Mostly just posting here as a reference for anyone else with one of the newer Apricus heat pump water heaters. I was able to get it running with Tuya Local as it is a supported device.
After using the SmartLife app to connect the device to WiFi and my Tuya account I was able to get the device_id and local_key via the Tuya developer portal as describe in the instructions. The trick when adding to HA was the plugin was failing with the following error;
Failed to refresh device state for Test
and in the HA logs;
[custom_components.tuya_local.device] Failed to refresh device state for Test.
Turns out that the issue was using the default protocol v3.3 or auto wouldn’t work. Changing to v3.4 solved the issue. No need to have the integration connected to my Tuya account.