Electric Consumption of Water Heater With Heat Pump

[frankge]

In Florida, my heat pump WH keeps me below my consumption limits. Its also cools my garage so I can "add" the cost savings of buying and running a minisplit. My garage is considered another room in my house. What's even better is I found an 80 gallon AO Smith for $150.00 and its been running for 4 years! If it went I'd get another. During our "Winter" I'll run it in resistance only mode if it gets cold in the garage.

BTW - according to my Sense monitor its using 816 watts right now.

[jovenac]

We will install solar this year. We have a gas water heater and I am thinking of replacing it with an electric water heater with integrated heat pump within the next couple of year. In order to size the solar installation with Dependable Hot Water in mind, I need to know about how much kWh such a water heater will consume. Are there some guidelines? Unfortunately, I don't know how many gallons of hot water we consume, only how many gallons of cold water.

A typical integrated heat pump water heater uses roughly 2–5 kWh per day per person, depending on usage and climate. A practical sizing rule is about 0.1–0.15 kWh per gallon of hot water produced, or roughly 10–20 kWh/day for an average household of 2–4 people. For solar planning, it’s usually safe to assume around 3–5 kWh per person per day as a design estimate.

[Rade]

We migrated from an oil-burning hot water tank to a heat-pump version. I keep the tank in heat pump mode; the settings are "Electric" (pulling 100% from the grid to heat water), "Hybrid" (combination heat-pump and electric) and Heat-pump (100% through heat-pump), oh, and vacation mode that keeps the temp above 70 degrees if we are away from the house for x-number of days.

I have not seen any increase in electric consumption between the oil-burning usage (used to power the burner and the circulating pump) and the 100% heat-pump mode. Two adults, 2 showers a day, assorted other hot-water usages. When the tank HAD been depleted (the occasion when I decide to soak in a hot tub); recovering was quick.