Worksport's Subsidiary Terravis Promises To Raise The Bar In Sustainable Heating And Cooling

The majority of North American households in colder areas depend on pricey fossil fuel-powered central furnaces with which air is blown through duct systems. Heat pumps have two undebatable advantages: they are good for the climate as they don’t burn fossil fuels and they don’t drain consumers’ wallets. Unsurprisingly, they are considered essential in powering a global transition to sustainable heating and cooling.

Heat pumps capture and amplify the warmth of existing heat from outside air, moving it indoors to heat the home. They work even in cold weather because a level of heat is always present in the air. When cooling, they merely employ a different phase change, as they take inside hot air outside the home, going from gas to liquid. Heating or cooling, they lower operating costs, energy consumption, and emissions. With big players such as Mitsubishi Corporation MSBHF, whose complex business model spans across the world from sausages to natural gas, and which is, due to its extensive experience, credited as the maker of one of the most reliable heat pumps on the market, there are also new entrants with big promises, such as Worksport Ltd WKSP(NASDAQ: WKSPW) subsidiary, Terravis Energy Inc, whose mission is to create energy solutions that could power a zero-emission future. 

Terravis Aims To Set New Standards With Its Zero-Emission Residential Heat Pump

As Terravis Energy CEO, Lorenzo Rossi, described, many existing heat pumps are inadequate in pushing enough hot air into homes at temperatures under 4ºF (-20ºC), which means they are unable to maintain indoor heat at low temperatures. Worksport CEO Steven Rossi announced that its subsidiary, Terravis Energy, has refined and completed a working prototype of its cold climate, air source residential heat pump. Worksport-backed Terravis is now testing its innovative offering at Worksport-owned state-of-the-art facility in Toronto.

In order to optimize the heat pump's efficiency and performance even at lower temperatures, Terravis will be executing detailed tests to monitor its performance across a range of 12 temperature points from 14ºF (-10ºC) to -31ºF (-35ºC), while also planning to expand the testing to include its cooling capabilities at higher temperatures. By providing heat to homes in as low -31ºF (-35ºC), Terravis promises to bring the most effective heat pump technology to date. Besides operating at lower temperatures, Terravis’s offering an easier-to-install modular design for simpler and flexible placement in homes, which resolves another complexity of heat pumps. Existing heat pumps on the market, including those from Mitsubishi Lennox International Inc LII and Trane Technologies TT can be quite costly to install, beginning with a cost of $3,000 that can easily go up to $15,000.

Worksport-Backed Terravis Promises To Fill A Market Gap And Push The Transition To Sustainable Heating And Cooling

With Lennox not far behind Mitsubishi brand-wise, it is also costly to install. Moreover, Lennox is a bit pricier than Mitsubishi, but the warranty helps level the playing field. Although Lennox replacement parts can be difficult to come by, its heat pumps proprietary all-aluminum alloy that provides greater longevity and means less maintenance throughout the product’s lifetime. Considering it has been operating for 125 years, Lennox already proved its forward-thinking mindset that kept the company going for more than a century and which is reflected in its Energy Star qualification. Both Mitsubishi and Lennox are compatible with virtual assistants, Amazon.com Inc AMZN Alexa and Alphabet GOOG-owned Google Assistant. Then there’s also Trane Technologies that has been in the HVAC game for 120 years, successfully differentiating itself as the creator of reliable heating and cooling solutions. Although it is ranked below Mitsubishi and Lennox, its high-efficiency models get the job done and are more resilient than their copper counterparts. However, even Trane Technologies heating solutions are also pricey to install, ranging from $4,000 and $14,000. All in all, Worksport and Terravis Energy promise to raise the bar on the sustainable heating and cooling front by bringing a reliable and more efficient heat pump that is also easier to install compared to existing models on the market.

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