Climate Watch: Plenty of hot water and lower costs - Evanston RoundTable

Climate Watch: Plenty of hot water and lower costs - Evanston RoundTable

If you’ve been hearing about heat pumps lately, you may have wondered, isn’t this too good to be true? “Pumping” heat out of the air into our homes, even when it’s so cold we’re shivering? Or pulling enough warmth from the inside air to heat water to 120 degrees? It sounds like magic. Before we installed a new heat pump water heater in June, I couldn’t quite believe a hot shower would be just as hot if the water was heated by one of these energy-saving appliances. But as soon as I turned on the faucet, I was convinced.

In a nutshell, heat pumps work like reversible air conditioners to heat and cool the air or, in this case, to heat water. But they use a lot less electricity than conventional water heaters. That’s because they use electricity to move heat rather than to generate it.

Heat pumps have become increasingly efficient and effective over a wide range of temperatures. They cost more than conventional gas-burning appliances, and not all contractors are familiar with them yet, but that’s changing fast. Costs are coming down, and climate-friendly provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act offer incentives for switching. With natural gas prices rising over time, and concern about cutting carbon emissions, there are additional incentives to reduce home energy use.

Water heating is a good place to try out heat pumps

Energy for hot water heating accounts for about 15% of typical annual household energy use in our region (2020 data), and a heat pump typically saves 75% of water-heating energy and costs. Installing a water-heating heat pump isn’t as complicated, or as big an investment, as changing how you heat and cool the air in your home. So it’s a logical way to become familiar with heat pumps.

For us, the choice to install a heat pump water heater was easy. A previous owner had a huge hot tub, and to fill it, installed an 80-gallon electric hot water heater. We’d removed the hot tub. The next step was to downsize the water heater, which was more than 20 years old anyway.

We had been hearing about heat pumps, and when we learned that ComEd was offering a free heat pump in exchange for participating in research, we jumped at the opportunity and were lucky enough to be selected.

‘Biggest target for Illinois homeowners to save energy‘

In early June, a Rheem hybrid heat pump water heater was installed in our basement near the furnace and laundry, where the temperature is fairly constant year round. The result: Our electricity use for water heating immediately dropped, and cost savings showed up in the next ComEd bill.

The water was just as hot and available just as fast as before, and because the new tank stores 60 gallons of heated water, there has been plenty, even when we’ve had visitors. In case there’s ever a need for a lot of hot water, fast, we could switch to a back-up heating element to heat water in a conventional way. That’s why it’s called a hybrid heat pump hot water heater. So far, switching hasn’t been necessary.

CLEAResult, the company carrying out the research project for ComEd, attached monitors in a number of places throughout the house two months before the new appliance was installed, then came back twice to download data. Brendan Kellam, energy engineer with CLEAResult, reports that our electricity consumption has decreased by about 1,500 kWh/year, roughly a 70% reduction in energy used for water heating.

“After addressing space heating equipment/controls,” he said, “the water heater is the biggest target for Illinois homeowners to save energy.”

What will a switch to heat pump hot water mean for your household? That depends on the kind of water heater you have now. If, like us and about 34% of households in our region, you have an electric resistance hot water heater, then you already have ample electrical circuit capacity in your home. The installation is fairly simple and you’ll reduce your use of electricity and your costs just as we have.

No up-front costs

We were in the unusual position of having no up-front costs, but a friend reports that they are paying about $3,600 for a new hybrid heat pump water heater, installed, but expect a good part of the cost to be offset by tax credits and possibly even an IRA rebate. Rewiring America is a good source for estimating what all of these incentives could mean for you. Another good source is the U.S. Department of Energy website.

If you have gas hot water now, a heat pump will lower your gas bill and increase your electric bill, but a lot less than with a conventional electric hot water heater. If you’re concerned about possible health effects of burning fossil gas inside your house, you’ll also have eliminated one source.

In both cases you’ll be ready for clean, renewable energy as our grid becomes greener and to help reduce the strain on the grid as more people convert to electricity for all kinds of energy needs. And you will have contributed to our collective commitment to cutting climate-warming carbon emissions from burning fossil gas.

Climate Watch is a series of occasional articles and essays about what climate change means for Evanston and what we’re doing locally to make a difference.