The Mission from MaRS startup’s brilliantly simple heat pumps are already saving tonnes of energy and money across Atlantic Canada.
Daniel Larsen knew there had to be a better way.
In 2015, the engineering student at the University of New Brunswick learned that in his home province of Prince Edward Island, many residents were switching from oil heat to heat pumps to take advantage of the area’s abundant wind energy.
But the switchover was putting so much strain on the grid that the province’s utility, Maritime Electric, was considering adding another diesel generating station — just for use during peak hours.
To Larsen and fellow students Jordan Kennie and Erik Hatfield, burning diesel to allow for more wind energy made no sense. So, they came up with a solution: a heat pump with storage capability.
Six years later, the simplicity and effectiveness of Fredericton-based Stash Energy’s technology has won some big fans. The City of Summerside, P.E.I., where the utility grid is about 50 percent wind power, was the first investor in the company co-founded by the three engineering students.
“We’re just so excited by what they’re doing and the potential for this,” says Brent Staeben, director of the $90-million Smart Grid Atlantic project at N.B. Power, which is testing the technology in 450 homes in Shediac. “They took something relatively simple and made something brilliant out of it.”
Read the whole article at Mars.
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CBC writes that Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe claims heat pumps aren’t viable in his province because it gets too cold, but some experts say newer models work in lower temperatures even if a backup is encouraged.