Increasing the Thermal Range and Efficiency of Affordable User-Installable Room Heat Pumps
Treau, Inc.
Recipient
San Francisco, CA
Recipient Location
11th
Senate District
17th
Assembly District
$2,794,274
Amount Spent
Active
Project Status
Project Update
The project completed in 2024 with systems being tested in employee homes in CA. The developed heat pump has since launched to the general public in early 2025, as the first ever commercially available cold climate capable window heat pump. This project supported many of the critical technologies within the system: high performance and fans and airflow surfaces, large heat exchangers for high efficiency, and an optimized system design. The final report has been completed.
During the term of this project, the Recipient was awarded a contract with New York's City Housing Authority (NYCHA) for 10,000 heat pump units. The progress made during this project directly supported the Recipients ability to reach this major milestone and commercialize its heat pump technology. Initial 36 heat pumps were deployed in late 2023 to NYCHA. Those heat pumps have served as the sole source of heating and cooling ever since for the 12 retrofitted apartments. Initial M+V data from a 3rd party firm demonstrated an 85-88% reduction in energy use for heating, 100% of residents being either satisfied or neutral, and only a 30% increase in peak electricity consumption for the retrofitted wing compared to the base case with gas fired steam heat.
The Issue
There are limited energy-efficient and all-electric solutions for space heating and cooling for multi-family and low-income homes. In the US, heating and cooling in buildings constitutes 15% of all energy use. The entire heating, cooling, and refrigeration sector produces more emissions than the transportation sector. The growing energy demand and CO2 footprint must be reduced by using low-Global Warming Potential refrigerants and replacing methane heating with electric heat pumps. Multi-family and low-income residences are limited to poor-performing window and portable ACs with few efficient and low-carbon options compatible with their buildings, budgets, and needs.
Project Innovation
Building HVAC systems consume more than 15 percent of all U.S. energy and contribute more to global warming than the entire transportation sector largely due to the high global warming potential (GWP) refrigerant leaks. A significant breakthrough in building cooling technology that uses low-GWP refrigerants, is low cost, and has high efficiency is needed. The Recipient will develop customized fans, heat exchangers, and cold climate configurations that optimize the thermal performance and minimize power consumption of a high efficiency, low cost, low-GWP refrigerant HVAC system with the potential to reduce building air conditioning energy consumption by up to 30% and greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent.
Project Goals
Project Benefits
Drawn from user research studies, Gradient systems have a strong customer appeal due to their low noise, low profile, ease of install, and low cost. Today, users of window air conditioners must lose use of their window, and suffer with ugly, noisy systems. Gradient’s technology allows these customers to get their window back, let more natural light and fresh air into their homes, reduce noise, improve room aesthetics, and reduce the carbon footprint of their home energy use. This has been supported by a number of press articles written since revealing our product and leading to a customer waitlist of 34,546 emails.
Equity
Increasing the thermal range of heat pumps can expand the geographies where heat pumps can be deployed, bringing more options for electrification to more communities.
Affordability
Developing a high performance heat pump that can plug into a standard 120 volt outlet provides an HVAC electrification option without the need for cost electrical infrastructure upgrades.
Key Project Members
Subrecipients
Match Partners
Treau, Inc.
