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. Model what it looks like in your service area.
tankless water heaters ordered, after one email to 6M households
average water heater orders per day
Eco Financing® at checkout
from browsing to installed
The real problem
An emergency shouldn't mean no choice.
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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
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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
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$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.
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01
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.
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02
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.
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03
Defuse the first-cost panic
53% of U.S. adults can’t cover a $1,000 unplanned expense. Eco Financing® turns the ~$1,587 average order into low monthly payments — instead of rent-to-own or typical high-APR consumer credit.
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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.
100
3–60 mo from 0% APRWhat shoppers see on every product — score, fair price, rebate, and monthly payment together. *Illustrative terms.
Daily tankless water heater orders
Customer demand outpaced every forecast.
Marketplace of the largest Southern California gas utility · Oct 2025 – Mar 2026 · actual daily order data
Annual incentive budget fully subscribed
What the Q1 budget cap tells us. 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.
Remove the first cost. Keep it off your balance sheet.
Embedded lending at checkout, underwritten by lending partners — U.S. Bank nationally — 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.
Lending-partner underwriting
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.
Personalize the model & funnel assumptions
Questions about the assumptions? Talk to our team.