See attached screenshot from Emporia Vue. This is a 30k Btu Mitsubishi Hyper Heat compressor attached to two indoor heads. Screenshot is from last night. Compressor kicks on, draws at about 0.75 kW fro 10 minutes, spikes to 3 kW quickly over a couple minutes, comes back down to ~1kW for 3 minutes and then cycles off.

This compressor doesn’t typically do this (first time I’ve noticed it). For example, most of last night it was running somewhere between 0.75 kW and 1.5 kW (which is pretty typical). Haven’t observed any short cycling. Shortest cycles are about 12 minutes. Weather last night was in the mid-30s but I don’t think it actually dropped to freezing. Defrost cycle? Resistance heat kicking in?