Commercial Buildings
February 20, 2024—For its 10th cohort, the Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) formed an all-demonstration group where each participant would scope and perform a demonstration of their technologies as part of the program.
The IN2 startups will complete their demonstrations over the next year or two, helping them in their goal to see their technologies gain market acceptance. Giving each startup a real-world opportunity for its technology backed up with technical assistance from National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) helps de-risk new customer acquisition by providing a concrete example of success.
Donnel Baird, CEO of BlocPower, likes to say he wants to turn buildings into Teslas, but this goal of electrifying buildings around the country means a bit more.
“We retrofitted a church on my block where I grew up as a kid,” Baird said. “I walked past that church every day. When I was young, we heated our home with a gas oven, and we would open the oven door to heat our home in the winter. As an adult, to come back to that same city block and reduce emissions, that was a nice full-circle moment.”
Because buildings contribute to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions, BlocPower aims to reduce these emissions by renovating buildings, removing fossil fuel equipment, and changing the buildings over to use electric systems, typically with a heat pump. Heat pumps transfer heat between the outdoors and indoors, taking advantage of the same vapor-compression technology efficiencies from traditional air conditioners and applying them during both heating and cooling modes. To date, the company says it has worked with more than 5,000 families in Brooklyn and has electrified approximately 3% of the apartment buildings in New York City.
“The future of the human race is in our hands,” Baird said. “We have all of the hardware and software capability that we need to dramatically reduce emissions.”
Read more about BlocPower’s demonstration project on NREL.gov.
