[mikeyouse]

He's saying that instead of a gas or electric hot water heater - you can now buy a heatpump version. It works the same as a normal heat pump, but it takes ambient air in your basement or garage or wherever, and then moves that heat into the water which provides a slight cooling and dehumidifying effect for your indoor climate. They make a lot of sense in the US South.

https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/heat-pump-water-heaters

[bombcar]

To be precise the heat pump water heaters are electric - they just use latent heat in the air around them as much as they can, but they'll fall back to electric when that isn't enough.

They also cease working when the power is off, of course.