APR 02

Great, and I just installed a new conventional GE water heater last month! :( A good way to save in the meantime is to install a heat trap ($20) and insulate your pipes!

In Edinburgh, those hybrid heaters won't help much, as we have winter from november to the end of April, but that tankless one is the kind of heater that makes me very annoyed that I live in an old flat that I'm not allowed to do ANYTHING with.

Unless I could legally force my land lord to change that ancient thing we have at the moment.

I have looked into the electric demand water heaters, Bosch makes one. The Bosch model consumes 19,200 watts in use, requires a separate service, and 8 gage cable (think truck battery cable size). Pretty long time to payback with the high installation cost.

The GE "hybrid" looks interesting.

I don't know about you guys, but where I'm from a lot of people use natural gas heaters. They do tankless versions, which are more efficient than the traditional tanks. The big thing is that natural gas heaters are already more efficient than electric ones, especially when your electricity comes from coal.

And better than that, supplement it with a solar water heater...

Magnulus,

The way I read the article, the heat exchanger would be inside the house. As such, I don't think it to be any great benefit in the winter. However, here in South Carolina come August...

Regards,
Andy

The first one seems like a standard gas water heater that I've been using for the last 12 years at least. (This one the last 2 http://www.towngas.com/tgweb/e...=14&con=45). So I can't see what the big deal is. One gas heater per area that needs it.

Unfortunately my neighborhood has no gas in it so a gas based tankless heater is out of the question. I'll have to wait for the hybrid unit next year and hope that it won't cost an arm and a leg.

Were building a new house and putting in two of the tankless. Our neighborhood also does not have nat gas so we are putting in a 500 gal propane tank.

If you can't wait until 2009, you'll want to look at A.O. Smith's VERTEX. The tank based system is 90% efficient vs. a tankless efficiency of 84%. It was developed in conjunction with the Department of Energy. Green-celebrity Ed Bagley, Jr. is a big fan as is Jay Leno who put one in his massive garage. I'm testing one in my own home for use in our future home projects. I can't comment on the utility reduction yet since it's brand-spanking new (I'm told I'm the first to own one in St. Louis, MO), but I'm happy to share soon.

You can read more about the Vertex at
http://www.hotwater.com/products/residential/rg-vertex.html

It would be nice to know what the cost would be. I am sure they are stressing the savings as an offset for the higher cost. The issue is not only the payback time, but the NPV.

You can find electric and gas tankless heaters on Home Depot's and Lowe's websites. I'm not that great at math, so I'm not sure how much they save overall, but they are much more efficient than the old water heaters. We have very hard water, so water heaters, washers, etc. go out sooner, I'm not sure how a tankless one would hold up.

It would be nice to get an estimate cost on the 2009 (4th qtr) hybrid unit.

I'm currently installing a Bradford & White 75 gallon natural gas water heater and a Heliodyne Solar Hot Water Panel to pre-heat the water. The goal is to get down to 10 therms (100,000 British Thermal Units per therm) of natural gas per month at a rate of $1.30 per therm or $13 per month. I'm aiming for as many free BTU's per month from the sun as possible with natural gas as my back up. Personally, I prefer NG, as 38% of local electricity in Northern Washington is still coming from coal fired plants.

Check out Paul Scheckel's great book "The Home Energy Diet" for great ways to reduce your hot water costs and carbon footprint now or in the future with the new GE system.

Speaking of which, if the new GE system can be tied into a solar hot water system it should be a real win all around -- especially if your local power company is burning something other than coal.

I've been using Bosch/Aquastar propane tankless heaters for the last 18 years or so. Based on casual comparisons with someone using a propane fired tank type heater I'm using about half the gas.

Bosch states in their literature that hard water is not a problem for tankless heaters.

why bother with electricity for instant hot water. Natural gas is a lot cheaper in CA. Considering electricity in CA one of the largest markets in America tiers the use. The more electricity the exponentially higher cost to pay. the last thing I want is some more electrical appliances to push the bill much higher.

Here's the issue though. National Grid here in RI is already asking for a distribution rate increase because people are using less gas.

This means any savings are pretty much moot.

you could always go 120% solar with ENERGY CONVERSION DEVICES, INC Solar PV Shingles.

