AO Smith’s Water Heaters Drive Building Efficiency - NAM

Oct 22, 2024

At AO Smith, the name of the game is efficiency. Though the company produces an array of water heaters, boilers, storage tanks and water treatment and filtration equipment, one goal is the same for every product: It should do more with less. This is especially true for hydronic and water heating appliances as these are energy intensive.

“On average, water heating loads are 25–30% of a home or building’s carbon profile,” said AO Smith Corporate Vice President of Government, Regulatory and Industry Affairs Joshua Greene.

Efficiency in action: Recently, one of the Milwaukee, Wisconsin–based company’s water heating products—the CHP-120 fully integrated heat pump water heater—was installed in a Hilton property in New Haven, Connecticut, the all-electric Hotel Marcel, which opened in 2022 in the former headquarters of the Armstrong Rubber Company. Unlike conventional water heaters, which generate heat directly, heat pumps use electricity to move heat around.

The differentiator: The CHP-120 is the only unitary (one-piece) commercial heat pump water heater on the market. Comparable items use a split system in which one part, the compressor, sits outside of the building.

Gaining popularity: Current heat pump water heater customers are mostly residential homeowners, but in the commercial market, the technology has been growing at a rapid pace, Greene continued, because the energy savings “go straight to companies’ bottom line.”

Overcoming barriers: Of the millions of water heaters (gas and electric) sold each year by manufacturers in the U.S., fewer than 3% are heat pump water heaters, Greene said. The main reason: price.

Regulation changes: With state and federal regulations and rebates, incentivizing high-efficiency technologies, heat pump water heater adoption—which is already on the uptick—will likely rise in many states in the coming years, according to Greene.

Coming up: What’s next for a company that, in its 150-year history, has been at least three different businesses—having gone from automotive-frame maker to energy sector steel product manufacturer to leading global water technology company?