The Heat Pump Water Heater market is characterized by the presence of a diversified regional and highly fragmented supply side providing with their knowledge of the market customized products. This is posing a stiff competition to the international players. However, the local manufacturers find it increasingly difficult to compete these, while the international players also take over or collaborate more and more with regional or local players.
The best opportunities for Heat Pump Water Heaters are in:
- Installing in new single family and multifamily buildings to meet building regulation requirements;
- Retrofit of existing gas or oil boiler in single family buildings or terraced houses, with a new boiler and a heat pump water heater or a heat pump for both space and hot water heating;
- Replacement of direct electrical heating of hot water in existing buildings, individual domestic buildings, terraced houses, driven by customer need for energy cost savings;
- Retrofit of collective distribution systems for hot water in domestic multifamily buildings with individual heat pump water heaters, either a booster type or an air source HPWH;
- Homes where space is at a premium, with compact wall-hung systems with < 100 litre tanks or split HPWH;
- Ability for smart operation with PV integration and/or connection to smart grid;
- Low temperature distribution systems of the 4th Generation District Heating, with booster HPWHs.
The three major markets – North America, Asia and Europe – represented by the countries participating to the Annex have different market conditions and different usage scenarios. An overview is given in the General Report which has been compiled and edited based upon the country reports delivered by the participating countries and other information available.
For the Annex 46 country reports have been delivered by Japan, South Korea, Canada, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland and Netherlands.
The IEA TCP – 4E Mapping and Benchmarking has made extensive study on water heaters for domestic applications. The Final Report states that switching from technology gives a huge potential in energy conservation far greater than increasing the performance of existing technologies. As an example, a switch from the worst performing gas storage water heater to the best heat pump model would reduce annual energy consumption by almost 7 MWh per water heater. However, traditionally, policy makers have been reticent in pursuing policies that would drive switching of product type, even where technology neutral policy measures have been deployed.
This 4E Mapping study encompasses a number of countries which have been analysed and reported upon, being Canada, China, Japan, Korea, Sweden and USA.