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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Electrification

Impulse Opens Up Battery-Integrated Appliance Technology as It Attempts to Become Platform Player

Impulse Labs announced an interesting move this week just ahead of the big KBIS trade show next week, unveiling a modular power electronics platform designed to bring battery technology to a variety of home appliances. As part of the announcement, Impulse announced a strategic partnership with THOR Kitchen, the first of what the company hopes to be many partnerships with appliance manufacturer as it opens up its technology for others.

The idea behind Impulse (and others like Copper) is to put a big enough battery in your induction stove (and now other appliances) to enable you to not only install it without having to hire an electrician to rewire your home but also to create what is essentially a power wall-by-committee.

“If you think about your home like an energy ecosystem, appliances shouldn’t just be consuming power—they should be managing and storing it,” said D’Amico on The Spoon podcast. ” We’ve proven this with cooktops, but the potential is far bigger. Bit by bit, you fractionally build out a whole home battery solution from parts from individual appliances.”

And now, with its new platform and partnership with THOR, we’re starting to understand how big an idea it is. D’Amico and Impulse see a broad application for its platform, from ovens and refrigerators to washing machines and water heaters—each with the potential to reduce energy costs, enhance grid resilience, and simplify home electrification.

Impulse says the new platform leverages the ingredients for its Cooktop – a high-capacity battery storage, custom inverters, and precision temperature control – to offer up to 10kW per heating element, degree-level precision temperature control, ability to adapt to standard 120V or 240V circuits for straightforward setup, compatibility with a variety of international electrical standards, and resiliency to maintain functionality during power outages.

According to the announcement, the market for battery-integrated appliances is expanding rapidly, driven by advancements in smart home technology and the growing demand for energy independence. The U.S. Department of Energy (at least before January) has called for a fivefold increase in distributed energy resources, such as home batteries, by 2030 to meet energy efficiency and grid stability goals.

“Impulse’s battery-integrated Cooktop represents a leap forward in making home appliances not only tools, but also essential components to a holistic energy system,” said Kyle You, Managing Director at THOR.

Your Future Induction Stove May Be the Foundation for That Home Power Wall

If you’re like me, you’ve considered installing a giant home battery to help transition away from traditional grid-connected power.

And if you’re also like me, you haven’t done it because it’s expensive, and there’s a lot of housework you need to do to make it happen.

But what if you could put together a home battery power system piece by piece, starting with a big piece, such as an induction stovetop?

That’s the dream of Sam D’Amico, the CEO of Impulse Labs. Sam’s company is building a new stove with a big battery built in to help folks who aren’t wired for induction (the rule of thumb is you need a 220V outlet on a 50-amp circuit). Impulse’s induction cooktop has a built-in battery that stores up energy via a traditional circuit and draws upon it when it’s time to cook. Perhaps more importantly, it can also be the foundation of a fractionalized battery system that, when pieced together with other batteries, can store power from solar panels and power your home.

“You’re deploying a pretty large home battery system piece by piece,” Sam said in a recent episode of The Spoon podcast. “And then once that’s deployed, you’ve got something with which you can essentially make the home all electric.”

Sam says his conversations with utilities tell him they are excited about the concept of fractionalized home battery backup and that they might even be interested in subsidizing some of this transition.

“There’s definitely a lot of interest there. You can already see incentives from utilities for more efficient appliances today. That’s already a thing that’s happening.”

The push towards electric cooking is coming at the same time there’s strong demand from consumers to move towards solar, and battery prices are dropping. The end result is you might just see these trends converge towards a new home power system in which many of your big appliances (stoves, washing machines, water heaters) combine to power your cooking and more.

You can hear more about this in my full conversation with Sam by clicking play below.

Silicon Valley is Betting Big on Home Electrification. Will It Pay Off In The Kitchen?

This week, news of a new home electrification startup hit the wires.

Founded by former Google Ventures partner Rick Klau, Onsemble builds technology to convert electric water heaters into what the energy industry calls a virtual power plant (VPP). VPPs act as aggregators and coordinate between independent distributed energy resources (DERs), such as rooftop solar and electric vehicles, with the electric grid. While Onsemble won’t enable water heaters to generate energy like a solar panel on your roof, the company believes that connecting and coordinating your water heater with the grid will translate to significant savings.

It’s an interesting concept, one that is symbolic of a growing interest within Silicon Valley and the broader technology community around home electrification. This interest has been rising for years, especially in markets like California, where state and local governments have pushed regulations around the construction of residential and commercial buildings mandating electrification. But it goes beyond that, and much of the recent flurry of activity has been spurred by a flood of new money entering the market through rebates that are part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Other startups that have ridden the home electrification wave over the past couple of years include Zero Homes, which partners with local municipalities to prove a decarbonization pathway roadmap for home electric users to help guide them towards home electrification. Another is QuitCarbon, which provides Bay Area customers with electrification roadmaps that outline the types of electric appliances for their home’s specific electricity infrastructure and help consumers navigate the home rebate process. Similarly, Elephant Energy partners with contractors to help install indication ranges, car EV charging stations, and heat pumps.

And then there’s Impulse Labs, a startup creating induction cooktops that incorporate a battery to help consumers transition to electric kitchens. By including a battery will enable those homes that aren’t wired for an induction cooktop – electric stoves can pull 40 amps at 240 volts after all – enables the homeowner to use one without having to rewire their homes or install a new electric panel. Impulse’s energy-storing cooktops will also serve as another energy storage node – or DER – on the electric grid’s network that can contribute to the collective VPP.

Of all the ideas, Impulse’s strikes me as the most innovative; it provides a solution that is not only about installation planning or falling in line with local building codes, but is an altogether new approach that helps both homeowners and the utility provider by putting a new kind of system (in the package of a conventional appliance) into the network.

There’s no doubt we’ll need more of these approaches as US homeowners, in particular, struggle to sever their strong addiction to gas heating and cooking. The installed base of gas stoves in the U.S. is massive, and there are significant financial and emotional attachments to cooking with fire. By embracing truly new alternatives that offer real benefits (financial and lifestyle), the kitchen electrification movement might actually stand a fighting chance