A huge turning point for homeowner savings and comfort came when highly efficient heat pump technology surpassed gas furnace installations. Now, the next wave of wallet- and planet-friendly HVAC technology has entered the chat: Harvest's "smart thermal battery." It helps heat, cool, and provide hot water in homes across America — all using clean energy when it's available.
In fact, Harvest reports its thermal storage-based HVAC system reduces energy bills by up to 30%.
Harvest co-founders Jane Melia and Pierre Delforge came up with the invention when their nearly 40-year-old gas furnace died in 2018. Engineers by training, they decided to build their own system from the ground up — but instead of just designing an energy-efficient heat pump, they took it one step further by coupling that with their hot water heater to store energy as a giant battery.
With this smart thermal battery, they reduce their energy bills by pulling in energy from the grid when it's cheapest and most likely to be powered by renewables such as wind and solar, and then storing it in the water tank to use for heating, cooling, and hot water as needed throughout the day.
"I firmly believe the future of HVAC is systems where you're combining the magic of that heat pump with the scalability, cost efficiency, and safety of thermal storage," Melia told The Cool Down.
Melia walked us through the ins and outs of what that thermal storage future looks like — including how it can help homeowners and renters lower their power bills, stay comfortable no matter the weather, and decrease planet-warming pollution in the process.
🔮 What's your vision for the future of HVAC?
"First of all," Melia said, this future "will be electric." That's because all-electric appliances like heat pumps (which, despite the name, heat and cool homes) are extremely efficient and can be powered by clean energy such as solar. By contrast, traditional furnaces are powered by fossil fuels, which pollute our planet.
"Whether you look at it from a climate perspective or from a cost perspective or just from a sheer efficiency perspective, [heat pumps] are the way to go," she said.
But the snag is that heat pumps can sometimes end up slightly increasing people's energy bills for two main reasons.
First, in some parts of the country, fossil fuels like natural gas cost less than electricity, so if you're replacing a gas furnace with an all-electric heat pump, your gas bill will go down, but it's not a guarantee that your electricity bill won't go up by the same cost or a bit higher.
|
Which of these factors would be your main motivation for installing solar panels? Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. |
Energy independence ⚡ Overall, you may not chart huge bill savings during the colder months if gas is cheap in your area, but since heat pumps are 3-5 times more efficient than gas and cool your home as well, you should be able to chart massive savings when it's hot, especially if you're replacing electric window air conditioners that do not operate as efficiently.
Another snag on heat pump adoption is that if many households across a region install all-electric heat pumps at once, it could put a strain on the electrical grid.
"Storage will be part of the mix because if we all transition from gas to electric at the same time, it will be really hard for the grid to keep up," Melia said.
And when the electrical grid adds capacity, who pays for that? "We do," Melia added. "So, it is a capacity issue — [but] it also comes down to a cost issue at the end of the day."
And that's where thermal storage comes in.
Harvest's smart thermal battery solves the issue by storing energy when it's cheapest, cleanest, and least in demand (typically during the middle of the day in winter), and then using it for heating, cooling, and hot water whenever it's needed in the home. Remember, Harvest reports it can lower customers' power bills by up to 30%.
For example, a couple in San Mateo, California, who recently installed a Harvest system reported paying 15% less on their energy bills last winter than they would have with their old gas system, even though electric rates had gone up 30%.
"We're telling grid operators that we can use energy when it's best for the grid — but homeowners and tenants get heating, cooling, and hot water whenever they need it," Melia said.
"One of our motivations in founding Harvest was you can't scale electrification if it's going to increase people's bills. It's just not doable, because people don't have that much spare cash."
And Harvest isn't the only fast-growing startup to figure out how much of a game-changer "energy arbitrage," aka batteries, can be for saving consumers money. Other clean tech brands like Pila Energy and BioLite are leading this trend with appliance-specific backup batteries, and major corporations like Sunrun are pulling on the same thread with solar and storage via monthly subscriptions.
🔋 So, why is Harvest's battery system so unique?
When most people think of batteries, they think of lithium-ion batteries, Melia told us. For example, most electric vehicles currently use lithium-ion — or increasingly lithium iron phosphate. But what if you could transform an appliance you already have in your house into its own sort of battery? How about a water heater?
That's what Harvest has done with its proprietary 3-in-1 heating, cooling, and hot water technology. "It's complex to implement and design, but once you've got it, it's really easy," Melia told us.
"Combining some really good controls with that hot water tank gives you the magic of that heat pump without the drawbacks."
"In five years time, … it's just going to be a standard for heating and hot water, because it solves so many problems, and it does it cost-effectively."
"I think it's going to become a no-brainer," Melia said. "When I talk to people about Harvest, people say, 'Yeah, it's obvious. Why aren't we doing this already?'"'
🗺️ Where is Harvest available?
"As a local Bay Area company, we're now up and down all of California," Melia told us. "We're also now deploying projects in Seattle, in Portland, Oregon, and in Denver, Colorado as well."
"We're now in hundreds of homes," she said.
Melia also mentioned that Harvest is in talks to expand to states on the East Coast, such as Vermont and New York, and pointed to the company website for details on how to explore the possibility of installing a system.
💪 Beyond big-picture visions, any recent exciting on-the-ground projects to share?
"We just finished our first two multifamily projects, and these are projects that have the conundrum of split incentives: The owner has to install the system, but it's a tenant who's benefiting from the reduced rates," Melia said.
In this case, it's been a win-win: Not only are tenants saving money on their power bills, but "the property owners are pleased because the reduction in utility bills is reducing churn and turnover of the tenants."
Melia also mentioned that Harvest was able to secure "for those property owners more rebates and tax credits than any other system, which means that the upfront costs really pencils out very well." The federal tax credit is currently 30% of the fully installed cost of a Harvest system — versus a capped $2,000 incentive for standard heat pump systems. There are also many regional incentives to look into.
Given that roughly 30% of all U.S. housing is multifamily setups such as townhomes, cracking the code on installing Harvest HVAC systems here — not just in single-family homes — is a huge step for reducing pollution and increasing savings for more Americans.
Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the latest innovations improving our lives and shaping our future, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Cool Picks
