In 2018, Jane Melia needed to replace the nearly 40-year-old gas furnace in her home. As an engineer with a background in clean technology, she decided to build an entirely new system from the ground up, rather than simply replacing it with a more sustainable option. This is a system that allows you to heat and cool your home and maintain a comfortable lifestyle. The water is also warm.
Fast forward six years and Harvest Thermal is born, an award-winning startup co-founded by Jane and her husband (Pierre, who is also an engineer). The company uses efficient heat pumps and “smart thermal batteries” for heating, cooling and supply. All domestic water heating uses clean energy when available.
“The thing about light bulbs for me is that heating and hot water make up two-thirds of a household’s energy use,” Melia told The Cool Down in an exclusive conversation. “Heating is like the neglected child of energy consumption.…We just put it in the closet and forget about it, but heating is the greatest energy we have.”
And that can add up to huge utility bills and lead to global warming pollution.
But Harvest’s HVAC system aims to reduce those electricity bills by about 30% by storing cheap, clean energy in your home’s hot water tank like a giant AA battery.
“We manage that tank as precisely as, say, Tesla manages its lithium batteries,” Melia said. When you need to take a hot shower or adjust the thermostat, the energy in that “battery” is already ready.
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“That means you can save on your bills, you can save on emissions, and you can electrify in a cost-effective way,” Melia told TCD. She explained what’s unique about Harvest’s “3-1” technology and how it saves customers money while also helping the planet.
💰 Budget-friendly savings
Melia showed me an email she recently received from a loyal Harvest customer. This is a graph comparing two winter heating costs. Before the customer installed Harvest’s system, the bill was $1,125. And after that? $477.
“People get excited when this happens,” Melia said. “They get excited. They make a chart and share it with their neighbors.”
The secret that makes Harvest’s system so cost-effective is that it combines the efficiency of a heat pump (which, despite its name, can effectively heat and cool your home) with a hot water heater that also functions as a giant battery. That’s what I’m doing. Batteries can draw energy from the grid during the day, when electricity is cheapest and solar energy is plentiful, and then store it as hot water for use during the rest of the day, when energy is more expensive.
Harvest reports that homes that replace gas appliances with the system save an average of 30% on their energy bills.
🌍 Savings for the planet
Melia pointed out that “residential buildings are responsible for the majority of climate change emissions.” “In fact, heating and hot water alone generates 10% of U.S. emissions. So if we don’t solve this, it’s actually going to be difficult to solve climate change.”
The great news here is that Harvest’s technology can reportedly reduce emissions by 90% compared to gas furnaces and 40% compared to heat pumps without a thermal battery attached. Again, much of it is because Harvest’s thermal batteries can store solar energy when the sun is shining, reducing the use of polluting fuel sources that would normally power the grid at peak times for homeowners. Because it helps you avoid it. Additionally, Harvest’s system is compatible with solar panels if you have them installed on your home.
According to Harvest, the energy savings from making the switch will be more than switching from a gas-powered car to an EV.
“One of the motivations for making Harvest was the urgency to act now,” Melia said. “Every gas furnace installed today is a missed opportunity,” because “it will continue to emit tons of CO2 for the next 20 years.”
“For our system, the point of proving bill and emissions reductions tends to be a lightbulb moment for people,” Melia said.
❗ Plus… tax deductions too.
Harvest’s patented thermal battery technology allows customers to receive higher federal tax credits from the Inflation Control Act than if they simply switched to a heat pump. The credit is 30% of the full installation cost, but for heat pumps, it is typically capped at $2,000.
Nationwide, Harvest customers receive a higher tax credit at tax filing time (rather than at the point of sale), so “that tax credit alone allows us to compete with regular heat pump systems,” Melia said. .
There are also regional incentives to consider, especially in California, where most of Harvest’s products have been installed to date.
“We’re going to make sure over the long term that our system is truly cost-competitive even without these incentives and tax credits,” Melia said. “But at the moment we are small, so…the role of incentives and taxes is for credit to bear with us while we scale up, and we are using our own resources to make it as cheap as possible.” I’m going to do the job.
To this end, the Department of Energy recently awarded Harvest a $2 million grant to bring its thermal battery systems to more U.S. homes by streamlining installation and further reducing costs. gave money.
📌 Where, when and how much can I get it?
Melia said Harvest has established a network of installers throughout much of the West Coast, and has sold more than 200 units and installed more than 150 since its launch in 2022.
“We are currently expanding to Canada, New Mexico, Oregon, and soon to Vermont,” she said. “And now people are calling us from different parts of the country and asking us to join them in the action.”
The team aims to build a national network in the future, but for now, if a customer wants to get started, Harvest will set up a training program for regional contractors and “deploy the system.” You can get it,” Melia said.
As for pricing, Melia said it varies widely depending on the size of the home, location and current heating and cooling system. When compared more closely, Harvest’s system beats comparable gas heating, hot water and cooling systems in California, she said. “And the reason they can do that is because they qualify for more tax credits and rebates than gasoline.”
Without incentives, Harvest’s systems cost about the same as high-end heat pump systems. “But in the real world, we get more tax credits…so you can get a harvest system, which is basically a high-end system…for the same price as a standard heat pump system,” Melia he said.
💬 Customer testimonials
It’s been a minute since Melia and her husband decided to retire their gas furnace and build their current OG Harvest system. “I have Device No. 1 and have been living with it since 2018…and then I realized, amazingly, that it reduced my bill by 42%.”
“It went well,” she said. “You get quiet, consistent heat. It meets all your hot water needs. …It’s not complicated to operate. Just set it and forget it.”
And the co-founders aren’t the only happy customers. “Customer satisfaction is actually very good,” Melia said. “If people took cold showers, we wouldn’t have that, would we?”
💚 What gives you hope for the future of climate?
“I’ve been working in this field for a long time, and it’s very encouraging to see that we can solve problems. We can actually generate electricity from the sun. We can actually generate electricity from the wind. We can also run. You can. Clean cars, clean vehicles, etc.,” Melia told us.
“So you see great innovations emerging that can solve these problems. You know, 20 years ago, people were saying, ‘How do we solve climate change? Do we have the right technology? ‘I don’t have any.’
But now… “We have the technology. It’s really exciting.”
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