The common operations of a tank-less water heater involves cold water flows into the inlet pipe through flow sensor and temperature sensors; then, the cold water flows through three 1 ½ inch diameter copper pipes with electric resistive heater elements mounted to each pipe. Temperature of water will increased to a maximum of 140℉ and flows to the outlet. The three common resistive heaters together usually pull 113 amps of current at 240VAC @ 60Hz. This common electric water heater requires three 40 amp breakers to operate.
PCDS integration will replace the three resistive heaters with roughly 32 meters of 8 gauge wire wrapped around the 1 ½ inch diameter pipes electrically connected in series to create one large induction solenoid. The large solenoid is connected to the PCDS electronics. Single phase 120VAC power from a wall outlet will be fed into a VI-ARMB-C2N AC to DC converter from VICOR to provide 375VDC at 3A into the PCDS electronics mounted inside the water heater. The solenoid coil will produce 20.45kW or 69.78kBTU/hr of output power with alternating frequency of 174Hz. The 174Hz frequency provides sufficient skin depth to fully heat the 1 ½ inch copper pipes, which will increase the copper pipes temperature and thereby increasing water temperature from 10℃ or 50℉ (usually temperature from an underground well) to 60℃or 147℉ in 3.8 seconds. The power amplification will increase by approximately a factor of 95 or 19.77dB.
Fig.1, tankless electric hot water heater
Fig.2, PCDS system integration into tankless electric water heater