A wall-mounted unit above the living room window in a house near Nafplio cools the room every August without a second thought. The same box sits idle every January while the oil boiler in the utility room runs instead. It is the same equipment, running the same cycle in reverse, and in most cases it heats the room for a fraction of what the boiler charges to do the identical job. The reason most owners never make the switch is not cost. It is that nobody has run the numbers next to each other.

Reverse-cycle is the term for it, and it is not a trick, it is a valve. A heat pump moves heat rather than generates it, extracting warmth from outside air, even air at plus 5 degrees Celsius still carries usable heat, and concentrating it indoors. Run the same refrigerant cycle the other direction and the unit extracts heat from inside the house and dumps it outside, which is cooling. One compressor, one refrigerant loop, one reversing valve, two jobs. This is why a heat pump condenser cooling a Greek apartment in August belongs to the same category of machine as the one heating a house through winter in the Peloponnese.

The Five Names Behind Most Units Installed in Greece

Independent Greek buying guides and installer catalogs point to the same handful of brands with enough consistency to narrow the field to five names an owner is likely to already have on a wall or in a plant room somewhere nearby: Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, LG, Hitachi and Panasonic. Daikin’s Perfera wall-mounted split is the reversible unit most often cited for heating and cooling one room from a single box, alongside its Altherma line for central, hydronic heating. Mitsubishi Electric covers the same reversible role with its MSZ-LN wall unit and extends into central heating with the Ecodan line, built around Zubadan compressor technology that keeps output stable in genuinely cold conditions. LG’s Therma V is the monobloc most frequently specified for central heating in mid-size homes. Hitachi’s Yutaki and Panasonic’s Aquarea complete the five as the central-heating names installers reach for most, with Panasonic’s reversible Etherea split covering the same heat-and-cool role as the Daikin and Mitsubishi units room by room. This is not a national sales ranking, no such data is published at model level, but it is the set of names that recurs across independent Greek buying guides and retailer catalogs. Several of these lines, on both the reversible and the central-heating side, qualify for the dedicated heat pump and solar subsidy scheme that runs alongside Greece’s main renovation grant.

The distinction that matters when choosing between them is not brand, it is family. Air-to-air units, the wall splits, heat and cool the same room through the same box, and are what most Greek homes already own as air conditioning. Air-to-water units, the monobloc and split systems that feed radiators or underfloor pipework, are usually installed to heat only, sized against the whole house rather than a single room. A property already running several air-to-air splits for cooling often has most of its winter heating solved without buying anything new, provided the existing units are correctly sized and used.

SEND THE HEATING SETUP BEFORE YOU BUY ANYTHING NEW

Send the current heating system, the make and age of any air conditioning units already installed, and how the property is used through the year. Our 139 euro Eligibility Check gives an independent read in English on whether the existing equipment can be extended into a full heating solution, what state support the property qualifies for, and what a correctly sized replacement would cost. Submit the details here: kgnordic.com/contact

What It Actually Costs: A Calculation Example

The following is a calculation example, built from published prices and manufacturer test data, not a quote for any specific property. Numbers move by tariff, contract, region and the specific unit installed, and the point is the shape of the comparison, not the exact cents.

Take a home holding an indoor temperature of 19 degrees Celsius while it is 5 degrees outside, a realistic winter evening on the Greek mainland. Household electricity in Greece currently lands around 0.17 to 0.19 euros per kWh once network charges and VAT are added to the supply price, and this example uses 0.18 euros. A modern inverter heat pump at this outdoor temperature typically runs a coefficient of performance somewhere between 3.8 and 4.2, based on manufacturer test data published at the standardized 2 and 7 degree reference points closest to it. This example uses 4.0, meaning every kWh of electricity in returns four kWh of heat out.

