Alternative Energy Water Heater in Series?

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by Ryland

Your 2nd water tank would be a normal hot water heater that would bump up the temp and keep it there, so yes if it was calm and at night it might run a little more, or you could have it on a timer and not run it at night at all unless you take alot of late night showers or do other things that call for alot of hot water late at night.
as for needing more PV and a large inverter to run the heat pump... look at the specs of the heap pump, something like 500 watts? that is a pretty small inverter, look at the specs on yearly energy use and realize that those specs are for heating water to 130F and what I'm talking about is heating it to maybe 110F or so and at that point you could almost get away with a small under counter 5 gallon tank style water heater to bump the water temp up the last 10-20 degrees as you use it.

OK, I checked the specs and the heat pump uses 5.8A @ 220V for 1276 watts.

So I'd need quite a bit of solar and then a 220V inverter to connect it directly to the heat pump.