Your hot water system may not be an exciting conversation starter but it is one of the easiest ways to reduce your emissions and energy costs at home and will play an important role in our electric future.
In NSW our hot water systems are typically the biggest household energy consumer accounting for about a quarter of a home’s energy usage. When we consider all our hot water systems together, they become an important piece of technology to combat our domestic emissions.
While being a large source of energy costs and emissions isn’t something to brag about, your humble hot water system also has the potential to help secure a more stable grid due to its flexible nature. With a decent system, you can choose when it heats your water and that can be timed to best line up with solar production.
Most of us (about 45%) either use a gas hot water system, which typically has been cheap to run (but rapidly growing more expensive) and is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions; or an electric resistance system (also ~45%) which are cheap to buy and install but use 3 to 4 times the amount of energy. If your electric resistance heater isn’t that old, and you have a decent sized solar PV system, then installing a simple timer to heat your water during the day (rather than the overnight ‘off peak’ rate that many are set to) is not a bad option.
Otherwise, here at Electrify 2515, we encourage you to consider an electric heat pump water system. Using a heat pump water heater provides significant efficiency gains. On the existing electricity grid, the cost of water heating is roughly halved when using a heat pump compared to a natural gas water heater. When paired with solar panels, the costs fall even lower to around 3 times less than gas heating costs (and two-thirds of an electric resistance).
They aren’t cheap to buy up-front though, with systems ranging from $1500 - $5500. However, there are both Federal and NSW Government incentives available which brings this cost down considerably.
We’ve put together a heat pump guide which outlines some of the features to look for, how to claim the rebates, some of the comparable differences between models and also which local installers offer the government rebates.
Check it out and let us know if you make the switch.
Happy showering! www.electrify2515.org/water