Connecticut Residents, $400 Rebate on a Hot Water Heat Pump

http://www.cl-p.com/home/saveenergy/rebates/heatp ... ebate.aspx

Heat Pump Water Heaters Can Save You Energy and Money

The Heat Pump Water Heater instant rebate is made possible by Energize Connecticut and administered by CL&P. A $400 instant rebate is available through participating distributors and retailers for the purchase of a new ENERGY STAR® heat pump water heater.

Makes sense for a warmer climate where robbing heat from the house is desirable but complete idiocy for most people in colder climate. If you can heat the hot water directly with what you are using as your primary heating source you will lose money. Ironically about the only place this would make sense is if your heating source is coal or wood and you have no option to directly heat the water with it.

Not sure you are "stealing" heat. R-134a is 160*f @ 300psi. That's not too bad. And you get the added benefit of dehumidification when it's running.

jpete wrote:Not sure you are "stealing" heat.

Unless you are going to defy the laws of physics every BTU you extract from the air is from your primary heat.

You can always design an elaborate drain system that keeps the heated water flowing around till cool. Extracting the btus into the air before draining off. In theory it could work.

There's plenty of heat to go around. Everything above absolute zero is heat.

R-134a boils at negative 15*F. I don't think you'll notice a few Btu.

My friend has one of these water heaters and as far as I know, his house isn't noticeably colder. But his water is quite hot.

jpete wrote:
My friend has one of these water heaters and as far as I know, his house isn't noticeably colder. But his water is quite hot.

Pointless, suppose he has NG for his primary heat.

NG >> Heat water directly

NG >> Heat the air >> Mechanically extract heat from air to heat water

Shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out which is is the more efficient and less costly.

Edit: just to add he'll save money over a standard electric hot water heater but only becsue the NG is cheaper per BTU but you might as well just heat it directly with NG to begin with.

Actually, he tore out a solar/electric system to install this and couldn't be happier.

I suppose you'd have to break it down to $/Btu for the specific location to really be able to say.

And then there are other considerations. In his particular case, the water heater wasn't near the chimney so the cost of adding venting or moving the plumbing has to be added in.

jpete wrote: I suppose you'd have to break it down to $/Btu for the specific location to really be able to say.

Not really becsue in nearly all cases someone should be able to use the fuel they are using for their primary heat to heat hot water.

The only place this would make any sense was if you had absolutely no choice but electric for the hot water heater and the fuel you are using is a lot less than the cost of electric.

I was under the impression that the condenser coils were external to the house. Then I clicked on the link....

A. CL&P sucks.

B. See A.

confedsailor wrote:I was under the impression that the condenser coils were external to the house. Then I clicked on the link....

These aren't for heat, they are for hot water. For air sourced heat pumps they use outside air, as the temperature drops so does the efficiency. They are also slow to respond because the hotter air is only a few more degrees warmer. It takes a while to heat up a house with a heat pump.

I'd assume because of the higher temperatures needed for the water you'd need a huge unit making what is already a very expensive unit much more expensive or it would be so slow with the what they have now it would be impractical when using outside air.

I figured that Richard, but like was stated, pulling internal heat out of the air to heat hot water is just plain silly...like using the kitchen spigot on a micro-turbine to make electricity.

Its CL&P's ploy to come up with something to replace all the electric water heaters that people are running away from and keep from losing all that sweet sweet transmission and distribution charge.

The old saying "if it sounds to good to believe". People, if the electric company is giving rebates for you to put in a certain type of heater or water heater, that is just their way of making sure they have plenty of suckers on the hook paying them for their power.

The part that makes it far more egregious is that there is no escape from the power company. I suppose you could drive a trailer loaded with batteries down to your friendly generating company and cut out the middle man that way. Deregulation did this state no favors...

Utilities are a natural monopoly. If you feel ill served by your coal breaker, you go elsewhere, but there can be no respite from the electric/gas/water/cable/telephone companies. Personally I think that the utilities industry is far too critical to our nation to be allowed to be the pawns of wall street. The only shareholders that such companies should worry about are their ratepayers and not the likes of rich yankee bankers.

Richard S. wrote: These aren't for heat, they are for hot water. For air sourced heat pumps they use outside air, as the temperature drops so does the efficiency. They are also slow to respond because the hotter air is only a few more degrees warmer. It takes a while to heat up a house with a heat pump.

I'd assume because of the higher temperatures needed for the water you'd need a huge unit making what is already a very expensive unit much more expensive or it would be so slow with the what they have now it would be impractical when using outside air.

I work on a whole bunch of heat pumps and they regularly put out 130* air within a minute or two. Mitsubishi Hyper Heats are rated down to -7*F for 70% efficiency(IIRC). With the new inverter motors, most people I talk to report a major savings in their electric bill too.

This gets even better, new DOE standards going into affect in 2015 will require any electric water heater over 55 gallons be a heat pump.

http://contractormag.com/residential-plumbing/new ... re-horizon

“The real technology shifts are for the roughly 10% of the market that is bigger than gas-fired storage water heaters of 55 gallons, which will have to go to condensing, and electric will have to go to heat pumps,” adds Sachs. “For everything smaller, there are very small changes. Product is already on the market today that meets the new standards.”