What The Hell America!

NEW YORK — Retired pediatrician Max Van Gilder, 79, loves to cook and calls himself an “early adopter” of new technology. That’s put him on the leading edge of a new segment of the appliance industry focused on climate-conscious consumers.

Van Gilder replaced a gas stove in his Manhattan apartment last year with an electric Copper induction stove. “Its serial number is 72,” Van Gilder says as he fries pork and boils water for spaghetti carbonara.

Induction stoves typically need special wiring or a larger plug, adding hundreds of dollars in electrical work to the cost of the appliance itself. But Van Gilder’s stove plugs into a conventional outlet. A battery under the oven charges through the night and powers the stove when he cooks.

Changing from gas to more climate-friendly electric appliances often involves expensive retrofits, such as hiring an electrician or contractor and sometimes upgrading electricity service from the utility. But a growing list of companies have begun to offer appliances that make switching easier and cheaper, with designs that allow customers to plug them into a standard outlet.

“What you’re seeing is the desire of consumers to start to move to all electric appliances and then manufacturers responding with products to overcome one of the key barriers to that,” says Panama Bartholomy, executive director of the Building Decarbonization Coalition.

Three products dominate this emerging market segment now — battery induction stoves, window heat pumps and plug-in heat pump water heaters. And manufacturers have plans to offer more appliances.

Battery induction stove

Nearly one-third of the greenhouse gases heating the planet come from buildings — much of it from burning natural gas in appliances. That’s why one key climate solution is electrification — switching from climate-warming methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, to electric appliances and heaters powered by an increasingly cleaner grid.

Gas stoves have been of particular interest to climate advocates, who want to electrify buildings, and the gas utility industry, which has used tobacco industry tactics to avoid regulation.

Van Gilder wanted to get rid of his gas stove for both climate and safety reasons. “As I’m getting older, I was afraid that I would leave the gas on,” he says. And he wanted an induction stove because it’s more efficient, complies with New York’s plan to eliminate fossil fuels from large buildings and he likes the control they offer a cook. Induction stoves heat pans with magnetism rather than flames or an electric coil.

“The only thing about an induction stove is it needs 220 volts of electricity,” Van Gilder says. He asked his co-op apartment board if it was possible to install the wires needed, but it was too expensive. A friend told him about the Copper stove with a battery that plugs into a regular outlet.

After using it a few months, Van Gilder says he likes the stove and has discovered a few extra benefits.

“The kitchen doesn’t heat up like it used to,” he says. Because the stove heats the pot directly, it doesn’t send heat into the room like a gas or traditional electric stove. He says the smooth cooktop is easier to clean too. The Copper stoves do have a hefty price tag, though.

“The base price is $6,000. There’s a tax credit that brings it down to about $4,000,” says Sam Calisch, Copper founder and CEO. He says that can still be a bargain for older, multi-family buildings with gas pipes that sometimes leak climate-warming methane and need to be fixed or replaced.

“In these cases, we install for less than half of what it costs just to fix the gas system and then we allow that building to retire that old, aging infrastructure and decarbonize,” Calisch says.

Window heat pump

Heat pumps have become popular with consumers, even inspiring a sultry R&B song. They provide heating and cooling with less energy than traditional furnaces and air conditioners. But heat pumps usually require expensive modifications to a home by contractors, plumbers and electricians.

Now, manufacturers are making heat pumps that plug into a standard outlet and can be installed in a window. Joe Soto, 69, is testing one in his Woodside, NY apartment.

“I call ourselves the guinea pigs,” Soto chuckles. He says he’s happy to be a part of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) test because he and his wife are comfortable year-round now. NYCHA used to heat Soto’s home with steam radiators.”It wasn’t very reliable — there were times that we spent many winters freezing in the cold,” he says.

Now his two-bedroom apartment has three window heat pumps, mounted in windows, like a portable air conditioner, but they take up less window space

“The beauty of this is it’s also a cooling system,” Soto says. “The temperature has been constant — winter, [or] the summer you don’t feel the difference.”

Soto’s window heat pumps were made by the company Midea. Another manufacturer is Gradient, which says its $3,800 appliance is designed to be easy to install. Most of the company’s customers are building owners, who can save money by avoiding expensive retrofits.

“We can install our system without any building modification, without any electricians, without holes in the wall, without asbestos mitigation, without scaffolding,” says Vince Romanin, Gradient’s founder and chief technology officer. “It is a 30 minute install.”

Eventually, Romanin says he’d like to sell the company’s window heat pumps directly to tenants.

Plug-in heat pump water heater

Heat pump technology is showing up in water heaters, too, including some that plug into a regular outlet and are designed to replace gas water heaters.

“We knew we wanted to go green as much as possible and cut the gas cord if we could,” says Laura Nakamura, who replaced her gas water heater with a plug-in heat pump water heater last year in the garage of her Concord, Calif., home.

“It was all done in one day. It wasn’t a major overhaul,” and she says the new model works as well as the old gas one. “It’s just as hot. And the water is still just as wet.”

She has noticed the new water heater is louder. She measured it as 60 decibels on a smartphone application — nearly as loud as her clothes dryer. That’s not a problem for her, since the water heater is in her garage. And Nakamura noticed a benefit — because a heat pump takes heat from the garage to warm water it leaves the garage cooler, something she looks forward to in the summer.

Plug-in heat pump water heaters also take longer to recover, once you’ve used the water in the tank.

“Because of the slower recovery, we do often recommend that those are installed in warmer states,” says James Courtney, director of product management at water heater manufacturer Rheem. ” Really, the main thing is the incoming ground water temperature.”

Warmer water coming into a house requires less energy to make it hot. Courtney suggests talking with a plumber or contractor because there are ways to mitigate the slower recovery time.

“A solution might be that you just upsize your tank if you have the space,” he says. If your old gas water heater held 50 gallons of 120 degrees fahrenheit water, you could get a 65 or 80 gallon version of the new climate-friendly model and heat the water to 140 degrees.

“We have a built-in mixing valve attached to the water heater,” and Courtney says the water heater will “then mix that hot water with the incoming cold water down to the 120 degrees.” That mimics what the old gas water heater used to provide.

These new water heaters cost about $2000 more than a comparable gas one. But government incentives can reduce some of the extra cost. Nakamura navigated that, sometimes confusing, process through the company Quit Carbon, which also helped her find a plumber.

“In addition to not using plastic bags at the grocery store, it’s one of those things that if people have the means and it’s time to upgrade to a water heater, this is something that I think people should be looking into,” Nakamura says. She’s the vice mayor in Concord and also has been active with a local clean energy group.

Courtney says plug-in heat pump water heaters are still a small portion of the water heater market, but he says they’re the fastest growing. And manufacturers are working on more products that are designed to easily replace gas appliances.

“I know there are manufacturers looking [at] putting batteries inside heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems,” says Bartholomy. That would make it possible to plug an HVAC system into a regular outlet and continue to operate when the power goes out.