Why Your Water Heater Should Be a Battery

How This Heat Pump Water Heater is Also a Battery. Go to https://ground.news/undecided for an innovative way to stay fully informed on tech, energy, the climate and more. Save 40% on the Ground News unlimited access Vantage plan with my link. Heat pump water heaters have been around for over a decade. If you follow this channel, you probably know they're three to five times more efficient than a standard electric tank. Maybe you've got one. I do. But here's what most people don't realize. Even if you own a heat pump water heater, it's still pretty dumb. It heats reactively. The tank drops below the setpoint, the compressor kicks on. It doesn't know your schedule. It doesn't know your electricity rates. And it definitely doesn't know when your solar panels are cranking. Two Boston startups think that's a massive missed opportunity. They're treating the water heater as a thermal battery, a cheap, insulated vessel that can store energy as heat, shift electricity use to cheaper hours, and participate in grid services. One of them, Wilmington, Massachusetts-based Cala Systems, invited me to tour their factory. Their predictive software is licensed from the National Renewable Energy Lab. According to a California Energy Commission study, intelligent scheduling on time-of-use rate plans alone can cut costs by 15 to 19 percent beyond what a standard heat pump water heater already saves. So I went inside to find out: is a smart water heater actually worth the premium? Or is "intelligent" just a buzzword bumper sticker slapped on a tank of hot water? Watch The Truth About Ocean Plastic https://youtu.be/Rqpfnj7dAgw?list=PLnTSM-ORSgi7uzySCXq8VXhodHB5B5OiQ Video script and citations: https://undecided.tech/how-this-heat-pump-water-heater-is-also-a-battery/ Get my achieve energy security with solar guide: https://undecided.link/solar-guide Follow-up podcast: Video version - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4-aWB84Bupf5hxGqrwYqLA Audio version - https://undecided.link/stilltbd-podcast Join the Undecided Discord server: https://undecided.link/discord 👋 Support Undecided on Patreon! https://undecided.link/patreon Visit my Energysage Portal (US): Research solar panels, heat pumps, and more to get quotes for free! https://undecided.link/energysage For a curated solar buying experience (Canada) EnergyPal's free personalized quotes: https://undecided.link/energypal 👉 Follow Me Mastodon https://mastodon.social/@mattferrell Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/mattferrell.bsky.social Instagram https://www.instagram.com/undecidedtech Website https://undecided.tech Some music provided by Epidemic Sound https://undecided.link/epidemic I may earn a small commission for my endorsement or recommendation to products or services linked above, but I wouldn't put them here if I didn't like them. Your purchase helps support the channel and the videos I produce. Thank you. Chapters 00:00 - Intro 02:10 - The Intelligence 05:21 - The Thermal Battery Concept 08:57 - The Tour 15:37 - The Real Economics