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.
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