Demand Response Performance of GE Hybrid Heat Pump Water Heater

This report describes a project to evaluate and document the DR performance of HPWH as compared to ERWH for two primary types of DR events: peak curtailments and balancing reserves. The experiments were conducted with GE second-generation “Brillion”-enabled GeoSpring hybrid water heaters in the PNNL Lab Homes, with one GE GeoSpring water heater operating in “Standard” electric resistance mode to represent the baseline and one GE GeoSpring water heater operating in “Heat Pump” mode to provide the comparison to heat pump-only demand response. It is expected that “Hybrid” DR performance, which would engage both the heat pump and electric elements, could be interpolated from these two experimental extremes. Signals were sent simultaneously to the two water heaters in the side-by-side PNNL Lab Homes under highly controlled, simulated occupancy conditions. This report presents the results of the evaluation, which documents the demand-response capability of the GE GeoSpring HPWH for peak load reduction and regulation services. The sections describe the experimental protocol and test apparatus used to collect data, present the baselining procedure, discuss the results of the simulated DR events for the HPWH and ERWH, and synthesize key conclusions based on the collected data.