silence7Heat-pump water heaters are a winner for the climate — and your wallet
Yes, but water heater tanks are by themselves inefficient as it stores heated water regardless of it being used.
If I ever get a house (millennial lol) I’d want to have a tankless water heater. That way supply meets demand exactly.
If I ever get a house (millennial lol) I’d want to have a tankless water heater. That way supply meets demand exactly.
Tankless is crazy LESS energy efficient than a tank heat pump water heater. Why? In tankless you’re having to CREATE THE HEAT. With heat pump tank you don’t. You’re citing the inefficiency of storing a tank of hot water, but the insulation on a decent (not garbage) hot water heater is really really good! The heat loss through the insulation is VERY small. You could turn off the water heater entirely and come back days or possibly weeks later and the water is still hot.
GhostalmediaI assume that the person above is referring to a natural gas tank system and not a heat pump tank system.
That all being said, this is something that the department of energy has studied. Depending upon household use, a tankless option can be much more energy efficient.
Here is a gas tank system compared to a gas tankless
Marxism-FennekinismIt’s even more efficient to produce hot water at the point of use with a water heating fixture than a centralized water heater. There is no energy loss in storage or a lengthy journey through pipes (which are also usually uninsulated), and you can also directly heat water to the temperature you want instead of wasting energy mixing hot and cold water to cool it back down. You also get truly instant hot water with them. They’re fairly common in Europe and Asia which have 240v electricity (also because a lot of those homes predate mass availability and adoption of domestic hot water in the region so they had to retrofit). Sadly the North American electrical system is too dinky to handle that.