PowerX makes water heating much more efficient. It is the Nest for water heating. It learns the water temperature you like and heats just as much water as is needed. PowerX saves an avg of $400/year and the CO2 emissions of what 10 fully grown trees can do!
As a former systems engineer at GE Electric and Gas in their European base in Florence, Italy, I can see multiple issues with this product.
Before I did into claims of PowerX, Manuel - you appear to be the Founder - can I ask about your qualifications in designing this product?
Please confirm this is your LinkedIn Profile.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/manu...
According to your profile Michael, you have degrees in "Chinese Studies" from Heidelberg University and an "International Business Administration" degree from Rotterdam School, neither of which are engineering or computer science degrees.
This product seems very technical in nature.
Simple question, who is actually designing this product and you have a Technical Co-Founder?
Do you have a working Prototype?
Do you have any Data to back up you claims of reducing Heating Bills?
I ask because as a former System Engineer, I was responsible for designing control systems for very large heating systems.
We have spent millions on developing these for home use and found that feedback control loop in heating is quite slow with a long "transient" and coupled with often the small water storage capacity of household, it lacks any meaningful improvement in efficiency.
We certainly didn't see a "65% reduction in heating bills" per the claim of your website.
We actually found that a simple on/off switch controller with an app that alerted users when to turn on and off their water heater (coming home from up) actually works best.
I look forward to hearing your comments.
@hellenhunt I have to agree with you Helen.
I also trained as a systems engineer, worked at a major power and electric company, before moving into a control engineering role at a hard-tech company in the Bay Area.
These claims are bit outrageous indeed - 65% ?!?
That implies a HUGE market opportunity that has been missed by BILLIONS of dollars in companies operating in the heating and indoor IoT space.
It just doesn't seem believable.
@manuelschoenfeld, don't mean to sound rude, but do you have actual DATA to back up your claim?
Do you even have an actual product?
@hellenhunt Dear Hellen, many thanks for your comment and please excuse my late response. We were on a long flight and had meetings scheduled right after. On your questions:
(1) Qualifications: We are a team of 5 people. A core part of the hardware development was done by Matthias Veitinger, a senior engineer who has worked on heating systems for years (https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt...). I myself worked in Energy Consulting as a manager for McKinsey and Company and graduated from Harvard University with an MPA/ID studying statistics and data science. I wrote the first version of our optimization model which is constantly updated based on data. By now we have 2 software engineers working on the model full-time. Finally, we are backed by VC companies Antler and Y Combinator. Both have very stringent vetting processes and review their founders very well before accepting them into their programs.
(2) Prototype: We have working units installed in Switzerland, Germany and several states in the US.
(3) I would be very happy to get in touch. Would you mind to send me an email at contact@powerx.co so we can give you a demonstration? I fully agree with you that most heating systems are highly efficient and that there is no chance of getting anywhere close to 65% in efficiency improvement. However, this is also not the claim of PowerX. Our claim is a reduction in the heating bill of up to 65%. And we have actual use cases that have achieved these numbers as we couple several efficiency and non-efficiency factors, including completely stopping heaters when users are out of the home, and heating at times when energy prices are low (in Texas or New York, e.g. energy prices can vary substantially every 15 minutes).
@joy_xu Dear Joy, I very much appreciate your feedback. I think it is not rude but rather due diligence to ask these questions.
We do have an actual product that is installed in three countries by now and our cost numbers are directly based in the real-life data we gathered. One important point to make is that we claim to save up to 65% off the heating bill, not that efficiency is improved by 65%. We indeed have users that saved up to 65% in cost. We achieved these numbers by coupling several efficiency and non-efficiency factors, including completely stopping heaters when users are out of the home, and heating at times when energy prices are low (in Texas or New York, for example, energy prices can vary substantially every 15 minutes).
If you have any further questions, I would be very happy to get in touch (please send me an email at contact@powerx.co) and I will reach out. Since we are also in the Bay Area I would be happy to meet up in person!
Hi from Canada!
I'm just doing some due diligence - seems you have a great mission for de-carbonization - I think climate change is very real so thank you!
I noticed you list some of your business partners. Congrats on working with @katmanalac of Ycombinator - heard great things about them from my Canadian friends that have gone through their incubator.
I did see however you list Antler as one of your partners, which I read something about in this article from Medium below.
Native Black Ideas Matter Too: Antler
https://medium.com/@jhamar/black...
Is this the same Antler you're business partners with?
@steven_daniels1 Many thanks for the comment and for pointing out Y Combinator. Regarding Antler, I would not take one Medium article only as a source for due diligence (anyone can write anything on Medium, really). In fact, there are hundreds of positive articles written about Antler as well so I think the view is more balanced and the program is similar to Y Combinator. Personally, I had a very positive time with Antler - they really cared about founders as people and are helping with the environmental angle of PowerX. One question: if you like the idea, why the downvote?
This is a very dishonest company it decided to go in another direction it's not refunding customer money. Do not do any business with this company you cannot trust power x hanging out to dry!
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