By GREGORY ZELLER //
Source: InnovateLI
Energy efficiency has a new online home.
That’s the word from Stony Brook-based ThermoLift, which has flipped the switch on a new user-friendly, information-rich website designed to promote the company’s superior technology and elevate its position in a world focused on lower carbon emissions and emerging hydrogen fuels.
The 2012 startup is hurtling toward market with the TC3 – the Thermal Compression Climate Control device, a refrigerant-free, single-unit HVAC and hot-water system that eliminates traditional power-conversion losses and dramatically cuts energy usage, all by leveraging a unique thermodynamic cycle (dubbed the Hofbauer Cycle, in honor of international engineering legend and ThermoLift Co-founder Peter Hofbauer).
Powered by natural gas, biofuels or hydrogen, the next-gen heat pump represents the evolution of residential and commercial space conditioning – and the new website, according to ThermoLift Co-founder Paul Schwartz, strives to help visitors understand exactly how it works, without beating them senseless with advanced scientific jargon.
“This website was a total team effort,” Schwartz noted. “We worked hard to explain the science simply but thoroughly.
“It’s advanced thermodynamics and it can be a little thick,” he added. “We wanted to help visitors really understand the business-case opportunities with the launch of our new technology.”
Paul Schwartz: Message delivered.
Like the TC3 itself, the site is efficient and streamlined – separate pages highlight uses for residential, commercial and life-sciences customers, while providing copious third-party data about the device’s superior efficiency in everything from warming your bath to maintaining the sub-zero environment of your cryogenics lab.
Also reinforced, repeatedly, is the pump’s prowess in virtually any Earth climate – see the distinct Consumer FAQ and Commercial FAQ pages – while the company’s impressive executive team and specific contact instructions for potential investors also enjoy prominent play.
In the end, though, the new website is really about ThermoLift’s breakthrough technology, which – as the threats of climate change mount and America re-charts an energy-efficiency course – proves more critical every day, according to Schwartz.
“The crisis in Texas, where there is an overdependence on electricity for heat, beyond the grid’s capacity, is the perfect example of the importance of this new technology,” Schwartz told Innovate LI. “Energy transition toward lower carbon emissions and hydrogen-based fuels – using the existing natural-gas infrastructure, which is critical – is the message we wanted to deliver (on the website).”
The new digital hub will be a work in progress, according to the co-founder, updated as necessary with new technological breakthroughs and new data. But as the world teeters on the ecological brink and the United States rejoins the global climate fight in earnest, the site’s content already speaks volumes about where energy distribution is today – and where it needs to go.
“In the future, the natural-gas infrastructure will carry biofuels and renewable natural gas and hydrogen-blended fuels, and the TC3 will be the device maximizing the end-use efficiency of those different energy sources,” Schwartz said. “We wanted this website to reflect ThermoLift’s place as a low- and potentially zero-carbon energy solution.”