in Australia which either use an electric resistance heating element , or burn gas. This is because heat pumps employ compressors which extract and concentrate energy available from ambient air to heat water .
Several years on I can tell you that the water heater has been very good at supplying hot water. Except when it inexplicably trips off at the circuit board. While this is infrequent, it revealed that the water tank is likely to be poorly insulated because the temperature of the water drops by a considerable amount over about 12 hours.
The other problem is that while the water heater has a timer, it elects to heat water at plenty of other times beyond the time I’ve set. That means my ability to take advantage of surplus energy from my solar PV system is far less than ideal.Not all heat pump water heaters have these problems, but about 10 years ago there was a plan to address these problems which the Abbott Government decided should be thrown into its “red tape bonfire”.
Importantly, such a labelling regime also makes these products subject to check testing and enforcement to make sure suppliers’ claims are true. More than 10 years ago, these basic consumer protections could have been implemented for heat pumps were it not for Abbott’s regulatory pyromania.