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Originally Posted by ctgottapee
From someone near the 40th parallel, I can kinda agree with you, but there are exceptions to everything.
The big issue is winter time defrost drain freezing up. The only fix is a drain pan heater which knocks the efficiency numbers down quite a bit.
However, with enough units and well sealed/insulated home, you can get by. My unit never stopped working last winter, even down to -20 outdoors, but it did go into defrost mode quite a bit at that temp. Backup electric heat units or panels are very cheap hardware to makeup for those extreme temps.
Price wise it depends on your electric costs, and where natural gas pricing hovers if you have access. I'm in a high nuclear and wind area so my electricity costs less than dirt, currently 2.2cents per Kwh. Right now many have access to cheap natural gas that a mini split has a hard time competing with in the dead of winter, and the near instant 'hot' heat of natural gas furnaces can be a benefit. There is no way to leave a a mini split heater off during the day to save money and jump the thermostat when you get home, as it will take quite some time to come back up, similar to in-floor hydronic heating.
Not many people with real winters go it alone with a mini-split, so there are some extremes that most don't report, like say the noise issues with the indoor coil expansion/contraction as it shifts from defrost to heat constantly during brutal cold spells or the drain pain freezing, or the chill of long defrost modes if you have no other heat source going during cold spells.
It has been quite an experiment here in my 900 sq ft home.
The financial savings are the only thing making it bearable. The A/C and dehumidification aspect are wonderful and super cost efficient.
I also miss the central hvac based humidifier for winter time. Now I'm back to a manual fill the bucket every day model. I would like to have the central hvac filter system back too as it seems to do a more thorough job than a standalone unit I now resort too. I definitely don't miss the hvac maintenance.
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Take a look at the new PTAC units and mini-split units that have come out recently. I believe these are a 4th or 5th generation, heat pump centered set of units. Many of the issues with energy wasting, whooshing sounds, ticking, clicking, being impossible to program, low ambient suffering,and such have been dealt with quite well. A decent portion of these units have electric expansion valves and big outdoor heat exchangers in them.
Lots of them have separate functions for different needs/goals. COP in heating between 3 and 5 down to 20 degrees F. Cold-buster hyper-heat turbo-blast function that spins inverter at 120% rpms and bypass pulses the evap coil with hot fog for more mass flow. Blow lots of 80 degree air at high efficiency. Don't blow air until the hx is above 90 degrees to avoid 80 degree airblow. Control it from your iphone at will. These units have come a long way in a short time.
That being said, expecting full capacity out of any ashp unit below about 25F is going to cost you energy. Either the electric meter runs faster or the heat doesn't come in very warm. The only way around that is a ground source that stays not cold all year long.