It’s not what others do that counts, it’s the individual who finally decides to do the “correct”/moral/that-which-benefits-all that matters. Greed and fear will always be that. Industry, be it commerce, politics, economics, science, religion and that bastion of instability, the screw or nut called the “human being”, will always wait to be exposed before dragging his heels to “do the right thing”, begrudgingly. Why so? Beause the typical human do not really know much about himself which means he doesn’t really know what or why he is born for. And when a person is so, and that means 99.99% of idiotics/screws or lunatics/nutters called “people”, regardless of whether he believes or knows what he is really born for, he judges others first. Never himself. Meaning?

Who voted, say, for “that” idiot/lunatic? Your neighbour? You, of course. So if we know why we exist, we’ll always do the “right” thing which brings us back to square one. The other guy will ALWAYS be your problem. To solve the problem completely, we have to start with ourself and thence through family, social, national and human, we’ll ALL do the right thing the next time round. And not for our bank or immortality accounts. For The Absolute Truth whilst not forgtting that when a human do not know why or what he exists for, he’ll become greed one moment and then fear the next moment. Just substitute greed with intellect, cruelty, masculinity, protein, oxygen, anger, the potential, ad infinitum and for fear, just substitute with emotions, subtlety, femininity, carbs, hydrogen, guilt, the kinetic, ad infinitum. Got it? The other guy is always the “devil” and ignorance or rationality is NO defence. Just face yourself first and when enough “humans” do that, we’ll start seeing a sea change coming. And this is not about those bastions of nonsense called science or religion.

The truth of a matter do not rely on association with emotion or replacement by intellect. It depends entirely on Intelligence also known as Morality [but not moralising], Love, Joy & Compassion. The biggest trick that immorality/devolution does is to engage people into a cycle of finger-pointing/judging-at-others for once the wheel of “rights & wrongs” starts spinning, it sucks in all who has no stability/foundation. It makes excitements-of-sorts, the reason for existing. Judgement/comparison is for between us and Truth, the state of one’s Evolution, and not for determining the state of the other guy’s state of Devolution whilst not forgetting that Decay is Natural.

Whoa! I didn't see that coming!

If this is going to be like the flush toilet that I have to flush twice, the shower head that takes twice as long to get you clean, or the auto AC that I have to turn all the way up to get the same effect, it's going to use more energy, not less.

When will people learn that government coercion tends to have a nasty side-effect?

Magnulus:
"Unless I could legally force my land lord to change"

Hey mag., what do you mean by "legal force" ??
would you have guys in suits send the Owner an order, if not followed, guys will come with guns and throw him in a cage? Is your building under mob protection or gov't gunmen? Is there a difference? heres an idea: buy your own building!!!

Davids smart:
"When will people learn that government coercion tends to have a nasty side-effect?"

http://isil.org/resources/introduction.swf

Peace Out,
-PauPer

Are you telling me that if I switch my natural gas water heater for an electric one, I'll help save electricity? Retarded. Most water heaters are natural gas. Everyone should NOT switch.

Electricity is one of the most inefficient ways to heat water. Electricity is about 12 cents per kWh here (3,412.14 BTU), and natural gas is billed at $1.18 per therm (100,000 BTU). So electricity costs 3.52 cents per 1,000 BTU and natural gas costs 1.18 cents per 1,000 BTU. Electricity costs twice as much.

Even if you're not concerned with cost, and you are just concerned with global warming, coal fired power plants emit about 2.1 pounds of CO2 for every kWh of electricity they generate (0.62 pounds per 1,000 BTU). Natural gas releases about 0.39 pounds per 1,000 BTU.

VERDICT: Electric water heaters are horrible for the environment and your wallet when natural gas is available.

no, you don't switch to electric if you have gas. and tankless is an established and proven technology. it's 30 years in japan and eu. only USA likes to ignore stuff that works.

The heat pump version won't be available until 2009? Where have you been the last 20 years, USA?? We (living in Austria, Europe) have a heat pump installed for nearly 15 years now. And while the really efficient season is only 6 to 7 month, we still managed to cut oil consumption nearly in half (still used for heating during winter).

Now imagine you'd use such a system in regions, where you don't have -15°C winters. You could use it all around the year and would take 80% of the energy needed out of "thin air". The technology is available at least since the beginning of the 90s, if you had wanted to.

If you buy a tankless heater and it tells you it makes 7gpm it is usually based on a 40 to 50 degree rise in temperature. Realistically it is much closer to an 80 degree rise in temperature giving you about 3 or 4 gpm. In that situation the water will be warm with just one fixture running but if you were using the shower and another faucet was opened you would get cold water. A decent unit for a 3 or 4 bedroom house is about $1100 wholesale

Our 2300 sqft home in Iowa, built in 2003, has a geothermal heat pump that suppliments the hot water heating during both winter and summer. Our average electrical bill (the house is all electric) is $150/month. The geothermal system cost an additional $5000 after rebates.

