Seriously good cold-climate heat pumps are headed to the US market
The manufacturers that took part in the DOE's Residential Cold Climate Heat Pump Challenge are taking their new, improved products to market.
We had great heat pumps in Montana already. And if it gets insanely (-38f) cold, there's a resistive fallback mode. But I'd wager most places aren't gonna get to 38 below.
I'm in PA and it doesn't get nearly as cold here, of course. We got mini splits in 2022 that can do -33f, I think. No resistive backup for us.
Mini splits are so, so nice.
Heat pumps don't work well (even the new ones coming from this article are only good to 15f) anywhere near that cold. Most are only good to about 25f. Anywhere they're installed that drops below freezing all have a backup heat system, whether or not it's a gas backup, or resistive electric backup.
Some large commercial heat pumps will got down to like 0 degrees F, but none of the residential ones do.
I have run hest pumps down to -10F just fine in multiple homes.