
COMMERCIAL WATER HEATING
For 20 years Liquid Solar has been designing and installing innovative and efficient commercial water heating systems.
We believe that investing in clean energy water heating systems makes strong economic sense on commercial buildings
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.
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.
PROJECT EXAMPLES
BUCKS T4 (STILLMAN)
STILLMAN EMPLOYEE HOUSING Big Sky, MT (2021)
Two pairs of Arctic air to water humps tied to two 120g Turbmax high performant indirect water heaters. This system pre-heats hot water for high capacity electric water heaters.
A 40 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
YELLOWSTONE FOREVER
Yellowstone Forever, Gardiner, MT (2024).
The field campus is all-electric and YF aims to eliminate their energy and bill and reduce their carbon footprint. On-Site Energy installed a large solar PV array and 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).