Mitsubishi Electric introduced the Hyper-Heating Inverter (H2i) MSZ-FH ductless mini-split this May, a product the company claims is the most energy-efficient heating and cooling system on the market.
At 30.5 SEER, Mitsubishi says the H2i MSZ-FH offers the highest efficiency rating for heating and air-conditioning systems and can use up to 40 percent less energy per room than a conventional system.
Already widely used in Japanese homes, it’s expected that ductless cooling and heating systems will account for nearly 30 percent of all energy-efficient HVAC systems’ revenue by 2020—a 130 percent increase from 2013, according to a 2013 report from Navigant Research.
When designing the Full Plane Passive House in Portland, Ore., builder James Ray Arnold of Portland-based JRA Green Building needed to find an HVAC system that could meet the requirements of the Living Building Challenge and Passive House standards. The house demanded an HVAC system that could run efficiently at very low speeds, ruling out conventional forced-air systems. Arnold worked with Portland-based Imagine Energy to specify and install the Mitsubishi Electric ductless system.
David Landau, project manager at Imagine Energy, says the ductless systems are the company’s go-to for Passive Houses. “You get very high efficiencies for low loads and the units adapt well to the environment,” he notes. Landau installed the Mitsubishi Electric system with an inverter-driven compressor and two 9,000-Btu ductless indoor units—one on each floor of the 1,950-square-foot Full Plane Passive House project. “The SEER ratings are as good or better than other products with inverter technology. And the ductless system is nice because we need only a small amount of space to move the energy from the outdoor unit to the wall-mounted heads,” Landau adds.
The Hyper-Heating (H2i) Inverter MSZ-FH models also feature Mitsubishi’s i-see Sensor 3D, which uses heat-imaging technology to scan the surface temperature in a space, along with the size of the room and location of people, to determine what is needed to heat or cool the space.
The H2i technology operates at 100 percent heating capacity in +5 degrees Fahrenheit, giving the unit the highest performance capabilities in cold climates on the market, according to the firm.
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Learn more about markets featured in this article: Portland, OR.
