With water heating consuming about 17 percent of the energy for a typical household, it's a good place to start when cutting costs. ORNL's Building Technology Center is assisting in developing a heat pump water heater as a "drop-in" replacement for a conventional 50- or 80-gallon water heater. It features the same footprint, electrical and plumbing requirements and can provide a two-year payback because of its greater efficiency. The heat pump water heater has an energy factor of 2.47 as compared with 0.95 for the most efficient conventional electric units. The unit can be installed where there is no floor drain, but where one is available, it will provide space cooling and dehumidification as well as hot water. If broadly adopted, use of this water heater could save almost 1 percent of the country's energy consumption.
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