In 2022, California announced that it wanted to install 6 million heat pumps by 2030. So far, only about 2.3 million units have been installed. That means an average of about 2,000 installations per day will be needed over the next five years to reach that goal. Achieving this goal can be difficult, considering that a typical mini-split installation takes about a day and costs about $4,000 to $6,000 per zone, according to EnergySage.
“We have to do something different,” Merino Energy co-founder and CEO Mary-Ann Rau told TechCrunch.
Merino Energy, which has been operating in stealth, wants to change both parts of the equation by significantly simplifying heat pumps. The startup gave TechCrunch an exclusive look at its new product, Merino Mono, which costs $3,800, including the one-hour installation process.
Lau previously worked at Apple, where you may have seen her at a keynote introducing the new AirPods and another heat pump startup, Quilt. While at Apple, she worked on electrifying her home in San Francisco. She installed solar panels, an induction stove, and an EV charger, but when it came time to install the heat pump, Lau was “completely shocked.”
“That’s when I realized that even though it was inaccessible to me, I had a privilege, but it was out of reach for the vast majority of Californians and Americans,” she said.
A typical heat pump has two parts: an indoor heat exchanger and an outdoor condenser. Merino combines them into one unit that takes up about as much space as a typical radiator under a window. It connects to a standard 120-volt outlet, meaning homeowners are less likely to need electrical upgrades. “If you can plug in a microwave and it will work in that outlet, the Merino Mono will work in that outlet,” Lau said.
Mono has all the usual features you would expect from a new generation of heat pumps. It is connected to Wi-Fi and can sense whether a person is in the room, allowing different units in the home to adjust their operations for efficiency and comfort. Lau said the company is also developing an integration with Oura Rings so that the heat pump can lower the temperature of a room by several degrees while the wearer is in REM sleep.
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To install Mono, workers cut two holes in the wall, one to let air in and one to exhaust it. The air in that loop flows over the coil of the condenser, which sends the refrigerant to the heat exchanger. There, another loop draws air from the room to heat or cool the room. Only the intake and exhaust vents and condensate pipes are visible from the outside of the house.
Lau says that by moving all the components into a single unit inside the home, Merino’s design is much easier to install. There is no outdoor unit that connects to the indoor unit and may require copper wire brazing and refrigerant filling. “They are very expensive from a labor standpoint,” she said.
In downsizing the system, Merino may trade some efficiency to make the product more suitable for smaller living spaces. The Merino Mono has a SEER2 rating of 15.2, while the Quilt 2-zone system has a SEER2 rating of 25. A large outdoor condenser will work better. But the startup felt that for many applications, including apartment and condo buildings in dense urban areas, it makes sense to keep everything indoors and streamline it as much as possible. Mono “is a solution where the cost is proportional to the problem we’re trying to solve,” Lau said.
The company currently has 48 heat pumps installed at Civic Center Apartments, a low-income development in Richmond, California. For now, the company is focused on California as its first market, but there are plans to expand to other states, including Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. So far, six installers have signed up in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. The company is currently accepting pre-orders for delivery later this year.
Lau hopes the simplified product will help heat pumps dominate the market. “If we can reduce the time and complexity of installing heat pumps, we can expand adoption,” she said.
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