Startup Series: Impulse

Built Environment

Jan 26

Today's guest is Sam D'Amico, Founder and CEO at Impulse. Impulse is helping to electrify homes with sleek-looking all-electric appliances, starting with an induction cooktop.

Regardless of whether or not you pay close attention to the climate space, you've probably seen some commentary in the last few weeks about gas stoves. The gas stovetop has become one of the latest culture war topics in American political discourse. Recent remarks from an official with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission about health risks associated with gas stoves in the home have prompted a wave of conservative voices to speak out in support of gas stoves, with one prominent House Republican tweeting a picture of a lit gas stovetop and the caption QUOTE "you'll have to pry it from my COLD DEAD HANDS!"

Sam and Cody have a great conversation about the news from the last few weeks, the emissions profile of gas stoves, recent data on health risks associated with gas stoves in the home, the history of how gas stoves came into homes in the first place, some of the city and state level regulation that has recently been enacted around gas hookups in new construction, and then all about induction stoves and what Impulse is building. Since this topic is likely to cross over and come up in conversation with folks you might not expect, we hope you find it informative and helpful.

Get connected:
Cody Simms
Sam D’Amico / Impulse
MCJ Podcast / Collective

*You can also reach us via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where we encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded on January 19, 2023.

In this episode, we cover:

[3:38] The culture war around gas stoves
[5:25] Growth of gas usage in homes
[9:57] Emissions and human health concerns of using gas stoves
[17:57] Regulations around gas hookups
[22:27] Utility incentives and influencer campaigns for gas appliances
[27:11] Legacy electric stove tops
[31:14] An overview of induction stoves
[5:45] Installation process for induction stoves
[40:04] Impulse's suite of appliances
[45:30] Sam's background and how he transitioned to working on appliances
[47:55] Future plans for Impulse
[50:49] Challenges and changes needed to help people understand induction stoves

