...anyone that stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night - let's hear your thoughts about the issue with my outdoor heat pump unit. When I got home last night, it was evident that the power had either been out during the day, or had at least "blinked" long enough that the stove clock was flashing and the alarm system was chirping to notify that AC power had been interrupted at some point. At that point, all else seemed fine. The house was warm and I didn't notice any issues with the heating system. However, while I was laying in bed last night, I noticed that the air handler was running, and I could hear the auxialiary heat strips cycling on and off, but I never heard the outdoor fan/compressor kick on. I listened for a while, but it never came on. There was nothing I could do about it at that moment, so I went to sleep. This morning, the same thing was going on, so clearly there is an issue.

I only had time to briefly visually check the outdoor unit - there's no sign of it being frozen. So I'm thinking I've either got a bad contactor, bad capacitor, or worst case scenario, the power blip fried something in the controller.

The only other time we had an issue in the 12+ years we've lived in this house, it was a bad contactor on the hottest day of the year. You EE types can enlighten me on this - does extreme power grid demand put excess stress on electrical components like contactors? If there was a dip in voltage due to a grid issue, could that have caused the problem?

TIA for any input.