On-demand Water Heat Goes All Electric with Heat Pumps, CO₂

The commercial water-heating systems used in hotels, restaurants, and large multifamily buildings have a few problems. As we move toward all-electric buildings, we need an alternative to gas, but heat-pump water heaters face a couple of challenges:

First, they do not heat water very quickly. For this reason, they require storage tanks for the heated water, and keeping that water hot requires constant “standby” energy. Second, although heat-pump water heaters are energy efficient, they often use refrigerants with high global warming potential (GWP). 

Intellihot is addressing efficiency, standby energy losses, and high-GWP refrigerants with commercial tankless heat-pump water heaters for multifamily buildings and other commercial applications. Its iE1 Electron uses CO2 as the refrigerant along with built-in thermal storage instead of using hot-water storage tanks.