Y'know what's dumb...until today, people still thought that having the government regulate all aspects of our lives was a good thing.

We needed this 30 years ago.

Also water heaters are not so simple as this article make them seem.

For instance a gas or oil powered hot water heater is ALREADY 30% more efficient than an electric. Fossil fuels may run very inefficient in cars, but the are actually perfectly fine for heating water or boilers or hot water heaters.

Likely this articles compares their on demand services to other low efficiency electric water heaters, which are the worst case scenario.

A HUGE problem with on demand is that while you save money per gallon EVERYONE who gets an on demand hot water heat will use more hot water than they did when their supply was limited.

The best way to save on hot water is to take faster shows, take few baths, turn down the temp of the water heater, insulate the water heater and only wash on warm or cold water.

Beyond that, you should go for SOLAR THERMAL hot water heating, not ON DEMAND which leads to people using more hot water since the supply becomes unlimited.

Even further beyond that geo-thermal is a great way to save money, coupled with solar thermal hot water heating you can save a lot on cooling and heater and basically get hot water for free.

Hmmm...pay a bunch to get half price hot water or.... pay a bunch to get solar powered water for free or nearly free during low sun.

Heat storage is not a new idea either and more houses should be using the idea in their basic designs and heating system.

You can heat LARGE tanks of water during the day, and since water holds heat well it's basically natures battery (for heat). The residual heat can warm keep water temps up all night long.

Energy prices are only going up, sunlight will remain free. At this point most US homes can save the MOST money on hot water using solar thermal, not on demand or energy efficient water heaters.


For the truly cheapest high powered solution a wood fired boiler can heat your water and home for many times less than electric or fossil fuels.

However, the future will be bio diesel, so oil fired boilers aren't that bad of an idea.

In the LONG term bio diesel is more renewable than coal, oil, propane or natural gas, which will all run out.

New specialized high yield bio fuels can EASILY provide ALL domestic fuels needs without competing with cropland. Sadly we just didn't plan far enough ahead to make the transition smoothly.

So diesel, diesel fuel cells and straight solar electric and solar thermal are the FUELS OF THE FUTURE. Though, wood is the easiest to get free and works now.

A good wood boilers runs at 89% efficiency, only a little under the best modern oil or gas furnaces.

Waste vegetable oil is a also a valid fuel for those self motivated people.

However in the long run waste oil will have little value as it gets replaces with new biodiesel and biodiesel fuel cells.

SOo, that means free oil for the motivated and cheaper biofuel for the masses.

Like wood today, you can heat your home and hot water for nearly free, just paying the gas to pickup free wood. It takes work and a chainsaw, and most people will simply lose their homes and live on the streets before they are motivated enough to adopt cheaper fuels on their own..

Just look at the tent city peoples. It was their home loan that killed them. It was the TOTAL failure between the feds, the banks AND the home owners to acknowledge rising energy prices.

They sold them huge houses with HUGE and ever growing energy bills. Many times a large houses oil bill can be more than it's mortgage per month.

Fortunately for the overall economy we now have a way to make cheap diesel in quantities enough to supply our nation and then some.

Oil futures are going to plummet in about 5-10 years depending on if we can get federal funding on the RIGHT bio fuels, not cropland biofuels... that are stupid and produce minuscule amount of fuel.

Either way, I personally know that American's with even small lots will be able to produce their own fuel or buy from large biofuel farms in the not too distant future.

One catch... we need diesel cars or electric cars with diesel fuel cells.

However, as I said, oil futures will go down once the biofuel farms go up... the good ones.

Current crops are maybe a couple hundred barrels of oil per acre. New methods, will cost much more to stup, but are cheap to run and produce tens of thousands of barrels or more per acre.

This heat recovery "Hybrid" system has existed since before I was in college in 1988. There were installations of Geothermal Heat Pumps with a Hot water heat exchanger over 20 years ago. Do the research. Sad that it has taken this long to catch on.

@Jason Stone

Thermal efficiency only tells you how efficiently you convert the gas/electricity to hot water while in operation. It doesn't take into account standby losses which the AO Smith will still have, but an instantaneous won't.

