Hey Ed, can you give me a brief description of what COP means?

In this edition of "Hey Ed," Ed discusses the coefficient of performance for HVAC systems.

Hey Ed, can you give me a brief description of what COP means? COP in the context of what we do is going to stand for coefficient of performance. And the most simple way I can describe it is if we put 100 watts into a piece of equipment and we get 300 watts out, that would be a COP of 3 to 1. Another way to hear it is you put a dollar’s worth of electric in and you get $3 worth of heat out, that would also be a COP of 3 to 1. There’s heat pumps out there right now that on a, we’ll say 40 degree day, can give us COPs 3, 4, 5 to 1, air source, water source respectively. The thing that gets compared most times to a heat pump COP is the use of electric resistance heat where our COP would be 1 to 1. It’s easy to see how this COP can be used to compare the usefulness of straight electric resistance heat to a heat pump. And that’s the way I see it.