Australia's energy market operator, AEMO, publishes regularly updated pathways to a clean-energy future. Credit: David RocheĪs we generate more electricity from renewables, this picture is changing dramatically. Results for Queensland, Victoria and the ACT are similar to those for NSW. The projected emissions intensity of resistance and heat pump water heaters in NSW will soon be much lower than for their gas counterparts. That's because electric water heaters use a lot of electricity, and most of it came from burning coal. Heat pump emissions were about the same as for gas. A heat pump uses three to four times less electricity than a resistance heater.īack in 2010, a resistance electric water heater typically produced around four times more emissions than its gas equivalent. These collect heat from the air and "pump" it into water. Solar water heaters use sunlight and electricity, but have become less popular as newer " heat pump" units emerged. A conventional "resistance" heater uses electricity to heat water directly. There are three main types of electric water heater. And they can make our electricity grid more stable by providing flexible demand that helps balance out the fluctuating supply from renewable sources.
They can help reduce and eventually eliminate greenhouse gas emissions. This means these heaters can soak up excess "off-peak" renewable energy, particularly from solar, and so help us solve two key problems at once. Smart heaters can be switched on and off in response to changes in electricity supply and demand across the grid. Our report, published today and funded by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), recommends that, to halve emissions by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050, we urgently need policies to rapidly replace gas water heaters with "smart" electric water heaters. This could eventually save over A$6 billion a year on our energy bills while getting us closer to net-zero carbon emissions. Our research at the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures has found Australians could use household electric water heaters to store as much energy as over 2 million home batteries of that kind. A heater with a 300-liter tank can store about as much energy as a second-generation Tesla Powerwall-at a fraction of the cost. So what's so great about electric water heaters?Įlectric water heaters offer a cheap way to store large amounts of energy, in the form of hot water.
About half of Australian households use electric water heaters, while the rest use gas.
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