Hundreds of new jobs are expected to result from production of a super-efficient water heater developed under an Oak Ridge National Laboratory-General Electric partnership. GE will be the first major brand to have a commercially available product that meets the 2009 Department of Energy "Energy Star" standards for electric water heaters. GE has announced that it will begin making the hybrid electric water heaters which are 50 percent more energy efficient than standard models at its Louisville, Ky., plant in 2011, creating about 400 jobs. The ORNL technology behind the water heater was funded by DOE's Building Technologies Program, which enabled the ORNL-GE cooperative research and development agreement that led to the new product. Much of the work was conducted at ORNL's Building Technologies Research and Integration Center. Tests show energy savings of $250 annually over a standard 50-gallon water heater.
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