This would explain why during my research I only managed to find one that was energy efficient and all had to be professionaly installed to keep from voiding the warranty. I finally got my electric bill down a few yrs ago by switching out my old window AC units for energy effecient and also bought an ES electric fire place.

My daughter has one, but her kitchen, bath and laundry room are quite a ways away from each other. So she doesn't really like it. It would be better if the heater is really close to the use.

We have geothermal. With that you get free hot water whenever the heater or the air conditioning is running. (Air conditioning comes with it as a freebie. So is the hot water.) So over the summer, we need very little air conditioning, but for the other three seasons, the geothermal unit acts as a pre-heater. We love it. Last summer our electric bill for the month of August showed that we spent $1.27 for running the geothermal, and that just might have been for heat. LOL

We have one for the kitchen sink, one for the laundry and one in each bathroom. Didn't cost much to install on the hot water pipe in each location. DH installed them and had a electrician wire them to the electric as we are all electric. I think they were $200 each. I have a separate dispenser for instant almost boiling water for the kitchen sink. No power needed to keep a big tank heated waiting for use. The water is heated when you need it.

Oh, interesting! I'll have to look into that. I wonder if it's a regional thing; my friend who has one never mentioned anything about that.

We just had our first estimate done for replacing our roof & HVAC system and adding solar panels....guess I better start playing the lottery because WOW is that all so expensive! The solar panels might need to wait...the rest really shouldn't.

No on demand electric meter here either. I don't know how the power company would know anyway. The ones we have run on 110 regular outlet. Our electric bill went down after installing the heaters and turning off the big electric water heater. DH had to add a breaker so we could turn them all off with one breaker switch. It wasn't that big an expense.