With eyes on U.S. markets, ThermoLift spreads across Canada
Things are picking up steam at ThermoLift, where the future of energy efficiency is
happening now – specifically, in British Columbia.
Just months after the Natural Gas Innovation Fund (NGIF), a major-league Canadian VC firm, announced it was increasing its already-significant investment in the Stony Brook-based innovator, ThermoLift has installed its first Thermal Compression Climate Control Device (TC3) – a fuel-flexible heat pump that leverages a unique thermodynamic process to create both cost and energy efficiencies – in a single-family Vancouver home.
And it’s busily installing its second TC3, also in a single-family home in the Canadian city. Both installations are part of a pilot project with FortisBC Energy, a power-solutions provider supplying natural gas, electricity and renewable energy to more than 1 million British Columbia customers.
That Vancouver test run, slated to include 10 units, is part of a larger shakedown for the TC3, including sites through ATCO and SaskEnergy in Calgary and Saskatchewan, and additional sponsored testing on Long Island and NY with utility collaboration that will install the advanced heat pump in a Long Island-based senior center and in NYC.
All told, the TC3 will be installed in “upwards of 20” test sites across North America between now and January, according to ThermoLift co-founder and Director Paul Schwartz, who said the company is determined to prove the device’s “durability and performance, with over 100-percent efficiency.”
“The full duration of each test is a 12-month cycle,” Schwartz says. “Around this time next year, we’ll certainly have a good idea of how they’re doing.”
What happens with the single-unit heating, cooling and water-temperature control device after that?
“I guess the market will tell us,” Schwartz adds.
All indications are the market will be pleased. ThermoLift – a longtime Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center client and the first company to graduate from Stony Brook University’s Clean Energy Business Incubator Program – has made steady progress since its 2012 launch, including numerous grants and awards supporting the TC3’s development and commercialization and a series of impressive laboratory tests.
The latest undisclosed NGIF award is good indication of ThermoLift’s potential. In March 2020, the NGIF staked the startup – founded by Schwartz and international engineering stalwart Peter Hofbauer – with a $426,500 investment, which soon grew to $525,000 as the TC3 pilot program grew in scope.
This summer, NGIF Cleantech Ventures – the NGIF’s $35 million seed fund for natural-gas innovations – scaled up that investment. The additional investment was undisclosed, but marked the first time the seed feed has increased its capital outlay in a single company.
The fund is “excited to be investing in ThermoLift” and its unique Hofbauer Cycle thermodynamic technology, according to NGIF Cleantech Ventures Managing Partner John Adams.
“Their natural gas heat pump is an efficient, low-emission, cost-effective product meeting a variety of energy needs,” adds Adams, also the NGIF Capital Corp. president and CEO. “We are confident that ThermoLift will emerge as a market leader in this space.”
Naturally, ThermoLift – which is “proud” to be NGIF Cleantech Ventures’ first upscaled investment, according to Schwartz – agrees.
“This partnership reflects our shared ambition toward a low-carbon economy,” the innovator says. “The investments and the pilot programs are big steps toward a clean-energy future.”