electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

We, a family of 3 full-time adults and one part-time, use a HPWH and it costs us ~4.5KWH per day. An excellent investment in my opinion.

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

Directly solar heating water has gotten a lot cheaper over the years. I am pretty sure its at least cost competive with electric and propane, not nessaraly competive with cheap natural gas.
One thing solar is good for is heating. Most of the wave lengths in sun light are useless for PV, but nearly all wave lenghts can be used for heating.

Using PV to heat water just seems like a huge waste of money.

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

"Most of the wave lengths in sun light are useless for PV, but nearly all wavelengths can be used for heating."

i have to correct you here on this as this is not true. pv does respond to all light frequencies even into uv and infra red to various degrees. the problem with pv is not the response to wavelengths, but rather its overall efficiency. pv efficiencies are typically only in the teens whereas solar thermal is closer to the 50% mark if i remember rightly. solar thermal does not respond into uv area as most of the energy is collected near the infra red region so in terms of wavelength response goes solar thermal is worse. in terms of efficiency solar thermal wins hands down as it collects more useful energy.

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

Heat pump assisted hot water heaters in heat pump mode is not fast recovery. Take this into consideration if you have four folks taking showers in a short period of time.

Operating solely from heat pump, they comsume about 500 watts of electric and produce the equivalent of a 1000 watt conventional heating element. Most purely electric heating elements hot water heater use 3500 to 4500 watt electric resistive heating elements so the recovery time is 4 times longer running solely on heat pump. They normally go to high power resistive element assist if water temp drops too much due to high demand, which puts you back to old way of heating water electrically.

If you get one, go with larger gallon size to get more reserve. If you had a 40 gallon resistive unit, go with a 50 gallon heat pump assist unit.

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

BB. wrote: »

Sears is selling a 50 gallon GE heat pump water heater for ~$1,000. The list price appears to be $1,400.

-Bill

Excellent info provided by that link BB. Thanks a lot for sharing this!

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

I frequently see hot water heater installations where the piping goes straight up to the ceiling and into the hot water system. It may look neat but its setting up a thermosyphoning loop where hot water from the tank rises up, then radiates heat to the air and then the cold water drops back down to the tank. Its a subtle process but over the long run, you are bascially heating the utility area with electric heat. Some folks use "heat traps" in the lines which are supposed to keep it from happening. I normally pipe in a loop just outside of the tank where the pipe come out of the top of the tank then elbows 90 degrees to horizontal, then another elbow so the pipe points vertically downward and then turn back up. Usually this solve the thermosyphoning issues.

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

Aparently they are lower priced. Why they are trying to dump the chinese ones. https://www.gewaterheater.com/GEStore/Appliances/BuyOnline/ModelSelection?Category=GeoSpring+Water+Heaters The ge store is selling them already. Sounds like they are going to be quieter, cheaper and provide some American jobs. I already see some fearures I like better than the one I have. :Dsolarvic:D

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

Try this address https://www.gewaterheater.com/GEStore/Appliances/BuyOnline/Home

sub3marathonman wrote: »

Apparently solarvic is worthy enough to get into the ge store. They wouldn't let me in without an invitation.

I was just about ready to get the Chinese one, but I read several reports that the coolant lines are thin and broke after about 18 months or so.

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

Remember, that (with the exception of heqt pump technology) adding heat to water is a direct linear relationship between BTUs (KWHs) transfed into the water. A lower wattage water heater wil just heat any given quantity of water slower. The same with a gas fired water heater. After you get Ned 100% efficient ( and some demand units are now in the 96% range) lowering the BTU capacity of the burner only serves to slow down the rate of rise.

Tony

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

solarvic wrote: »

Try this address https://www.gewaterheater.com/GEStore/Appliances/BuyOnline/Home

Well, it still wants you to register. Which I would do, but it also wants your "Authorization Code as shown in email or flyer."

So apparently I'm still not worthy.

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

sub3marathonman wrote: »

Well, it still wants you to register. Which I would do, but it also wants your "Authorization Code as shown in email or flyer."

So apparently I'm still not worthy.

Try this RSUPEXTWP

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

solarvic wrote: »

Probably don,t have the supply chain filled yet and when you get on the GE store it says backordered till April. At least if you do the search you can find some of the differences from the Chinese ones. Solarvic

If the new American one costs $175 more than the Chinese one, which one would people get? Is the American one that much better?

Also, does it make a difference that the Chinese one has been sitting as a display for about a year?

Re: electric water likely the #1 power user in my house

solarvic wrote: »

The american geospring is way cheaper than the Chinese made waterheater. Don,t see where you got the idea that the American one cost more. :Dsolarvic:D

Thanks solarvic!

This is an unusual situation because the Chinese made waterheater was a display model and therefore discounted greatly.

I also wonder if a house with an 80 gal waterheater set at 110°F will be OK with a 50 gal waterheater set higher. I'll have to try to calculate what setting it needs in order to store the same amount of heat. The problem then of course is the potential of too hot water in the house.

The calculations are:
An 80 gallon waterheater has about 9.4kwh of stored heat at 110°F. In order to obtain roughly the same stored heat, a 60 gallon waterheater is needed to be set at 125°F to have 9.2kw. But, now that the smaller waterheater is set at a higher temperature, it will be losing more heat through thermal loss to the outside. I am estimating based on rough calculations that this could be 0.5kwh / day. So now, part of the gain of the hybrid has been lost. I am guessing 80 gallons of hot water usage / day. So it takes the 9.4kwh to heat a full 80 gallon tank / day. Now, if the hybrid is twice as efficient, it is down to 4.7kwh / day for the hybrid, but losing another 0.5kw/day ends up at 5.2kwh/day. So about 10% of your savings is lost if you have to keep the smaller water heater at a higher temperature. But now thinking too, you'd only use about 90% of the hot water, so you would probably save the extra 0.5kwh of thermal loss with less water being heated.

I was also wondering how much electricity (amperage) the waterheater used when heating in eco-mode.

Here is something else that seems a bit interesting. You could pay $900 to get the 4.7kwh/day electric savings from the hybrid waterheater, or if spent on solar panels it would give about 4.5kwh/day electric generation (at $1/watt PV, 5 hr/day sun). So the calculations are more complicated than just jumping into a hybrid waterheater. Of course, if you're needing to replace a waterheater anyway the calculations go back to favoring the hybrid more.