Whirlpool Corporation Introduces New Hybrid Heat Pump Dryer Technology, HybridCare™

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Advantage Of Heat-Pump Dryers

Is that they will use just 1/3 of the electricity as a regular 240V dryer, this will enable you in some cases to have a fast dryer that operates on 120 volts and requires NO EXTERIOR venting, it sounds like a win to me especially at NY power rates, these dryers will actually be a cheap to run as a gas dryer in most cases.

The goal here is reduce total power consumption and high loads on the power system.

These will be much like the 50 gallon Heat-Pump water heater I installed in my partners house, it draws just 6 AMPs on 240V instead of 25 AMPs for the old WH and after 4 years of use we can't tell any difference except for about a $22 saving on the electric bill every month. And look at the huge reduction in demand on the power grid when everyone is getting up on Monday morning and jumping in the shower in these all electric communities.
 
Went to Energy Star's web site and it says the Whirlpool WED99 has an estimated energy use of 531 kWh a year versus 603 kWh for an Energy Star rated Whirlpool with traditional electric heating. However, I couldn't find anything on how they come up with these numbers or how much a "normal" dryer would use...
 
Curbside Supply Heatpump dryer.

find one electric "vintage" dryer.
Convert to 120V low wattage element.
find one 10,000BTU air conditioner with bad fan
create ductwork leading dryer out into AC cold side, over hot side, and back into intake.

Watch your electric meter spin!
 
Hmm I am not good at math in my head although I should be but.......so if you have an electric rate of .15 per kWh the difference per  week is between $1.53 or $1.73.  What can I do with 20 cents? Or about $10 per year.. Can't even buy a tank of gasoline with that or go out to eat, so no thanks. They would have to come up with a better line than this before I would get a heat pump dryer, nevermind that I have a natural gas dryer whose usage numbers don't even change after drying 5-7 loads of laundry and heating the water for it, plus washing dishes and taking a shower... in one day....and I have a gas utility that charges the highest rates in my state!

 

If they are really serious about energy savings they should be encouraging everyone to use natural gas.  Of course I realize this is often not feasible, but this is a hard sell to anyone who is using natural gas to dry their clothes,or anyone who actually does the math in their head vs the expense of buying this device. Can't make it pay for itself over it's lifetime which is about what.. 7 years in the USA?  Well with the added filters and such it will be 5 years in the USA, and don't worry, manufacturers have already figured out what parts to have break so you have to buy a complete new unit. Talk about dryers catching on fire--- you just wait for these units to hit.

 

This is nothing but energy star not being able to come up with anything else so they came up with this.   Heat pump dryers make sense in buildings that cannot vent..I get this. They don't make any financial sense to the hundreds of millions in the USA who dry their clothes using a vented dryer.. At least cost savings have not been proved yet by stating these numbers.  I realize that as an aggregate the cost savings mount, but we are not interested in everyone else, we are interested in what we ourselves can save.  This ain't it.

 

 

I don't care about the power grid.  I am paying them money and I expect to have electric.
 
@logixx #62.

 

Thanks for those numbers. What is suspect is NOT included in those numbers is some way to account for the heated or air-conditioned air that is removed from your house over the course of drying a load of laundry. This air needs to be made up somehow. 

 

Now for those in the southern & southwestern U.S. who have their laundry installed in a garage, carport or porch this offers next to no savings in a practical sense. However, for those in the midwest or northeast who have to keep our laundry equipment IN the house and do not have natural gas service and are heating with oil, propane or electric, the amount of expensive heated air that is lost from a traditional dryer is not insignificant. 

 

Being a geeky collector, I LOVE using my Frigidaire Filtrator in the wintertime because it's extra heat AND moisture that goes into the house. But that's only for about 6 months of the year. Once  the temp in the basement goes above 70 degrees or so, she gets mothballed for the summer!
 
so if you have an electric rate of .15 per kWh

If we had an electric rate like this, people would celebrate as if the Berlin Wall had come down a second time. *lol* We, on average, pay more than twice that.

 

I've been looking up how much power a very efficient heat pump dryer uses. Turned out it's 0.08 kWh per lbs. of laundry (cotton fibre with 60% moisture remaining after the spin cycle). So, does anybody have any idea how much a traditional electric US dryer uses?
 
Heat-Pump Dryer Operating Costs

Hi the Whirlpool figures in post #62 have got to be seriously off, by their figures that is not even a 10% savings, no one would ever build or buy such an appliance.

Hi Aaron [ post #63 ] Your idea will work but you need to do the math,

A 10,000 BTU A/C minus the fan motor draws about 800 watts, the motor and blower in a dryer draws about 400 watts, [ total 1,200 watts ] and you should not need a heater at all since heat will build-up as the clothing dries from the waste heat from the compressor, in fact you will end up venting some heat into the room for the dryers cool down period.

