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heat pumps just run something similar to a reverse Carnot cycle on their refrigerants and use a condenser coil to release the extra heat to the water. So for all practical purposes it heats the water inside the tank in a pretty similar fashion to how a normal electric water heater works, it just delivers it from a slightly different source and it isn't electric resistive.

So no, not possible. Theoretically you might be able to do it with a stupid enough system of coils and a very ridiculous amount of power, but it wouldn't be efficient or practical.



I'm still not sure why not possible. A tankless waterheater is just a regular water header with a tiny tank (pipes count as a tank...). I know electric tankless water heaters exists - they draw massive amounts of power (I considered one for my house, but it needs 4x 40 amp, 240 volt circuits - like most houses in the US I'm limited to 200 amps total and I suspect at times I'm using more than the remaining amount (not for long, but long enough to blow the main breaker)




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