This Building America Measure Guideline is intended for builders, contractors, homeowners, and policy-makers. While HPWHs promise to significantly reduce energy use for DHW, proper installation, selection, and maintenance of HPWHs is required to ensure high operating efficiency and reliability. This document is intended to explore the issues surrounding HPWHs to ensure that homeowners and contractors have the tools needed to appropriately and efficiently install HPWHs.

Prepared by:  National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Published:  February 2012

The objective of the research is to forecast baseline heat pump water heater sales in the Northwest -- Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Specifically, we estimated the unit sales and installations of heat pump water heaters meeting the Tier 1 and Tier 2 Northern Climate Specification, above and below 55 gallons, in absence of utility incentive programs.

Prepared by:  Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance

Published:  October 23, 2014

NEEA commissioned Fluid, a CLEAResult company, to conduct a field study capturing energy savings data primarily on Tier 2 HPWHs. As the first field study of ducted HPWH installations, the study provided in-field installation findings to identify best practices as well as concerns to support NEEA’s HPWH market test. 

Prepared by:  Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance

Published:  October 2013

Following the survey of existing activities, the report presents conclusions through a series of recommended strategies to accelerate market uptake of HPWHs in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region.

Prepared by:  Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships

Published:  December 2012

The following HPWH performance data come from an NRDC-commissioned analysis conducted by Ecotope in June 2016. Ecotope conducted a set of simulations to estimate the energy use of Heat Pump Water Heaters (HPWH) across the United States.

Prepared by:  Ecotope

Published:  June 2016

Building America Case Study Project Name: Systems Evaluation at the Cool Energy House. Location: Windermere, Florida. Year Tested: 2012. For a 6-month period, the Consortium for Advanced Residential Buildings, a U.S. Department of Energy Building America team, monitored the performance of a GE Geospring HPWH in Windermere, Florida. The study included hourly energy simulation analysis using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Building Energy Optimization-Energy Plus (BEopt) v1.3 software.

Prepared by:  US DOE Building America program

Published:  November 2013

This project seeks to answer the technical questions associated with residential heat pump water heater (HPWH) placement, design, and performance using lab testing of particular HPWH products that are likely to be available in the residential market.

Prepared by:  Bonneville Power Administration

Published:  January 25, 2010

The report describes laboratory testing and modeling exercises performed to assess potential heat pump water heater (HPWH) energy savings in the Pacific Northwest. Three integrated HPWH models, pairing two electric resistance elements with a tank-mound heat pump, were thoroughly investigated: the AO Smith Voltex, the GE GeoSpring, and the Rheem EcoSense.

Prepared by:  Bonneville Power Administration

Published:  November 11, 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze the economics of a range of advanced electric water heating load control and energy efficiency strategies that utilities and demand response aggregators could implement to reduce total system costs.

Prepared by:  The Brattle Group

Published:  January 2016

Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP) Heat Pump Water Heater fact sheet.

Prepared by:  Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships

Published:  December 2012