How to make the air update the heat pumps more powerful

The program may eat the world, but it takes some industries longer than others to achieve its full potential.

From iPhone to Teslas, people are accustomed to updates of software that improves the things they already have. But outside the consumer Electronics and CarsAir updates are not common yet.

However, this change began, starting with an unlikely product: heat pumps. Last week, the heat pump starts to run Quilt He said he paid an update last week to heat the pumps already installed in customer homes. It was not just fixing errors: The new program and fixed programs have strengthened the heating and cooling capabilities of the units overnight by more than 20 %.

“From the beginning, we wanted to design systems to be able to improve it continuously, and update them on the air. It is an event pattern in EVS and got a lot of traction, but no one has already done so before in HVAC,” said the CEO of Leblet Paul Lambert Techcrunch.

He added: “In cars, sometimes they call specific vehicles for programs. We feel that we have created HVAC knowledge by programs.”

It may be difficult to prove negative, but according to the heat pump expert Drew TozurIt is possible that the update is the first of its kind. Usually, when installing a heat pump – or any piece of HVAC equipment – the only time that is touched is when there is a problem.

but Many in the quilt team It did not come from the traditional HVAC background. Instead, they were withdrawn from nestGoogle, Apple and Tesla, companies where frequent updates are the rule. Isaac Mcwellin, the engineer who led the capacity project recently in Lucid Motors, has been able to heat and cool for both passengers and batteries.

“We got some comments from (installation) partners and some customers it would be really useful if we can get a slightly higher operating capacity,” Mcwellin said. Some people had larger living rooms or two open floors who were more demanding. So dug the team to see if the heat pumps have a little additional to serve.

McLein said that the quilt has identified higher and higher quality sensors than usually found in residential HVAC systems, including additional pressure sensors, higher accuracy temperature and current sensors. This data was the key to the project.

Once the team realizes that they have room to spare them, they started testing new parameters on the internal units to verify the validity of performance and reliability. Quilt updates included both the fixed programs and programs that work on the main processor and its place spread in all internal and external units.

The outer part of the outdoor heat pump was originally installed, as up to 19,700 heat units of cooling per hour and 20500 heat units of heating per hour. Now the cooling and heating numbers have increased to 24,000 thermal units per hour and 25,200 thermal units per hour, respectively.

The new classifications do not change the efficiency of heat pumps, but they allow them to deal better with severe heat and cold.

The power of the air modernization does not come free. That was only possible because the quilt use high -quality sensors, closely monitoring data, and included network equipment to receive the update. They added a small amount to the total material of the material. But as the company sees, the benefits are far exceeding costs. “There is the capital cost provided to the sensors, but we believe that there is a great value to gain it from the additional data that we felt deserved to merge,” said Mcwellin.

“It knows how to build all the integration around it with the program and all the systems that work together.”

In addition, the quilt can now sell units to a wide range of customers without the need to design and market a completely new model. It looks like a victory.