Comment by sgc
Electrical upgrades are almost always required, and price is more like 7k-9k around here. It's going to be seriously painful for a lot of people.
Electrical upgrades are almost always required, and price is more like 7k-9k around here. It's going to be seriously painful for a lot of people.
If you currently have an electric resistive water heater, a heat pump water heater with the same heating capacity will use 3-4x less power, which means you can use a much smaller circuit.
A 6kW 240V EWH uses 25A, it’ll need #8 wire and a 35A or 40A breaker.
An equivalent HPHW would use 1.5kW at 240V, or 6.25A. You can use #14s and a 15A breaker.
If you were in the market for an resistive electric heat pump, you likely had the service for it already. A heat pump version will almost always require less power.