I'm about to buy a hybrid water heater to replace the old electric that is causing our electricity bill to explode, and I think I have the right model, but when I look at the EF rating it's listed as 3? Is there some kind of trickery here that marketers use, or can you really get EFs over 1?
Edit: nevermind, I found the answer; here it is for future reference:
Heat pump water heaters are very different. Electricity isn’t converted directly into heat; rather it is used to move heat from one place to another. This is counter-intuitive because the heat is moved from a colder place (the room air where the water heater is located) to a warmer place (the water in the storage tank).
This seemingly magic process happens because a specialized refrigerant fluid is alternately condensed and evaporated in a closed loop. This process relies on phase changes of the refrigerant that capture and release significant amounts of heat.
A detailed explanation of the refrigerant cycle is beyond the scope of this blog. Trust me that it works. (It’s the same basic principle used in your refrigerator, which extracts heat from inside that insulated box and dumps it into your kitchen.)
The net result is that for every one kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity consumed, two or more kWh’s of hot water are produced. The energy factor, which is often thought of as a measure of efficiency, is 2.0 to 2.5 for most heat-pump water heaters on the market, while a 100% efficient electric-resistance water heater would have an energy factor of just 1.0.
Submitted May 01, 2015 at 12:13AM by roboczar http://ift.tt/1GJzgbK Frugal
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