Eco-friendly and cost-saving water heating solutions

Eco-friendly and cost-saving

water heating solutions

In a typical South African home it is estimated that approximately 50-60% of electricity consumed is used to heat water. The biggest culprit is your geyser. Now that it’s winter, everyone is taking longer, hotter showers and heating their homes electrically in a bid to keep warm. Naturally, this translates to greater electricity usage and a more expensive power bill at the end of each month.

In 2022, the cost of electricity is increasing by 25%. This means your energy-guzzling geyser is costing 25% more to run than in 2021. With no end to price hikes seemingly in sight, many consumers are switching to cost-effective, modern energy-efficient technologies from Alliance for solutions to their residential and commercial water heating woes. This was the case for a private residential homeowner earlier this year.

The client’s home was disconnected from the national energy grid and installed with a 7kW/h solar photovoltaic system (PVS) that uses 28 x 250 watt photovoltaic solar panels to generate electricity. Installation was expertly done by Eco Simply Solar.

To reduce the size of the PVS required for the property, Fourways Group supplied an Alliance 5kW hot water heat pump that was installed onto an existing 200-litre geyser. Traditionally, a 200-litre geyser requires a 4kW/h electrical element for full efficiency. This is not practical with a PV system as the geyser’s element would require a much larger solar array. Its 4kW/h element would take 2.9 hours to heat the water inside and consume an electricity total of 11.6kW/h. At a tariff of R2.10 per kW/h, it would cost R24.36 each heating cycle to heat the water within.

Alternatively, an Alliance Retrofit Heat Pump only has an input power of 1.2kW/h. At 20°C ambient, it heats the 200 litre geyser from 10 to 60°C in 2.3 hours and uses only 2.76 kW/h at R2.10 per kW/h.

The Alliance Retrofit Heat Pump would cost R5.80 to heat the water, saving consumers R18.56 each month. This represents massive savings over a 10-year cycle, which would cost R88 914 for a 4kW element to heat geyser water, whereas the Alliance water heat pump would cost just R21 170, saving end-users an incredible R67 744. Whether in homes or hotels, hot water heat pumps help every household and formal accommodation facilities such as hotels reduce rapidly increasing electricity costs.

The Alliance Heat Pumps work on the same principle as air conditioners, extracting ambient heat from the atmosphere but, instead, transferring it to water. Thus, in a normal geyser, 1kW of electrical energy produces just 1kW of heat energy. With an Alliance Heat Pump, 1kW of electrical energy produces approximately 3kW of heat energy. The result is water heated for only approximately one-third of the electrical usage of a normal household geyser, saving consumers two-thirds on water-heating costs.

Domestic Alliance units comfortably heat from 100 litres to 500 litres of water. For commercial use, as a result of the modularity of Alliance Heat Pumps, many units can be linked together to supply thousands of litres of hot water per hour. Water temperature, as well as heating periods, can be adjusted via a wired controller to meet specific hot water demands. An additional technical challenge for Eco Simply Solar was to figure out how to heat the private client’s 3 000 litre marine fish tank that boasts R200 000 worth of live coral and exotic fish at a maintained water temperature of 26°C.

Experts at Alliance recommended an Alliance 5.4kW swimming pool heat pump which has a titanium heat exchanger that is resistant to the saltwater of the marine tank. The 5.4kW pool heat pump operates for three hours each day to maintain the perfect 26°C water temperature, while consuming only 3.2kW per day. This was the first time a swimming pool heat pump was designed for a system like this and a great accomplishment to see how Alliance water heat pumps can be used successfully for different types of water-heating applications. Apart from saving electricity, saving homeowners money and reducing the load on Eskom, Alliance units also operate on eco-friendly R410A gas. This gas has replaced R22 Refrigerant as the preferred refrigerant for residential and commercial air conditioners in South Africa as it does not contribute to ozone depletion. R410A gas also functions at a higher pressure than R22, thus new compressors are built to withstand greater stresses, reducing the chance of cracking.

With soaring energy prices and a strong probability of more to come, Alliance heat pumps in residential properties and the likes schools and hotels have become the go-to energy-saving solution for consumers to trim their monthly electricity costs.