Gas heater thermal efficiency has room to improve, electricity should always be in the 98% range, but you also have to take into account the thermal efficiency of the power plant where the electricity is created, and the transmission efficiency of the power lines. That will significantly reduce the effective thermal efficiency of any electric water heater (standby or instantaneous).

tankless water heaters have been around for almost ten years. mostly for people who have lots of money to spend on that kind of stuff, though it was generally available for more commercial needs. they work really really well and do save a lot of energy. but to say that this is the first is completely wrong, it isnt they have been around, they just have costed around 10,000 bucks to save 10,000 bucks in about 20 years. but now that they will be more mass produced i can see prices, obviously, dropping a lot, probably down to prices comparable to tanked water heaters.

(1) I recall seeing a tankless gas-fired water heater a couple decades ago in a country house in Mexico. If a middle-class mexican summer house had one twenty years ago, they can't be anything special.
(2) At my old job, I used to steam-clean trucks/engines/etc. Inside the pressure washer i used, was a pipe that was coiled a couple dozen times over top a flame-shooting burner. Instant boiling water when the switch was flipped.
(3) Therefore, since tankless hot water is old technology, I'm wondering why we have we used tanks all these years? I'm sure there must be some good reason....?

Congrats GE. With Jack Welsh gone, maybe we'll see more innovations.

Any form of electrically heated hot water is terribly wasteful. Heat exchanger based systems are ok, but gas is still better, and solar-thermal is better still.

Solar hot water makes so much sense that unless you live somewhere extremely cold and cloudy for most of the year, it should be a crime against the environment to not use it. If necessary, supplement with gas powered on-demand systems, but for most people on Earth it wont be necessary.

For folks like me living outside the USA, it's really quite scary to watch such pronouncements, from the country that uses about three quarters of the worlds resources,of 'new' ways to heat water that we've been using for as long as I can remember (I'm not young, so that's quite a while). Things like 'hot water on demand' heaters have been normal here for decades and 'heat pump' heaters for not quite as long.
Long ago people here have been moving to solar as well as various other 'passive' ways to save hot water. And the thought that until now there has been no regulations to do with efficiency - sheesh!
I guess if you live in a country where you use resources like there's no tomorrow without thought of the consequence, both short and long term, then announcements such as these ones from GE must look exciting. But to the rest of us they look old hat and bordering on irresponsible.

After my last somewhat caustic comments I should say to Hank - anyone who spends time exploring/documenting environmental issues to help us get out of the mess we've gotten ourselves into, deserves a vote of thanks.
So thanks Hank.

Both tankless and heat pump water heaters have been available for some time in the US, GE seems to be playing catch-up. The only news here seems to be that water heaters are coming under government jurisdiction.

Ecogeek doesn't seem very well informed about energy-efficient appliances.

Remember that the real goal is not to heat water. The goal is to have a shower that feels good.

Check out this energy efficient shower:

http://www.appropedia.org/Sun_Frost_energy_efficient_shower

Heat loss is minimized so that less water at lower temperature still feels comfortable. Cheaper. Simpler. No fancy (and expensive) heater with heat pumps and heat exchangers.

For those so interested in natural gas over coal. The majority of the world's natural gas is in Iran and Russia. We may not want to depend too heavily on natural gas.

The US has more coal than any other country, and we are the veritable Saudia Arabia of coal.

I find it funny that I was suggesting a similar design to my father over a decade ago, and he told me that it would not be worth it. What they are missing is that with a bit of a CPU and intelligence, they could monitor the household and increase the holding tank temp AHEAD of the expected use. So, if it detects that family is getting up at 6, it might raise the temp from 65 (temp in the basement), to 90. Then from there, for the next hour or so, it keeps it up higher. Once the demand has gone down, it simply allows the heat to go away. This lowers the total demand, or allows for more ppl to take showers before going cold.

Grand hall sells the hybrid water heater now. So no need to wait until late 2009 for GE.

$2499 for a 3.6-7.4 gallon per minute unit (retail price, wholesale plumber installation price varies)
$2799 for a 4.7-9.5 gallon per minute unit

There is a problem with the tankless units, though it crops up more if many of them are installed in the same area. While it saves energy overall, the biggest issue is that they use a lot of power in a short amount of time. Since a lot of people tend to take showers or use hot water at the same time (early morning before work/school after dinner for dishes, etc), then the power company can see huge spikes in peak consumption which require delicate loading and even distribution.

Not an issue as a few homes convert, but if a new development goes up and all the homes have this installed, then it could create some issues.

