COMMERCIAL WATER HEATING

Investing in clean energy water heating systems makes strong economic sense on commercial buildings

Commercial Hot Water

  • Energy costs/usage associated with water heating in many types of commercial buildings is often seriously under-estimated or ignored.

  • We find that few architects, engineers & plumbing contractors are aware of or specify innovative water heating technologies.

  • As a result, many projects end up with conventional water heating systems and decades of high operating costs and excessive energy use.

Applications

  • Apartment Complexes; Gyms/Fitness; Restaurants; Car Washes; Industrial Processing

COMMERICAL WATER HEATING SYSTEM APPROACHES

CONVENTIONAL APPROACH

Cold in --> Hot Out.  Incoming cold potable water enters a water heater at temps as low as 40F. Delivery temps need to be between 120F and 140F.  140 minus 40 means the water has to be heated 100 degrees; and this uses a lot of energy especially with old-school fossil fuel water heaters.

Diagram illustrating commercial hot water production using conventional water heaters, showing cold water supply at 40°F and domestic hot water output at 120 to 140°F. It emphasizes high costs with dollar symbols over each heater.

LIQUID SOLAR APPROACH

Cold in --> PRE HEAT --> Hot Out.  This is where it get interesting. Our systems use the sun or heat pump technologies to pre-heat cold incoming water.  Where budgets are limited, systems can provide perhaps only 50% pre-heating or we can meet 100% of the hot water demand and zero-out associated energy bills.

Diagram of a water heating system using a solar or heat pump to pre-heat water, with a backup domestic hot water system for light usage. Shows cold water supply at 40°F, heating to 100-120°F, then to 120-140°F for domestic use.

PROJECT EXAMPLES

BUCKS T4 (STILLMAN)

STILLMAN EMPLOYEE HOUSING Big Sky, MT (2021)

Hot water usage for high density employee housing apartments can be 50% of total building energy use. So Lone Mt Land Co. invested in efficient renewable water heating at the front end of this project and at least 12 other employee housing complexes.

Four 5-ton Arctic air to water pumps are tied to two 120g TurboMax high performance indirect water heaters. This system pre-heats hot water for high capacity electric water heaters (that end up doing little work).

Then, 40 kW solar PV array offsets energy usage for heat pumps nearly eliminating all water heating costs.

YELLOWSTONE FOREVER

Yellowstone Forever, Gardiner, MT (2024).

The field campus is all-electric and YF aims to zero out their energy bill and reduce their carbon footprint.  

On-Site Energy installed a 50 kW solar array.

We are helping them reduce their electricity consumption associated with water heating and  space heating with a combination of solar heating panels, heat pump water heaters and A2W heat pumps.  

They have electric vehicle charging as well.

POWDERLIGHT

Powderlight Apartments, Big Sky, MT (2022): 4 apartments; 120 occupants each

Three roof-mounted heat pumps tied to basement buffer tanks and 480 gallons of thermal storage that pre-heats water for 7 large commercial electric hot water heaters.

A 48 kW solar PV array offsets energy usage for heat pumps nearly eliminating all water heating costs. This system was repeated on each of four buildings (just south of Ace Hardware in Big Sky).