Intellihot’s Electron Is A Tankless Heat Pump Water Heater For Commercial Buildings

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The third cease of my heat pump water heater tour across America prematurely of Heat Pump Water Heater Day was in Vernon Hills, Illinois, to take a look at the world headquarters of Intellihot, an organization that’s making an attention-grabbing kind of business warmth pump water heater that wants a lot much less storage capability.

Intellihot is an organization that bought began making tankless gasoline water heaters for industrial buildings. The producer bought its begin creating on-demand gasoline water heating expertise to satisfy massive industrial scorching water masses. Nonetheless, state governments and air high quality businesses have begun to phase out fossil fuels from buildings to speed up full electrification and decarbonization. Such developments have made warmth pump expertise interesting because the status-quo for water heating within the close to future.

Intellihot acknowledges this momentum behind warmth pumps. Like Rinnaia producer of tankless gasoline water heaters for residential buildings, the corporate has created a warmth pump water heater that has just lately been delivered to market. However Intellihot has executed so in a really distinctive manner, because it has created what it calls a tankless warmth pump water heater for industrial buildings.

Regardless of the acknowledged awesomeness of warmth pump water heaters (aka effectivity and financial savings), gasoline water heaters do have some benefits over warmth pumps. One of many major is that gasoline heats water shortly. Heating water slowly makes warmth pumps extraordinarily environment friendly (5x extra so than gasoline), but additionally means they require a number of scorching water storage, and in industrial settings this could imply a number of tanks. Additional area required for extra tanks could make it troublesome to switch gasoline water heaters in a constructing that solely want a small quantity of area.

Intellihot’s answer to this downside has been to take a web page out of the gasoline water heater trade e-book and develop what it calls a “tankless” warmth pump water heater. Now in actuality, there’s a small tank within the unit, but it surely doesn’t retailer potable water. As a substitute, Intellihot calls it a thermal battery, and this smallish tank shops a superheated water/glycol combination. When a constructing person activates the tap, the water passes via a coil seated contained in the water/glycol combination, which is heated to 180 levels, and the water absorbs warmth in real-time. Better of all, the water heater makes use of CO2 for its refrigerant, which is pure and has a really low world warming potential.

I bought to take a look at the Intellihot product and chat with a pair of us about it in individual in Illinois. The Electron mannequin that they’ve created is concerning the measurement of an individual or a big residential water heater, and may serve roughly 8 condominium items relying on the local weather situations.

The Electron items may be cascaded collectively to serve larger buildings, and may be positioned both indoors or outside in nearly any local weather. The colder climates should have extra glycol of their thermal batteries and thus be rather less environment friendly.

I discovered the Electron product to be fascinating and revolutionary, and it solutions lots of the challenges dealing with bigger buildings switching to warmth pumps. Intellihot is engaged on the following era of product as effectively, with a number of stacked condensers positioned exterior which feed a thermal battery inside. The corporate has put in a number of water heaters in varied climates nationally and is trying to scale with the rise of warmth pump water heaters.

Watch my tour of Intellihot’s World Headquarters and the way I bought their workers to do a warmth pump boogie with me:

Additionally, try this video from the Superior Water Heating Initiative, which does a extra in-depth take a look at Intellihot’s revolutionary warmth pump water heater.