Now compare this to a typical electric dryer that draws 5,800 watts, now to be fair you would need an A/C that is closer to 18,000 BTUs to get the same drying speed as the orignal dryer, so your total power consumption would be around 1,800 to 2,000 watts, but as you can see this is not going to make your electric meter spin very fast compared to a regular dryer.

A Heat-Pump dryer as in many other HP uses around the house should draw around just 1/3 the total power.

The biggest problem I see in building a large, fast American style dryer is getting all the equipment in the cabinet. I think the the dryer will have to have a permanent pestle type base that would add about 12" of height to the appliance. Since pestles have become popular over the last decade I don't see this a deal breaker for American homes.
 
Went to Energy star.gov to look at dryers, both electric and gas, but didn't look at more than the first page.  For electric they have an estimated yearly cost of 608 Kwh.  For gas they have an estimated yearly cost of 685 Kwh.  So since gas is not using electric to heat, why would they list gas as using more  electric than electric dryers?   I can't imagine the electric motors in my gas dryer are using more electric than the electric heaters and motors in an electric dryer.  Can't figure that out. Maybe I went to an old version of the web site.
 
Jerrod,

The actual electric power consumption of a gas dryer would be a small fraction of a model that uses electricity to provide the heat.

The way the website expresses power usage is to normalize other fuels (natural gas/propane) so as to express them as Kwh so there is a direct comparison.

They aren't taking energy costs into comparison, or looking at electrical generation and transmission losses. With those factors considered, a gas dryer will be cheaper and ultimately more energy efficient then a resistance electric heated model.
 
Thanks for your comments.  Normalize?  Well this sounds stupid and devious, since the energy star site is supposed to be about energy costs and energy efficiency.  So they think I am paying the same amount for gas and electric?  They should think again.  

 

Just tell us what the costs are and what would be cheaper and more efficient given any particular electric or gas rate -  that's all they should be doing.
 
In the ratings that we are discussing, the Energy Star people weren't looking at cost, they are only looking at total energy consumed. And of course bear in mind its only an estimate due to numerous external factors.

Since it would be difficult to compare the energy used if they rated the electric dryer in Kwh and the gas models in Kwh + therms, they make the adjustment to show the energy consumed being either gas or electric in total Kwh. It is a bit spurious but it does allow for comparison.

I too would rather see them break down the amount of gas and electricity used, since then we could calculate cost based on our local gas and electric rates. The way its listed it is indeed difficult to determine what percentage each energy source makes of the total.
 
My guess is that heat pump dryers won't really be practical until the cost comes down of high-efficiency solid state Peltier devices. A drier that used these would not be much more complex or less reliable than a conventional electric dryer.
 
High Efficiency Peltier Junctions?

Unless there is a new development in solid-state cooling technology, I think this is an oxymoron. The Peltier junctions I'm familiar with are a number of times less efficient then traditional compressed refrigerant phase change cooling. This is the reason we generally see them used only for small cooling applications that must be portable, low cost and often run on 12 volt DC power.

For a large application like a dryer, Peltier cooling would probably use as much energy as resistance electric. And likely be more expensive to build then a traditional heat pump.
 
I can't get the comparison.

 

If I looked at this energy star site I would think that it would cost me more to use a gas dryer than an electric.....except that  in my case the money out of my pocket would less to operate a gas dryer than electric, and I have a gas utility that charges the highest rates in my region.

 

So I don't see a fair comparison at this site.  Better to show the amount of Kwh used for X number of cotton loads using electric.  The number of therms or Ccf used for the same number of cotton loads for natural gas, then have a calculator at the bottom of the page so that each individual can plug in their utility rates and let each person compare which is cheaper and figure it out for themselves.  We are talking energy efficiency.. but this site is using dollars as a savings so cost does matter.
 
If you click on the (i) symbol on the product details page, a little info box comes up saying:

 

"<!-- [if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:HyphenationZone>21</w:HyphenationZone>
<w:DoNotOptimizeForBrowser/>
</w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The estimated annual energy use is based on the Combined Energy Factor and an annual usage of 283 cycles per year, as referenced by the U.S. Department of Energy test procedure, Code of Federal Regulations, Title 10, Section 430, Subpart B, Appendix D2. Actual energy consumption will vary on your usage patterns, including how often your run the dryer, what cycle you select, and load size. NOTE: For gas dryers the estimated annual energy use is expressed in kilowatt hours to allow for comparison, and represents the equivalent multi-source energy use of the product (e.g., natural gas or propane typically expressed in British thermal units (Btu)).</span>"

 

Also found the test procedure here:

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/appliance_standards/pdfs/clothes_dryer_tp_final_rule.pdf
 

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