This is basically a device that moves heat around. It’s installed outside your home, like an air conditioner. It takes heat from the air or the ground, and pumps it inside your home.
There are different ways they acquire heat.
- Air: heat is extracted from the air (I feel like this would only work when it was warmer outside than inside?)
- Ground: heat is extracted from the water heated underground; also called “geothermal”
- Exhaust: heat is extracted from air exiting the building
- Solar: heat is generated by solar panels
- Water: heat is extracted from water taken from a source; also known as an “open-loop ground heat pump”
The key is that it doesn’t actually heat or cool the air. It just moves it around – it takes hotter or colder air from one location, and “pumps” it to another.
That’s an interesting way of looking at it – the desired hot or cold air always exist somewhere, just not in the place you need it.