Albert Rooks, CEO of WaterDrop Systems, is reshaping how the industry approaches heat pump water heating for multifamily residential buildings. By delivering fully prepackaged, CO2-based systems, WaterDrop eliminates the complexities and risks associated with design, installation, and operation. In this interview, Albert delves into how WaterDrop's innovative solutions stand out, not just by providing cutting-edge technology, but also by offering a complete, end-to-end support model that ensures success from initial sizing to ongoing maintenance. With a commitment to decarbonization and grid optimization, WaterDrop is setting a new benchmark in sustainable water heating.
In addition to revolutionizing the industry, WaterDrop is driving forward-thinking developments like thermal storage using phase change materials and advanced energy management systems. As the company prepares to expand across North America, Albert shares insights into the vision for WaterDrop's future, the comapny's collaborative efforts with research institutions, and how Waterdrop System solutions address critical challenges in both new and retrofit projects. This interview is a must-read for those eager to explore the future of efficient and sustainable water heating.
For those who are unfamiliar with WaterDrop, can you briefly explain what a WaterDrop system is and what makes it stand out in the water heating market?
Our WaterDrop Central Heat Pump Water system takes the risk out of designing and installing central heat pump water heating systems for residential applications such as multifamily buildings. Our team is there to support the project from the beginning. Our support starts with sizing and design and goes all the way through installation and start-up. After occupancy we occupancy we are available to support monitoring and maintenance.
Our business model is really different from most heat pump water heater manufacturers. Typically, the heat pump industry supports clients and projects by supplying a few components for a project. A Water Drop fully packaged skid is a single source solution to provide an entire water heating system. We have the flexibility providing the fully packaged skid as well as individual components that constitute the majority of a single pass system. That allows for providing a bit more flexibility, while still reducing risk in design, installation, startup and operation of the project since all the major components through a single source with a single set of contact and responsibility.
All of our designs are based on using CO2 as a refrigerant. With CO2, there's never a question of whether the system will generate the heating capacity needed, because CO2 really works in all North American climate zones. No matter how cold we get, in the coldest areas of the continent, CO2 refrigerant works well and delivers a steady flow of 150° water. Even in cold ambient conditions, the COP is the highest of any refrigerant type or heat pump currently available.
Because of its advanced control system, the WaterDrop heat pump water system is able to provide solutions for new and retrofit systems. Can you share a couple ways these systems do that?
An exciting part of our system development is that we've moved beyond the simple act of lifting cold water to hot and entered the sphere of energy management. The interesting thing about domestic hot water loads is that they're really stable and consistent. With that stability, we can design systems that will work to avoid buying electricity at the higher peak energy rates and make an energy buy at the lowest available rates. This is really interesting from a grid management perspective, but it's also impactful for the building owner, because they simply pay less for their fuel to make domestic hot water. In order to support this new energy management, we've designed a whole new series of tanks and a master controller. The tanks have a total of four thermistor wells in each tank, which creates a whole map of the primary storage system so that we can get high visibility into the condition of the primary storage tank. Because of this, we can run new programs that look at the condition of storage and the current energy rates, based on time of day, to make buying decisions.
We're also working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who are developing more dynamic pricing models and developing the ability of our equipment to respond to these new very dynamic price models. It used to be that water heating was just simply lifting cold water to hot with some kind of a fuel. These days the opportunities are to look at the available fuel rates and incorporate them into the management system. We think this strategy is really exciting and where our company wants to go.
Another new development on the technology side is how we store the thermal energy in the system. Currently, everyone uses water, a big tank full of water, that is lifted from cold to hot. And that’s thermal storage. However, water isn't very flexible when it comes to storing energy. What we're working on now is the ability to store that energy inside of phase change material, such as a hydrated salt or wax. When storing in these new forms, we have the ability to get the typical sensible lift like water, meaning taking something from hot to cold to the touch of your finger. Latent energy storage starts with is taking it from cold to hot but then places more of the thermal energy from the heat pump into actually melting the salt or wax. Since more energy is going into the melt, more energy is being stored. The result is that you can store two times the energy in the same physical size as a tank of water. That’s a big deal when you consider how hard it is to place large storage tanks into existing buildings.
We've got a lot of old existing buildings that are really space constrained. Part of the solution to decarbonize these buildings is to put in enough storage so it can manage the daily load, as well as some extra storage, to allow for load shifting and grid management. So, getting storage to the point where it's smaller and it carries more thermal energy is a really big deal. Our challenge is greatly increased because we're really focused on CO2 so that we can operate in all ambient conditions and get the high COP that is available with this unique refrigerant. CO2 has some unique challenges that we are working thru in order to get it to work with latent storge systems. We’ve made great progress over the initial 2-year study in BC and are onto the next phase in the State of Washington.
We’ve been fortunate enough to be awarded a grant from Washington State Department of Commerce to study and develop thermal storage over the next two years with the final step being to deploy a working plant in the State of Washington.
What are other new developments for WaterDrop?
In October, WaterDrop was selected as the commercial water heating manufacturing transformer by the Advanced Water Heating Initiative. Their award cited that our fully prepackaged product dramatically reduces risk and complexity for designers and installers. We are really honored to receive the award.
On top of the new product development and the award, we're also really excited because we've completed our two-year test market on the West Coast and are ready to expand across all of North America. We've started working with new distributors in New York City (Dolphin Equipment Corporation) and Los Angeles (Delta-Q) and are in discussions for other key markets in North America.
By the end of 2025, I think WaterDrop systems will be firmly established across many markets in North America and will be supporting engineers developing new projects with our simplified tools and equipment. The goal is the same: to derisk the design, installation, and operation of central heat pump water heaters for multifamily residential buildings.
Can you briefly summarize what the webinar in January will cover?
At the webinar, I’ll start out with the basics of what a WaterDrop system is, how it works, and how it can be integrated into both a new and retrofit projects I’ll discuss both full skid and droplet systems and how they can be used for load shift. I will also share about our new tank series, which provide unparallelled flexibility in energy load management.
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