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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 forces an urgent, expensive and unfamiliar purchase. On a utility marketplace the customer compares every model, sees the installed price with your instant rebate applied, and can pay monthly. Model what it looks like in your service area.

Run your numbers See the case study data
Installer connecting a heat pump water heater in a garage while the homeowner looks on
100
Heat pump water heater · Ideal
Rated against every model on the market

Water heater programs at a glance

What it does for you

  • Meets the customer at the failure, with a clear comparison, the installed price and your rebate applied at checkout.
  • Turns the price after rebate into a monthly payment with Eco Financing®, off your balance sheet.
  • Delivers and installs in the same order, at one fixed price set before anyone enters the home.

The evidence

  • 561tankless water heaters ordered in one day, after one email to 6M householdsLargest Southern California gas utility's marketplace, 10 February 2026
  • 67/dayaverage water heater orders in DecemberSame program, December 2025
  • Q1annual incentive budget fully subscribed, by 24 FebruarySame program, 2026

How it runs Enervee is your program implementer for water heater replacement, on a platform we own and operate: fulfillment and installation coordinated in the same order. The rebate levels and the budget stay yours.

See the full evidence

At the failure

Why water heater rebate programs miss emergency replacements

  • 75%+

    Three-quarters of water heater replacements happen because the unit failed.

    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. They default to a like-for-like replacement.

    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.

    Source: CalNEXT ET23SWE0020, VEIC 2024

Case study · Largest natural gas utility in Southern California

How a gas utility's water heater program meets the failure moment

  1. 01

    Show every model, its price and its Score

    The utility-branded marketplace opens up the whole market: every model, live pricing, visible incentives, and an Enervee Score for every unit.

  2. 02

    Make the installed 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 see what a competitive bid looks like.

  3. 03

    Monthly payments at checkout

    53% of U.S. adults can’t cover a $1,000 unplanned expense. Eco Financing® turns the order into monthly payments, an alternative to rent-to-own or high-APR consumer credit.

  4. 04

    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.

Your utility · Marketplace$1,500 rebate
100
Gas tankless · condensing
Installed 9.0 GPM tankless water heater
$3,030.53or $64.91/mo*
Eco Financing3–60 month terms
Hardware$2,730.53
Installation & haul-away$1,800.00
Utility instant rebate−$1,500.00
Buy now

What shoppers see on every product — score, installed price, rebate, and monthly payment together. *Illustrative terms.

Daily tankless water heater orders

Water heater program results: 561 orders in one day

Marketplace of the largest Southern California gas utility · Oct 2025 – Mar 2026 · actual daily order data

OctNovDecJanFebMar
67/day
avg daily orders (Dec)
$1,500
max instant rebate
Q1
annual budget reached

What the Q1 budget cap tells us. For program teams: size the incentive budget for the volume that failure-driven replacement produces. The program continues.

Eco Financing by Enervee

Water heater financing at checkout, off your balance sheet

Spread the first cost into monthly payments. Embedded lending at checkout, underwritten by lending partners (U.S. Bank nationally), not by Enervee or your program.

Monthly payments from 3 to 60 months

0% on 3- and 6-month terms by default. A longer 0% term is bought down by the program, at a cost per financed dollar. Priced live in the calculator below.

Lending-partner underwriting

The lending partner underwrites and services every loan, including compliance and statements.

No balance-sheet exposure

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

Program calculator

Water heater program calculator: installs, savings and incentive budget

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

Your program

Defaults come from Enervee programs; change any of them to match yours.

Technology path
The measure your program promotes — seeds cost and savings defaults.
Eco Financing® · 0% APR term
0% APR offer at checkout — the program buys down the lender's rate (the merchant discount rate, MDR).
Personalize the model & funnel assumptions

Questions about the assumptions? Talk to our team.

Year-one projection

—
efficient units installed
—
incentive budget required
—
first-year energy savings

Monthly install ramp · year 1

M1M6M12

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—

FAQ

Water heater programs: what program teams ask

More questions program teams ask →

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

About 75% of water heater replacements follow a failure. Post-purchase rebates, retailer coupons and contractor-led midstream programs are rarely there at that moment, so the marketplace has to be. Enervee delivers your program midstream, with the marketplace as 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?

Enervee coordinates installation 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 everything a replacement 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. For purchases made on channels you do not control, Fast Track™ delivers the same rebate after the purchase.

Instant rebates & Fast Track™ →

Is there evidence this works for water heaters specifically?

Yes. One Southern California gas utility runs its water heater program this way. Orders averaged 67 a day in December and peaked at 561 tankless units in a single day on 10 February 2026, and the annual incentive budget was fully subscribed by Q1 2026. The maximum instant rebate was $1,500.

What volume should a water heater program expect?

One Southern California gas utility's program averaged 67 orders a day in December and peaked at 561 tankless orders in a single day. Read the peak as a sign of demand, not a forecast: budget to the average and to your incentive level.

Take it to your team

Talk through your modeled scenario with our team

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

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