ET25SWE0021 - Wastewater Energy Transfer (WET) Heat Recovery Systems Market Study

This project is a market study that will explore commercial and industrial (C&I) and agricultural market potential and assess how Wastewater Energy Transfer (WET) heat exchangers and heat pumps can decrease energy consumption and demand, decrease operating costs and increase building energy resiliency. The project will investigate the potential of WET systems and applications commercially available and in use at C&I and agricultural buildings in California.

This project will explore WET system market potential and associated individual technologies to better understand the landscape and program impacts and scale the market. This project will investigate emerging WET heat pump technology will vet the systems for C&I and agricultural space cooling, space heating, water heating, and process heating applications within California, and analyze highest potential technologies to identify market barriers and intervention strategies to address these barriers.

WET systems make cooling systems more efficient and reduce barriers to decarbonization by lowering life-cycle costs of electrifying buildings (ex. installing new heat pump systems for space heating or water heating) by incorporating heat recovery to reduce system energy consumption. Many California electric grids do not have enough capacity to supply power to electrified buildings. WET uses heat recovery to recycle waste heat from wastewater to reduce the electrical demand of heat pump HVAC, hot water heating, and process heating systems to overcome grid constraints. Many WET systems can also be leveraged to reject heat from building systems to wastewater, reducing load on cooling towers and other heat rejection equipment.

In this proposed CalNEXT project, which could be the first of two studies, WET technology will be assessed to examine the range of products currently on the market, the current state of advancement of the technologies, and how they can be integrated within existing programs. A market study will investigate the percentage of buildings using WET systems, market penetration of technology, and energy, demand, and greenhouse gas savings potential for increased adoption of  WET technology. The assessment will leverage literature review, surveys, interviews with experienced practitioners, and site visits to assess potential for energy efficient technologies that can achieve significant energy savings in new and existing buildings. The project deliverables will identify cost-effective energy efficiency measures for WET heat recovery systems in the non-residential sectors.

In a potential future CalNEXT study, field demonstrations could deploy and study WET technology to power space cooling, space heating, water heating, and/or process heating systems of C&I or agricultural buildings to inform work paper development and go to market strategies for existing program channels.