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The replacement moment · Water heaters

Help customers when the water heater fails. That's where the scale is.

A failed water heater is an urgent, expensive, unfamiliar purchase — the moment a customer most needs someone on their side. A utility marketplace turns that moment into a confident decision: transparent comparison, fair pricing, instant rebates, and monthly payments. And customers respond: 557 efficient units ordered in a single day, the annual incentive budget exhausted by Q1. Model what it looks like in your service area.

67 average
water heater orders per day
0% APR
Eco Financing at checkout
Days
from browsing to installed
Single-day peak · Feb 10, 2026
557/day
tankless water heaters ordered, after one email to 6M households
The real problem

An emergency shouldn't mean no choice.

75%+
Three-quarters of water heater replacements happen because the unit failed — and contractors report the true emergency share is even higher. The customer isn't shopping; they're reacting.Source: NEEA Water Heater Market Characterization 2018, cited in CalNEXT Emergency Replacement HPWH Market Study, 2024
1 option
In the emergency, the typical customer sees one installer, one product, one price. No comparison, no transparency — and research shows they default to like-for-like, never seeing an alternative.Sources: DOE ENERGY STAR Water Heater Market Profile, 2010; NEEA 2018
$2,000
Where rebates rose without price transparency, installed costs rose with them — up to $2,000 higher in high-incentive territories. Opaque pricing lets your incentive leak to the contractor instead of the customer.Source: CalNEXT ET23SWE0020, VEIC 2024
Case study · Largest natural gas utility in Southern California

What happens when the utility takes the customer's side

1
Give the customer real choice — and full transparency

The utility-branded marketplace opens up the whole market: every model, live pricing, visible incentives, and an Enervee Score for every unit — instead of one number scribbled on a clipboard.

Enervee Score 100 Tankless water heater product photo $1,500 rebate
Gas tankless · condensing Installed 9.0 GPM tankless water heater
$3,030.53
or $64.91/mo*
Eco Financing®6–60 mo from 4.24% APR
What shoppers see on every product — score, fair price, rebate, and monthly payment together
2
Make the fair price visible

Transparent market pricing plus up to $1,500 in instant rebates applied at checkout — with hardware, incentive, and installation each broken out, so the customer can finally tell what a competitive bid looks like.

3
Defuse the first-cost panic

59% of households don't have $1,000 on hand for an emergency. Eco Financing® turns the ~$1,587 average order into low monthly payments — instead of rent-to-own or typical high-APR consumer credit.

4
One fixed price, installation included

Professional installation and haul-away bundled into the price shown — set before anyone enters the home. Often thousands less, fully installed.

Daily tankless water heater orders

Marketplace of the largest Southern California gas utility · Aug 2025 – Feb 2026 · actual daily order data
67/day
avg daily orders (Dec)
$1,587
average order value
$1,500
max instant rebate
Q1
annual budget reached
What the Q1 budget cap tells us

Customer demand outpaced every forecast: the annual incentive budget was fully subscribed by Q1 2026. The takeaway for program teams — plan the incentive budget for replacement-moment scale. The program continues, with future cycles sized to address demonstrated demand.

Eco Financing

Remove the first cost. Keep it off your balance sheet.

Embedded lending at checkout, underwritten by a top-5 national bank — not Enervee, and not your program.

0% APR for 3, 6 or 12 months

The program buys down the rate for the chosen term, at a cost per financed dollar. Priced live in the calculator below.

Top-5 national bank lending

Loans are underwritten and serviced by the lending partner — bank-grade compliance, statements, and servicing from day one.

No balance-sheet exposure

Financing is fully off balance sheet, with no cost to the utility beyond the optional 0% APR buydown.

Program calculator

Your customers, your rates, your budget — modeled in 60 seconds.

Enter your territory and program parameters. The model projects a 12-month campaign of monthly emails to your own customer list — the acquisition channel you already own, at zero media cost — and delivers installs, savings, and the incentive budget you'd actually need, for year one and a 3-year cycle.

Your program

Defaults reflect Enervee program experience — adjust anything to match your program's realities. Questions about the assumptions? Talk to our team.

Sets energy-price and per-unit-savings defaults for your service area.

The measure your program promotes — seeds cost and savings defaults.

Total residential accounts in your service territory.

Point-of-sale incentive applied at checkout — drives participation, budget, and the financed amount.

Yearly incentive funding — the model shows the month it runs out.

Personalize the model

Customers you can reach with program emails — your marketing-consent list.

0% APR offer at checkout — the program buys down the lender's rate (MDR).

Typical unit price for the selected technology, before installation.

Professional installation, permitting, and haul-away.

Annual energy saved per installed unit — use your TRM / workpaper value if you have one.

What customers pay per unit of energy — converts energy savings into bill savings.

Share of installs you target for income-qualified / hard-to-reach customers.

Extra incentive per LMI install, on top of the base rebate.

Funnel assumptions

Unique clicks ÷ emails sent, per monthly send — scaled automatically with your rebate relative to equipment cost.

Share of marketplace visitors who complete an order.

Share of buyers who choose Eco Financing at checkout.

Extra conversion when 0% financing is offered.

Year-one projection
efficient units installed
incentive budget required
first-year energy savings

Monthly install ramp · year 1

Savings & cost-effectiveness

Lifetime energy savings (13-yr EUL)
Customer bill savings, year one
0% APR financing buydown (MDR)
Program cost per lifetime unit saved
LMI / hard-to-reach installs
Take it to your team

Ready to talk through your scenario?

Save your modeled scenario as a PDF or copy the link above, and bring it to a conversation with Enervee's utility partnerships team — program design, incentive structure, and marketplace launch for your territory.

FAQ

What program teams ask about water heaters.

Most water heater replacements are emergencies. How does an online marketplace reach that customer?

About 75% of water heater replacements happen because the old unit failed, and most programs are never present for that moment. Enervee runs it as a midstream program where the marketplace is the retailer: the customer who needs a unit today sees every model on the market, a transparent installed price, the incentive already applied, and installation booked in the same order.

Who handles the installation?

Installation is coordinated in the same checkout as the purchase, with hardware, incentive and installation each priced separately so the customer can see what a competitive bid looks like. The order covers what a replacement actually needs, including haul-away and, on a fuel switch, capping the gas line. Your program does not have to run a separate contractor process alongside the marketplace.

Can you run a heat pump water heater program, including the electrical work?

Yes. A heat pump water heater is not a like-for-like swap. It can need a panel upgrade, a new circuit, gas-line capping and haul-away, and those are the steps that stall electrification programs. Enervee coordinates them in the same flow as the purchase and the incentive, so the customer makes one decision instead of managing several vendors.

Does the customer still have to file a rebate application?

No. The incentive is applied at the point of sale, the same structure your midstream HVAC and water heating programs already use, so the customer sees the net price before they buy instead of being reimbursed weeks later. For purchases made on channels you do not control, Fast Track delivers the same rebate after the purchase.

How rebate delivery works

Is there evidence this works for water heaters specifically?

Yes. One Southern California gas utility ran its water heater program this way. Orders averaged 67 a day in December and peaked at 557 tankless units in a single day on 10 February 2026, and the annual incentive budget was fully subscribed by Q1 2026. Average order value was $1,587, against a maximum instant rebate of $1,500.

More questions program teams ask