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Improving the energy efficiency of air conditioners and heat pumps is crucial for reducing the effects of continuously rising energy demands for space conditioning. One of the effective and tested approaches for achieving this goal has been to set energy efficiency benchmarks based on minimum energy performance standards which drive technological innovation and implementation in the market. For heat pumps, a testing and rating procedure that estimates equipment seasonal performance from laboratory measurements forms the technical basis for these standards. However, with current residential heat pumps rating standards, significant differences have been observed between efficiency measured in the lab and actual operational performance in field applications. One of the reasons for this is that with current rating approaches, the test unit native controls are overridden when measuring performance in the laboratory. As an alternative, a load-based testing approach has been developed that captures dynamic interactions of the integrated controls, equipment and building with the goal of better-representing field application conditions. In this paper, a load-based testing approach previously developed for air-conditioners is extended for heat–pump heating-mode and demonstrated for a variable-speed system. Climate-specific heating seasonal performance ratings were determined by propagating the test results through a temperature-bin method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]