San Francisco startup wants to help you electrify your home
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Illustration: Annelise Capossela/Axios
A San Francisco-based startup aims to help homeowners navigate the switch from gas to electric water heaters.
Why it matters: Onsemble's launch comes as there is a continued push toward alternative energy and cities like San Francisco have set goals to lower emissions.
- The most significant contributor to climate change worldwide is fossil fuels, and buildings accounted for 44% of greenhouse gas emissions in San Francisco in 2020.
State of play: Onsemble opened its waitlist last month and is initially accepting clients in Marin, Sonoma and Contra Costa counties.
- Founded by Rick Klau, a former Google Ventures partner, and Julia Yrani, a former cybersecurity executive, Onsemble plans to launch in San Francisco in early 2024, according to Yrani, co-founder and president of the startup.
- The launch comes at a time when there are a number of existing and upcoming incentives, including in the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocates $8.8 billion in rebates for homeowners to make their homes more efficient and upgrade to electric appliances.
Yes, but: Despite these incentives for homeowners to convert to electric appliances, "every single one of them will be met by an incredibly opaque and fragmented process that will likely churn most people out of it," Yrani told Axios.
Details: Onsemble wants to help homeowners take advantage of those incentives, find the right appliance and select the right contractor.
- The company's focus is initially on water heaters, but the plan is to also help homeowners electrify their furnaces, stoves and more.
- Onsemble hopes to eventually connect those smart, electric appliances to a virtual power plant, where a utility provider can shift demand when needed to help stabilize the grid, Yrani explained.
What they're saying: Dana Armanino, a sustainability planner for Marin County, said it will be "a very valuable resource in the future if we can schedule appliances to take in that renewable energy at peak production and store it, and then discharge it during peak demand times."
- She added, "it saves us from having to build another power plant and all the emissions that come with that."
Zoom in: San Francisco has been chipping away at a plan to be a net-zero-emissions city by 2040.
- The city is awaiting a decision on whether the city will receive a grant to begin testing virtual power plants, Tyrone Jue, director of San Francisco's environment department, told Axios.
- Jue envisions some technical challenges around getting different virtual power plants connected to each other, but thinks "it's imminent we'll see scaling of virtual power plants."
Of note: Onsemble will need to partner with utility providers for a virtual power plant, but MCE, a power provider based in the North Bay Area, is already exploring a virtual power plant pilot in Richmond.
- A virtual power plant decreases the need to power fossil fuel peaker plants, which only run when there is high demand, and can save customers money by lowering their usage during those hours, MCE executive Alexandra McGee said via email to Axios.
What to watch: Whether more homeowners convert their gas-burning appliances to electric ones, and whether they'll opt those appliances into a virtual power plant.
- As of 2020, just 8% of homes were all-electric in California, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.