slight tangent...

Interesting thing to consider is that reverse cycle airconditioners are notoriously inefficient compared to dedicated cooling or heating units..

Reverse cycle units can use anything from 2 times to 5 times the power of a dedicated unit on cooling

At least 2 times and as much as 5 times seems surprisingly bad.

Do you have a source or a concrete example for that?

The most plausible explanation I can think of for what you're saying is that you're comparing an evaporative cooling system to a heat pump based one, in which case the 'reverse cycle' aspect is not the thing causing the inefficiency.