Going all electric: Heat Pump water heater

[Engineer]

So now that we've got solar it makes sense to consider weaning off natural gas appliances, which for us are

• cooktop - DONE (got induction)
• water heater
• clothes dryer
• central heat
• gas fireplace
• outdoor (heater, barbecue, etc)

Taking the first one I thought about getting solar water heating, but our roof is already filled with panels and that's an expensive solution. Instead I heard about the GE Geospring Heat Pump water heater. The way this works is it's basically an air conditioner on an electric water heater. It takes the heat from the air and puts it into your water. Uses 30% of the energy of a regular electric water heater. Long story short I got one, installed it myself and am happy and impressed. It's in pure heat pump mode so cools down my garage (which is hot/warm year round) and provides cheap hot water for about 500W. Basically it uses as much energy as one of my computers.

In addition there's a $300 federal rebate and a $500 PG&E rebate, plus a sale a Lowes so I got it for about $200, which is cheaper than any other water heater. And since the electricity is coming from my panels when it's running during the day it's 'solar heater water' So far I highly recommend them.

Next up is the clothes dryer. There's a heat pump clothes dryer available, but unfortunately we recently (last year) bought a new gas clothes dryer, not knowing we were going to go solar. So maybe if I can sell that for a good price I can buy a new one.

[DanKegel]

I'm thinking the same way, except I can't touch the gas stove or fireplace, they're legacy. And the barbecue is used so little it's not worth it.
(To be clear, though, I'm not motivated by economics at this point; natural gas is cheap. My goal is to reduce my carbon footprint.)

Thanks for posting your experience with the water heater.

That $300 federal rebate is pretty good, but man, that PG&E one! Alas, LADWP doesn't have such a rebate.
I see the sale at Lowe's is still going on, $1000, so it'd cost me $700 plus installation. Hrmph. Maybe I'll holler at the next LADWP guy I see and ask him why they aren't going after water heaters, especially in light of Porter Ranch and the gas shortage.
(GE itself also has a promotion if you buy more than one of their appliances, $100 for two, $300 for three.)

I keep hearing stories about heat pump appliances breaking down, and will probably spring for the extended warranty on any I buy (well, as long as it's reasonable).

Your computers use 500W? That might shoot way down next time you refresh them, Intel's new Skylake chips are positively miserly.

[Engineer]

My goal is to reduce my carbon footprint.)

In our case it's reducing carbon, replacing old appliances with better ones, and economics too. After solar I still pay some $500-$600/yr for gas, I'd like to drive that below $100.

That $300 federal rebate is pretty good, but man, that PG&E one!

Yeah it's crazy

I keep hearing stories about heat pump appliances breaking down, and will probably spring for the extended warranty on any I buy (well, as long as it's reasonable).

I got the Lowes warranty for an extra $50. On the water heaters I haven't had it for a long time so will see, but the story I've heard is that GE previously build these offshore, but then brought them back to the US because of the quality problems. They do proudly proclaim that they're built in Kentucky, not that it means they are built or designed well. I do see a little slightly shoddy work, one label is skewed a bit, and some screws are installed at an angle not 90°. Nothing big and doesn't affect it, but for the record ...

Anyhow so far it pumps out really cold air cooling my toasty garage. As a bonus it has a device to Cloud connect to IFFT so I can hook it into the rest of my smart house.

Your computers use 500W? That might shoot way down next time you refresh them, Intel's new Skylake chips are positively miserly.

I run cloud computational servers, not blade capacity but think 6 core HPC. The power usage is basically all GPU DNN processing though, one server is about a kW.

[DanKegel]

Did you have to get the $49 dongle ("ConnectPlus") for the Geospring to connect it to the internet?

It'd be interesting to try putting the water heater into a power saving mode when the sun isn't shining...

[Engineer]

Did you have to get the $49 dongle ("ConnectPlus") for the Geospring to connect it to the internet?

Yeah, was a gift for my birthday but hasn't arrived yet.

It'd be interesting to try putting the water heater into a power saving mode when the sun isn't shining...

I have no idea what functionality it supports. I assume it's read only, but if you can push commands to it too that would be great, let me check the IFTTT site ... wow, OK you can basically fully control the heater, like to go into vacation mode when your out of the house. Seriously cool, I'm thinking of the opposite. I'll have it only run in off peak time during the summer to maximize the NEM backfeed credit.

[DanKegel]

Oh, sure, be sensible That's the economical thing to do with the current rates. (Once solar dominates, it'll be the other way around, but the same gadget will help either way.)

[Engineer]

Oh, sure, be sensible That's the economical thing to do with the current rates. (Once solar dominates, it'll be the other way around, but the same gadget will help either way.)

And maybe if electricity rates continue to go negative during the day they'll pay us to use electricity

[RedDenver]

I'd like to mention to the general audience that while heat pump water heaters do provide energy savings (compared to electric resistance heat), they won't perform as well in cold regions due to needing to place the HPWH indoors. Engineer was able to put his in the garage which doesn't get too cold in the winter, which is optimal for the HPWH. Here's a link with some of the pros and cons: https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/h...-pros-and-cons