What a heat pump is — in one minute
You already own half of one. Your aircon takes heat out of a room and dumps it outside. A heat pump does the same thing, backwards: it takes heat out of the outside air and puts it into your water. Same machine. Different direction.
That changes what you pay, because the fuel is not electricity. The fuel is air. The air around your building holds an enormous amount of free heat — the heat pump just collects it. You pay a small electricity bill to run the pump. You pay nothing for the air.
The whole pitch in two lines: an electric heater uses ₱1 of electricity to make ₱1 of heat. A heat pump uses ₱1 of electricity to move about ₱4 of heat. Three of those pesos come free, from the air.
Few countries suit a heat pump better
A heat pump works hardest when the air is cold. Philippine air sits at 28–35 °C day and night, all year — so the machine barely works. The same Karnot unit delivers more heat per peso here than it manages in a European winter.
It works at night. It works in the rainy season. The fuel is the heat in the air, not the sunshine — and warm air is the one thing the Philippines never runs out of.
And because the country also gets five and a half strong sun hours a day, a heat pump pairs naturally with solar: run it in the daytime and your hot water tank becomes a battery, storing energy as heat instead of buying more lithium.
What a heat pump costs in the Philippines
- For a home or guest house: the Karnot AquaHERO 200L heat pump water heater is about ₱151,600 VAT-inclusive, installed. One tank feeds every bathroom — it replaces the per-bathroom electric showers, not just one of them. A 300L size covers small clinics and B&Bs.
- For a café or restaurant: the iVOLT F&B kit bundles solar, a LiFePO₄ battery and an AquaHERO at ₱370,000 installed — power and hot water from one purchase.
- For hotels, laundries, factories: iHEAT commercial systems run from 9.5 to 100 kW and are quoted to your measured load. Anyone who gives you a price without measuring is guessing — our survey is free.
What it saves — real Philippine numbers
These are verified Karnot installations, not brochure figures:
- A Philippine guest house replaced its per-bathroom electric showers with one AquaHERO and saves about ₱53,000 a year.
- A commercial Philippine install replaced electric water heating with iHEAT and saves about ₱627,000 a year — the system paid for itself in eight months.
- As a rule of thumb: a ₱25,000-a-month heating bill becomes roughly ₱6,250. Run your own number in the free savings calculator.
The honest catch: the saving is real only if you heat water regularly. A business that uses hot water every day saves the most. A bathroom used once a week does not justify the machine — and we will tell you so.
How to pay for it
A home buys an AquaHERO the way it buys any appliance. For commercial systems, the arithmetic is friendlier than most owners expect: green-loan programmes from DBP, LandBank and BPI finance energy-saving equipment over five years, at rates priced for exactly this kind of project. These are loans, not grants — but when the monthly saving is bigger than the monthly payment, your cash flow improves from the first month, without writing a cheque.
For larger sites we also offer Energy as a Service: we install and maintain the system at no upfront cost, and you simply pay a lower monthly bill than today.
Questions we get asked
How much does a heat pump cost in the Philippines?
About ₱151,600 installed for a residential AquaHERO 200L. Commercial systems are quoted to your measured load and can be bank-financed over 60 months.
Does a heat pump work at night or in the rainy season?
Yes. The fuel is the heat in the air, not the sunlight — and Philippine air stays warm around the clock, all year.
What is a heat pump water heater?
A water tank with a small heat pump on top. It makes the same hot water as an electric heater for about a quarter of the electricity, and plugs into a standard 13A socket.
Is the propane refrigerant safe?
R290 is propane — the same gas that cooks your dinner, in a small sealed charge, installed outdoors, designed to the European EN 378 safety standard. It is never refilled by the customer.
Can a heat pump run on solar?
Yes — and well. Heat the water during sun hours and the tank stores the energy for the evening. iHEAT units are SG-Ready for solar integration.
See your number, not a brochure's
Two minutes in the calculator shows what your bill becomes. A free survey turns that into a firm quote, measured at your site.
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