Very confused about this. How is it any different from any other high-SEER heat pump currently on the market?
Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
411–420 of 809 posts
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#412Difficult market to jump into with Tesla openly saying they want to disrupt the heat pump/heating space with their established manufacturing and dealer/installer network. They also have some significant IP in the heat pump space with their octovalve heat pump design which is being battle-tested and proven in one of the most hostile environments.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#413Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No, you don't understand. Making it non-cloud-capable incurs a cost.
And there is no they, the commenter is a single individual.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#414Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Heat pump passion is kind of a thing for some reason! Because they are throwing money at it. Billions. All policy driven, not science-driven. If every home in the US switched to electric powered HVAC heat-pump systems we'd have huge blackouts in every city. Our power grid and power generation systems are not ready for this at all. Add electric cars to the mix and the scenario gets much darker (no pun intended, ligh…
You're right about switching everything over all at once. That would be a big step change in grid load! But large scale heat pump adoption is going to take a decade or more, and in the meantime we can work to build out the grid, and also on technologies that make load shifting more feasible.
Of course. My issue is that there seems to be no serious acceptance of this reality and, therefore, a strong political push to address it. All we talk about are the wonders of electric-everything, as if power will magically appear from somewhere.
Gradual adoption is conceptually easy to understand, except that in certain places it will not take much for gradual adoption to reach a threshold that will lead to a painful reality. Speaking in terms of Southern California, it doesn't take much for a city like Los Angeles to create a power availability/grid crisis. We've already been there multiple times.
The issue with reliable (strong emphasis on that term) power generation is that, in the US, it takes decades and much red tape to address it. In other words, cart before the horse: We can't afford to materially increase demand without a solid preexisting plan to also materially increase supply ahead of demand. The two need to be out of phase, with power generation build-up happening first.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#415This is great to see. I have a question around the "a delightfully uniform temperature in each room". I live in a 3-story townhome, which has largely non-uniform temperature across floors (since warm air travels up). So, cold lower floors in the winter and hot upper floors in the summer. AFAICT, this is pretty common with central duct systems and the usual fix is to switch to split-unit systems. How does your product handle this?
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#416As someone who recently picked a contractor to install a heat pumpt I need to see:
- confirmation that it does both heating and cooling - the price - a list of approved contractors who can install it in my area - the expected installation costs
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#417How long will I own this before you start trying to squeeze more revenue out of me by locking up basic functionality? I mean, this isn't just Sonos, you could literally freeze people out!
Seriously though, how is your system better than the heat pump that has been installed in my parents house since the mid eighties?
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#418How will you compete with Goodman/Daikin and needing lineset runs with usually high voltage work and panel upgrades that sometimes come with converting to a heat pump. If you don't use 24V AC controls i don't think it would take off with any installers and you seriously limit and then hinder yourself needing way more customer support. What refrigerants are you considering as there is more environmental stuff coming o…
> What refrigerants are you considering as there is more environmental stuff coming out killing 410A.
I'm also interested in this. Specifically, I'm interested in R-744 (CO2) as it has a GWP (global warming potential) of only 1. R-32 (Difluoromethane) has a GWP of 675 while R-410A has a GWP of 2088. Japan has had R-744 heat pumps for years now.
Drawdown lists refrigeration improvements as the single most effective method (we need to do all of them) for combatting climate change.
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#419"Preorder". "Shipping Winter 2024". "While we don't have any physical prototypes at the moment, we have the industrial design and also largely understand how this will be built." No. You have to build it before you can sell it.
I get where you're coming from. There's a lot of scope to this though, and not a lot of technical risk. I think in this case it makes sense to sell units, and also generate feedback about the product as early as possible. We're not selling fusion or self driving cars.
In this particular case, and given your background, I am not worried about your ability to build it. Yes, a bit easier than fusion energy :)
I am wondering, though... Why don't you make a prototype, and attach a webcam in front of it, with a few sensors, etc?
Re: Launch HN: Electric Air (YC W23) – Heat pump sold directly to homeowners
#420$22000 with install seems high. Got a ducted a reverse cycle air conditioner and an additional split reverse cycle air conditioner supply and install for about $8k aud (us$5k) 10 years ago so say us$10k with inflation. Is this a competitive price. I don’t know btu but in total about 4kwh input.