Heating oil this winter is running at roughly 1.30 to 1.45 euros per liter under the reduced winter excise rate that applies from 15 October to 30 April, and this example uses 1.35 euros. A liter carries about 10 kWh of energy, and a reasonably maintained, non-condensing boiler, typical of the older housing stock foreign buyers are usually looking at, converts roughly 85 percent of that into usable heat. That is a separate product from the diesel sold at the pump for cars, taxed differently and priced accordingly, so the two should never be read off the same number.

Run the arithmetic on those assumptions and the heat pump delivers a kWh of heat for close to 4.5 cents. The oil boiler delivers the same kWh for close to 15.9 cents. Oil costs roughly three and a half times more per unit of heat delivered in this example, meaning the heat pump cuts the running cost of that heat by somewhere in the region of 70 percent, which lines up with the 60 to 75 percent savings range Greek retailers quote for heat pump conversions generally, one of the few places a marketing claim and an independent calculation land in the same range. Scaled to something tangible, a room needing a steady 2 kW of heat output for an hour costs about 9 cents to run on the heat pump and about 32 cents on the oil boiler in this example. That gap only widens once the EU’s carbon price on heating fuel, covered in our guide to ETS2 and Greek heating costs, reaches the pump from 2028.

Why 19 Degrees Is the Number, Not 22

The 19 degree target in the example above is not arbitrary. The World Health Organization’s minimum recommended winter indoor temperature is 18 degrees Celsius, rising to around 20 to 21 degrees for infants, older residents and anyone managing a chronic illness. 19 degrees sits just inside that band, comfortable for a healthy adult in normal clothing, and close to the setpoint most European energy guidance points to when it argues for turning a thermostat down rather than off. Every degree above it adds measurably to both sides of the calculation above, in roughly the same proportion, which is why the comparison holds regardless of what the actual setpoint in a given house turns out to be. It is also why an energy-poor property bought at a discount is frequently the better upgrade candidate than it first appears, the same arithmetic applies to it, just starting from a worse boiler and a thinner envelope.

Weighing a Heat Pump Against an Old Oil Boiler?

Before you commit to new equipment, we confirm what the existing system can and cannot do, the correct size for the replacement, the state support the property qualifies for, and a running-cost comparison specific to the property rather than a published average. Start at kgnordic.com/contact or see the energy upgrade service.

The unit cooling a Greek living room every August was never a summer-only machine. It was always capable of the winter job too, usually for a fraction of what the boiler in the next room charges to do it, and the only thing standing between an owner and that saving is running the numbers once.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q - Can the same heat pump that cools my house in summer also heat it in winter?

Yes, provided it is a reversible unit, which almost all modern air-to-air split systems are. A reversing valve switches the direction of the refrigerant cycle, so the same outdoor and indoor units that extract heat from the room in summer extract heat from the outside air in winter. Central heating systems feeding radiators or underfloor pipework are usually a separate, heating-only installation.

Q - What heat pump brands are most common in Greece?

Daikin, Mitsubishi Electric, LG, Hitachi and Panasonic are the five names that appear consistently across independent Greek buying guides and installer catalogs, covering both reversible wall-mounted splits and central-heating monobloc or hydronic systems. No official national sales-share data is published at model level, so this reflects market presence and buyer familiarity rather than a verified sales ranking.

Q - How much cheaper is a heat pump than an oil boiler in Greece?

In a calculation example using current Greek electricity and heating oil prices, a heat pump delivered a kWh of heat for roughly 4.5 cents against close to 15.9 cents for an oil boiler, a difference in the region of 60 to 75 percent depending on the specific tariff, oil price and equipment involved. The real figure for any given property depends on its insulation, the size and age of the boiler, and how the heat pump is sized and used.

Q - What coefficient of performance (COP) should I expect from a heat pump in a Greek winter?

Manufacturer test data for modern inverter units typically shows a COP in the range of 3.3 to 3.9 at 2 degrees Celsius outdoor air, rising to roughly 4.1 to 5.2 at 7 degrees, both measured to the EN14511 standard. At the milder end of a typical Greek winter, a COP around 3.8 to 4.2 is a reasonable expectation for a correctly sized modern unit.