To sing the praises of an electric water heater is crazy unless you don't have natural gas as an option. Electric heating water isn't efficient nor the most eco-friendly option. This story was obviously generated by a GE press release.

The GE is a combination of heat pump and resistence heating. The heat pump uses electricity but it uses it to move the heat from the air to the water. Moving heat is much more efficient than creating heat with electricity. The GE is a hybrid because it also has an electric resistence element for heating. The more you use this heating element, the less efficient it would be, but I think the intention of the heating element is to merely supplement the heat pump. This unit will be best for warm climates as it will output cool, dehumidified air from the heat pump.

I installed a heat pump on my water heater two month ago & it works great. I live in Hawaii with my water heater in the garage so I'm in the ideal place for this technology. These will also work in cooler climates but I'm not sure how well if it was placed inside the house since the noise might be offensive & the cooling in the house might need to heated in the winter.

I put a meter on the unit and use less that 2 KWH per day or about 15% of the 13 KWH rated usage. I've turned off the breaker to the Elec heater and havn't had any problems. My unit is called a Airtap ($500) but others are available on the market.

Finally, a Big name brand is jumping into the Heat Pump Water Heater Market, with a fully intergated unit no less! Other companies (i.e. AERS and Airgenerate) already have heat pump water heater addon units to be used with regular tank water heaters. I was thinking about getting one of those, but if this is true then I'd be willing to wait until Q4 2009 to get a fully integrated unit that is easier to install.

So I've read alot about how gas water heaters are more efficient and consequently cheaper than electric. Yet I'm still thinking an electric WH will be cheaper than gas for my situation and here's why. Here in the great state of Georgia, we deregulated natural gas in 1997. The short story is we pay fees to have the gas delivered via pipe line to the house and fees to purchase the gas. Depending on the month, these fees can be as high as $46/mo. to a low of $26/mo. even if you use zero CCF of natural gas. The only gas appliances in my house are the furnance, gas fireplace and the water heater. So during the summer months, the only gas appliance requiring gas is the water heater. If I had an electric water heater and cancelled my gas service for the 6 months when gas was not needed, I believe I could save about $100/yr. This includes a reconnect fee of $50. Using 2007 data, I've calculated an expenditure of $291 in fees, taxes and gas during the months that I propose turning off the service. That's a chunk of change that could be used for electric water heating. Obviously this only works if there are no other gas appliances that are needed during the summer months, i.e. gas range. So is gas cheaper? Not always.

this is a typical leftist blog, the terms of usage are check your freedom at the door if it doesn;t line up. If you are in to dissenting information you should check out this link http://www.populartechnology.n...rming.html

For all you who claim all electric appliances are bad, here is the way I see it:

Units (BTU, kWh, therms, whatever)

Electric: 100 units X 0.45 eff. at power plant (though 50% plants are popping up and 60 has been reached) X 92.5% (transmission line losses) 2.2 (EF of GE heat pump water heater)= 91.6

Gas: 100 units X .99 (pipeline losses) * .84 (most tankess water heaters, though some can reach 96.6%) = 83.2

So looking at that, you can't call this a bad technology.

Cost: Will vary pending on where you are, but where I'm at, electricity is a smidge over $.08/kWh and NG is $1.53/therm and since .08 x 29.3 kwh/therm = $2.34/therm of electric, a more noble form, of energy (it is possible thermodynamically to get effeciencies of over 100% when going from electric to heat, but will never reach 100% when going from heat to electric energy). When you combine that with th eff. above your cost per unit energy becomes very close.

All that said, I would much rather have a house that did not have gas lines running to it. Rather not have a gas bill. Rather produce as much off of solar energy as possible. So as many of you have said already, Solar thermal is the way to go.

AND THAT BRINGSME TO MY "NEED MORE INFO".
I recently went to a conference where they said this heat pump water heater is expected to be around $1500. BUt the speaker also said that this heater is supposed to know when to use heat pump vs. electric resistance heat, but he would not go into details. According to this site, they said when it gets to ambient temp. To me, that makes no sense as you can still get an EF of over 1 when you reached ambient temp. Can anyone with insight tell me how the brains of this machine works? A solar preheat would make no sense with a heat pump water heater if the temp is coming in at 75F and the heat pump kicks off at 70F in leiu of the electrical element.

All, I look forward to the GE unit but have been a long time proponent of the technology. You might find this product interesting and we have just begun marketing the 3rd generation. www.nextgenes.com. you can buy directly from my company if you like please inquire.