Home Air Conditioner vs. Electric Car

Good to hear.
Just to be clear, this is an Air Source Heat Pump?

 

Yes, air source, installed in garage. Exhaust is vented outside, though the garage is well above the minimum size needed for non-vented systems.

Some offshore R744 systems are mini-splits, just like space-heat/AC ductless minisplits. Tank inside the house or garage, evaporator outdoors.

I haven't heard of any stand-alone ground or water source units. Those sources would require HPWHs that can connect to a compatible central HVAC heat pump system. When searching for information, include this term: desuperheater.

 

My electric utility company's *audit* of my all electric home says I use less than over 75% of comparable homes in my neighborhood uses ( there are about 150 homes in my development, only 38 households in my development are as frugal with electricity as me ). To put this in more concrete terms... I use about an average of 440 kwh / month ( 5280kwh /year, from 200 kwh/month to 1200 kwh/month). My guess is that about 66% of my total usage is for heating and cooling or 3500 kwh / year ) I don't use much because (1) my home has been upgraded to be very energy efficient and (2) I am the only one using electricity and I'm really careful about using electricity. Technically - I could recharge a BEV overnight and I would still use less electricity than almost everyone in my neighborhood. When my wind turbine electric consolidator provider Clean Current went bankrupt a few years ago I had to switch to PEPCO's standard electric source which include electricity from their very old legacy coal burning plants. Of course all this is moot because Alas ... my home does not have a garage to recharge a BEV overnight. So like Moses - I'm never going to see the promise land. :-(

 

When I first heard about heat pump water heaters, I went searching for what was available. There may have been an add on unit for an electric water heater, but practically nothing. Searches did return water heaters available in other markets. One rand in Australia was a solar heat pump system. The evaporator would be placed on the roof where it would collect solar heat along with ambient heat for the water heater. No luck finding brand now, but did find a paper on the subject.

http://solar.org.au/papers/00papers/Aye.pdf

Sounds like split systems will start arriving in the US.
Split-System Heat-Pump Water Heaters | GreenBuildingAdvisor.com

You don't really need a garage. Once saw a post by a Volt owner that didn't have a garage, and just installed an exterior EVSE.

 

I live in an older townhouse development where the non garage units like mine lack an electrical outlet in the front. There are strict architectural rules for exterior modifications so I would need approval to put a recharge station in the front of my home. There are a few Prii and one or two Volts and Leafs in my town but not many... My town of about +40,000 still favors SUVs, Minivans, and Luxury sport sedans. ..One of the reasons I pick the Prius was because Priuschat provided support to understand all this new alternative energy vehicle stuff in a safe and supportive environment .. I'm pretty happy I did my research on this ... locally everyone I live next to is basically an alternative energy vehicle Luddite. (9_9)... I rarely talk about hybrids or BEVs in the real world.... in the real world ... this sort of stuff gets a polite smile at best, a blank stare normally, or - at worst -- I get someone really angry at me who would brand me a liberal leftist Eco-nut... I am +55. and my family history suggest I won't live more than another 10 years so my guess is that I probably won't be alive when BEV and FCV tech becomes more common ... but I sure it is only a matter of time... I wish the next generation of alternative energy vehicle pioneers and the vanguards the very best. .

 

I want a two tank system. The reserve tank will be fed from PV through an airspace heat pump during the hot and sunny part of every day. Electric resistance as a back-up from either the grid or a home storage solution.

 

Thanks for the news update. The particular system mentioned here is the same one I mentioned in a couple posts last spring and summer, after finding the lab report on a different regional energy efficiency site. Glad to hear that it is expected to appear on our shores this year, though the price remains quite steep.

I briefly contracted through the agency that performed the testing. That ended when I was unable to avoid a mass layoff at the client company. The agency would not even point me to its other available opportunities, maybe from overload from so many employees being benched at once, and I was one of the newest kids on the block. The most important contact, who wouldn't give me anything more than an 'out of office' email autoreply, is thanked by name in this lab report. I would have loved to have worked on its series of HPWH tests.

 

As you can see, our 240v central AC is a real pig . . . and that doesn't include start up surge;



At 240v - that's north of 8,100 watts

.... and I'll bet there are a whole lot of folks with dinosaur compressors just like us -
we could do some serious car charging with the power our AC sucks down
.

 

and if everybody switches to led lights then a load will be taken off the grid