The Design Preliminary Review has been completed on one of my projects and we have one query from EAp2 which appears unclear. It states that ‘heating equipment should be heat pumps in both Baseline and Proposed Case’. The building has been designed with heat pumps for heating and hot water generation.

My query is; does the Baseline hot water generation need to be heat pumps? I have checked ASHRAE 90.1 Table 7.8 Performance Requirements for Water Heating Equipment and ‘electric water heater’ seems to be the only Baseline hot water heating equipment that I can select. Whether I use a heat pump or electric water heater for the Baseline has a big impact on energy consumption so would appreciate advice on this.