Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#101

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #68

I'd like a furnace company that has a financial incentive to keep my house warm and efficient. Todays furnace/heat pump makers test their kit in a lab under perfect conditions, and then when it is installed it often costs double or more to run compared to what the datasheet says.[1] I would like the company to say "we will keep your house at 70F, year round, for $3000/yr. We will pay any electric/gas use to achieve t…

Would the company also have control of the doors and windows, or at least perfect knowledge of how long they are open? And number of bodies in the house, or amount of cooking being done?

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#102

Post by londons_explore » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:32 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #63

I keep reading lots of horror stories about heat pumps. People are complaining about all of the following: - Enormous energy bills because under some conditions (cold weather?) heat pumps use a lot more energy than expected. - Heat pump equipment and radiators taking too much space in small homes. - Cold homes and/or a requirement to keep windows shut because heat pumps just don't generate enough heat. - Only suitabl…

Heat pumps are trying to compete against very inefficient, yet very powerful, forms of heating.

A 100 year old house might have 12 fireplaces, each of which, when loaded full of wood or coal, can output 10 kilowatts. Thats 120 kilowatts of heat - 500k btu/h.

If upgraded to a gas boiler, that same house might be fitted with a 30 kilowatt system - 100k btu/h

The same house outfitted with a heat pump might expect to get a 10 kilowatt system - 34k btu/hr.

See how we are fitting smaller and smaller heating systems to our houses? Thats because a heat pump's cost scales with capacity, so we don't want to oversize. In fact, a typical house wouldn't even have enough electricity for a heat pump as powerful as those fireplaces!! Whereas a fireplace doesn't really cost any more to make it a tad bigger.

The less powerful heat sources need to run all the time, and will take many days to bring the house up to temperature after being turned off. Even then, they need to be paired with extra insulation to reduce losses.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#103

Post by walterbell » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

stevenpetryk wrote: post #87

daredoes wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would your company be willing to provide an open-source local-first websocket-based integration with https://www.home-assistant.io/ or use the new Matter + Thread standard to provide it for everyone? If that's available, this would be my top choice as I'm actively shopping for all-electric heat pumps

Or the company could at least leave it easy to hack :)

Implement with a swappable compute module?

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#104

Post by jahewson » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:33 PM UTC

AYBABTME wrote: post #36

My gas furnace sits next to my gas water heater. I want a central air heat pump that dumps the heat into my water heater when I'm cooling the house.

We have a heat pump water heater, it pumps out cold air. In theory we could duct it into the house (at least in the summer) though it cools the garage for free, so that’s nice.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#105

Post by cmui » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

gumptionary wrote: post #86

Love what you're trying to do. I recently moved most of the way off oil-based hydronic baseboard heating in my 1800's New England farmhouse through installing 3 ductless mini-splits with Mitsubishi Hyper Heat condensors. Just to help with your user research, my biggest decision points: 1. Cold weather operation. I get you're saying the units are good down to -15f, but there's nothing like the fact that I can talk to…

Thanks for the feedback! I'll send you a note.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#106

Post by garduque » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

imhoguy wrote: post #23

Dnguyen wrote: post #19

So the difference in cost between natural gas and ElectricAir is ~ 400/yr. And it costs $14,000 to install the ElectricAir system. It will take a very long time to break even. It will be very difficult to convince people with current working natural gas system to switch over.

Unless the ruling changes and one won't be able to install fossil fuel based heating, like in EU soon.

Sure but his target market is North America, where I don't think there is too much danger of dropping fossil fuel heating anytime soon.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#107

Post by toss1 » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:34 PM UTC

cmui wrote: post #57

aaomidi wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will not buy this without a fully unlocked everything. This company is going to wait a few years and then charge you a shit ton for subscription to keep using your device. No thanks, and honestly whoever goes with this is going to regret it if they don't make changes to their software. Pick one: - Sell the device - Sell the software If you do both, you're going to alienate your customers and get regulatory wrath on…

I understand the concern around lock in. There is a technical hurdle to optimized thermostat variable speed heat pump interop. You have to turn the temperature error between setpoint and actual temperature into a compressor speed command and also factor in behavior such as defrost, compressor cycling limits, etc. So you have to have a communicating thermostat to fully utilize the efficiency of these variable speed he…

Yes, that MAY be required for full optimization

Wonderful option to have: "Subscribe, and we'll improve your efficiency by 10%++"

OPTION

Another option would be "we'll send you a download with the latest weightings for our optimizing AI firmware for $14.95, or every month for a subscription of $49/year" whatever.

I, and most other sharp people will happily ignore you and buy a system that is 50% less efficient and twice the cost to avoid your lock-in.

I'll also happily buy and subscribe to your reasonably-priced optimization service as long as it is OPTIONAL.

Just look at the nearly violent reaction that BMW got when they suggested that their heated seats would be a subscription option.

If you want your company to die before it even gets started, keep making excuses for why you need to lock us in.

If you want a growth giant, architect it from scratch so someone can happily use it where Starlink doesn't even service, and offer extra-efficiency OPTIONS that OPTIONALLY use internet service.

And yes, open-sourcing the code would be a huge step in giving people confidence that you are serious, and that their investment has a future that is not a brick.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#108

Post by robertlagrant » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:35 PM UTC

soheil wrote: post #89

cmui wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally get this concern. Any good piece of critical home infrastructure should be able to operate without the cloud or an internet connection. Following this logic the thermostat + heat pump combination can operate fine without the cloud. You leave some optimized behavior on the table like demand response and weather response, but everything else will work (you'd have to manually enter your TOU rate plan to get th…

I'd be careful catering to everyone asking for everything but the kitchen sink. Creating a non-cloud capable system is dumb. If you have customers like commenter above maybe put in a clause in the contract that says they will receive a partial refund if/when there is an acquisition event during the warranty period and bump up their price by 20%.

> Creating a non-cloud capable system is dumb

No, you haven't understood. It will be cloud-capable. They're asking that it's not cloud-only.

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#109

Post by mixdup » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:36 PM UTC

The site is kind of sparse with specifics, this seems like a marketing ploy to people who don't know heat pumps exist or have existed for decades. Mostly marketed to people who think a gas furnace is the only option

What do I get out of this $10k, 24k btu system that I don't get in a $4,695/36k BTU Mr Cool mini-split, or $4,528/5 ton (~60kbtu) ducted Goodman heat pump system?

If you're going to be charging 2.5x per btu, you're probably going to need to explain why

Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners

#110

Post by olyjohn » Mon, Mar 13, 2023, 5:37 PM UTC

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #63

I keep reading lots of horror stories about heat pumps. People are complaining about all of the following: - Enormous energy bills because under some conditions (cold weather?) heat pumps use a lot more energy than expected. - Heat pump equipment and radiators taking too much space in small homes. - Cold homes and/or a requirement to keep windows shut because heat pumps just don't generate enough heat. - Only suitabl…

I replaced my electric furnace with a heat pump. It takes up the same space as the old furnace, so you're not wasting any space inside the house. There is an outside unit, but we just put it on the side of the house where we don't see or hear it. They are noisy outside, that's one thing they don't always tell you.

When the temps are too cold out, there are still electric elements inside the unit in the house. Sure, that's probably not saving me any power when it's running, but most of the time it's not. It pretty much only kicks in when there's a big temp differential between desired temp and current temp. It's basically like having the best of both worlds. Plus, as a bonus, I got A/C for the summer to offset all my winter savings.