your home, you can save 45% on your utility bill. In regions with a mild climate, these solutions are ideal, as they are three times more efficient than a boiler under the same thermal conditions.

Heat pump air-conditioning operation

Unlike other air conditioning systems, heat pump air conditioners do not simply produce hot air and cold air: they are able to transport heat, taking it from one environment and transferring it to another.

Explaining how it works is very simple: you could say that it is the reverse depending on what you want to do with it. To heat the room, the air conditioner takes warm air from outside and blows it into the house, raising the temperature by means of electrical energy. By contrast, for cooling, heat is taken from the indoor environment and transferred to the outside, exploiting the properties of refrigerant gas to lower the ambient temperature.

For both purposes, the best air conditioners are those equipped with inverter technology, as they automatically modulate the power of the hot or cold air required to maintain the set temperature without continuously switching the machine on and off (on-off technology). This system optimises energy consumption, limiting waste, as well as ensuring better comfort.

The advantages of heating your home with a heat pump air conditioner

There are many advantages to opting for a heat pump air-conditioning system:

• Environmental sustainability
  By using outside air as a renewable energy source for air conditioning, the heat pump offers guaranteed eco-friendliness with a clear reduction in emissions. In fact, the unit annual CO2 saving for an air/air heat pump air conditioner is (-) 251 kg.

• Energy efficiency.
  There are heat pump air conditioner models with hot/cold function and high energy efficiency, thanks to the coefficient of performance (COP), which indicates whether the machine is able to return more energy to the system than it actually consumes to operate.

• Money saving
  By using a renewable source of energy to condition rooms (because it transforms the otherwise unused heat in the environment into useful energy), the heat pump air conditioner not only reduces the environmental impact of consumption, it also cuts down on utility bills, ensuring significant savings.
  Let's look at a practical example. Considering an average home with the following characteristics:

  • Climate of Rome

  • Surface area: 90 m2

  • Building height: 2.7 m

• The estimated consumption for heating the house will be about 10 kWh. Estimating that an average of 136 switch-on hours are needed in a month to heat the house adequately, the total monthly expenditure will be €123/month if we use an energy-efficient boiler, €67/month if we use an air/air heat pump with a COP of approximately 4.25. Thus, for the same heating requirements (unchanged climate conditions and heating needs) of a house, the running costs of heating with a heat pump are on average 45% lower than with a condensing boiler.

• Flexibility of use
  The ability to quickly switch from a cooling system to a space heating system makes the heat pump air-conditioning system a highly flexible solution, which again translates as a reduction in costs due to the possibility of using a single system, avoiding the expense of building and operating two separate ones.

• Simple installation
  A heat pump air-conditioner is an easier product to install than a boiler system as it does not require flues. Maintenance also does not require any special procedures, other than a regular check for any anomalies and malfunctions that could compromise operation. We recommend regular checks of filter cleanliness to ensure good air quality.