Jason Jacobs (00:01):
Hello everyone, this is Jason Jacobs.
Cody Simms (00:04):
And I'm Cody Simms.
Jason Jacobs (00:05):
And welcome to My Climate Journey. This show is a growing body of knowledge focused on climate change and potential solutions.
Cody Simms (00:15):
In this podcast, we traverse disciplines, industries, and opinions, to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change, and all the ways people like you and I can help.
Jason Jacobs (00:26):
We appreciate you tuning in, sharing this episode, and if you feel like it, leaving us a review, to help more people find out about us so they can figure out where they fit in addressing the problem of climate change.
Cody Simms (00:40):
Today's guest is Sam D'Amico, founder and CEO at Impulse. Impulse is helping to electrify homes with a suite of sleek looking, all electric appliances, starting with an induction cooktop.
(00:53):
Now, regardless of whether or not you pay close attention to the climate space, you've probably seen some commentary in the last few weeks about gas stoves. Somehow, the gas stove top has become one of the latest culture war topics in American political discourse.
(01:10):
Recent remarks from an official with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission about health risks associated with gas stoves in the home. And as further remarks in an interview with Bloomberg about how products that can't be made safe can be banned, have prompted a wave of conservative voices to speak out in support of gas stoves, with one prominent house Republican tweeting a picture of a lit gas stove top and the caption, "You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands."
(01:38):
In response, our MCJ artist in residence, Nicole Kellner, created a new piece of artwork on social media called Gas is Gross, with a caricature of a sick looking gas oven and stove top, and woke up the next morning with so many negative comments that she had to turn off Twitter replies. So while we at MCJ usually explore relevant topics independent of news cycles, this one seemed especially close to home, and so we decided to jump in more deeply.
(02:09):
Sam and I have a great conversation about the news of the last few weeks, the emissions profile of gas stoves, the recent data on health risks associated with gas stoves in the home, the history of how gas stoves came into homes in the first place, some of the city and state level regulation that has recently been enacted around gas hookups in new construction, and then all about induction stoves, and what Impulse is building.
(02:34):
Since this is a topic that's likely to cross over and come up in conversation with folks that you might not expect, I hope you find it informative and helpful.
(02:43):
I appreciate Sam for coming onto the show on relatively short notice, and I learned a lot from our conversation. Sam, welcome to the show.
Sam D'Amico (02:50):
Thank you.
Cody Simms (02:51):
So what in the world happened over the last couple of weeks? I was... I've heard of induction stoves. I obviously know about some of the issues with gas and whatever. It's been a thing in the climate world for the last couple of years, but over the last two weeks, all of a sudden, someone turned the dials to 11. I saw Tucker Carlson talking about, "Don't take away my gas stoves." And I saw Ron DeSantis tweeting about it, and I saw Matt Gates tweeting about it.
(03:20):
My colleague, Nicole Kellner, who's our artist in residence at MCJ Collective, created a piece of artwork that she put on Twitter that said, "Gas is gross," and had a picture of a gas stove, and she had to turn off Twitter, she was getting so much hate comments. How did this become a culture war? What happened?
Sam D'Amico (03:38):
So actually, I think we just talked to Nicole actually, just before this, which is sort of funny. But yeah, I don't know how this exactly happened, in an orchestration sense, but I did see a bunch of messages claiming that, "Oh, there's like an op going on, and they got AOC, and that no opinion guy and some other things." And I was just like, "Cool, so if you think I orchestrated this, it upsells me as a founder, and all of my machinations and preceding all this stuff." And it's like, "No, this is not me. This is not even Impulse. This is a thing that... The ball has been rolling on this for, I would argue, the better part of a decade."
(04:19):
And this kind of goes back to... And by a lot of folks in the arena on this, I think, taking sole blame for this is actually completely wrong, but also, I find it totally flattering and hilarious, but I think it's totally untrue.
(04:33):
And so there was a bunch of studies that I think have been percolating over the past, I would argue, 10 years, but this has been going on longer. And if you understand this from a climate perspective, you realize that gas stoves are the one user facing thing that is left for getting rid of fossil fuel use in the home.
(04:51):
And so, once you realize that the flame of the gas is the user experience, you run into this problem of, "Okay, that's the one that's actually going to be hard to switch." Everything else you can do, from a... If the economics line up, you'll get a heat pump. Those sort of things, your central forced air system can switch from gas to heat pump and you don't notice.
(05:11):
And so I think the big thing here with gas is, it is a user experience, and thus there's going to be this small culture war dust up, and all these other things, but also it's the one sticky thing, keeping gas piped to people's houses.
Cody Simms (05:25):
Unpack that for us more, like I think I saw some stats on that, in terms of the number of houses that have increased their gas usage over the last few decades. It's something like... In the 1970s, it was less than 30% of single family homes had gas, and today it's 50% plus. And in some big areas like California, New York, Illinois, it's 70% plus of homes have gas stoves.
(05:52):
How has that happened? What's been the path to the increasing growth of gas usage in the home? And also, I guess, related to that, how does that help the gas industry continue to have access to gas in home for other use cases like water heating and HVAC, et cetera?
Sam D'Amico (06:13):
Yeah, so I think going back in time is probably the right way to approach this. And I posted something on Twitter about this, showing that if you look at where gas is most prevalent, it's like... It's where the coastal elites live, the so-called coastal elites. It's not actually in "real America", as you would put it on cable news these days.
Cody Simms (06:31):
I grew up in Kansas with electric stove tops.
Sam D'Amico (06:33):
Yeah, exactly. You're fully electric. Kansas is fully electrified, in a sense, because of the Tennessee Valley Authority, all these other things. But if you go back, and you look at where gas networks were built out, my house in San Francisco has gas plumbing to the chandeliers. And so, literal gas lighting was easier to deploy at scale before Westinghouse was deploying steam... Basically steam generated, or steam alternator, or steam power plants and stuff, all across America.
(07:03):
Effectively, the gas network built out in cities much earlier. And I guess it was to replace like whale oil lamps, and other things like that. So that was the first thing that happened, starting in... I mean, really, it started before, but really took off in the 1880s when the gas mantle was invented, which I think was invented after the light bulb, which is also just really kind of hilarious on when things happened where.
(07:30):
And so, all these cities built out gas networks, then electricity became cheap. Lighting was clearly better with electricity. That took over there. But these networks remained, and they weren't necessarily used for heating either. They were... I think it was mostly a lighting intention thing. You would sometimes have gas fireplaces. So my place actually has a gas fireplace in, with a chimney and stuff in there. This is a 1900 Victorian, but you go and look at where my house, when I grew up in it, north of Boston, there was an oil tank in the basement.
(08:04):
And so, we were using other fuel sources, whether there were wood stoves, whether they were oil, heat, et cetera. And gas started taking over those, which was, I mean, arguably near term probably good, because it was lower particular emissions, lower smog, lower all these other things, at home use. But that was mostly because electricity... Heat pumps weren't there. If you were living in a cold environment, you were stuck with resistive heat, and thus you had to pay the power conversion tax.
(08:32):
And you could argue that this wasn't more efficient pretty easily at that point. Obviously everything has changed since then, but that's kind of the setting the stage for why, in the sixties plus, everyone was like... Homes started switching over to gas for heating, basically.
Cody Simms (08:48):
And so then what happened, I think over the last few weeks, if I understand it, was someone in the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is the federal government, came out and said, "Hey, these gas stoves have health impacts to kids, and maybe we should think about regulating them." Which triggered this extreme backlash of anti-regulatory sentiments, you can't take away my gas stoves. Is that... I mean, that's where we landed today.
Sam D'Amico (09:19):
There was a couple things that happened before that. So I think there was the Rocky Mountain Institute study that came out, and there was a couple other studies. There was also, I think it goes by curious founder on Twitter, he did a bunch of measurements of his own kitchen.
Cody Simms (09:32):
Michael Thomas. Yeah.
Sam D'Amico (09:33):
Michael Thomas. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a bunch of interesting studies that landed around the same time, and then people were also doing direct experiments. And so the CPSC commissioner, I think, started piping up right after some of the studies started landing, and then that brought this right into the culture war vortex, I would say.
Cody Simms (09:57):
I mean, anytime the phrase cold dead hands comes up around the rights to have a product, you know that it's entered the mainstream vortex, I think. And so, what have we learned over the last few years about gas stoves in particular, from the emission side of things, but I think also from the human health side of things? What are the takeaway pieces of information for people to be aware of about... You would never back a car into your living room, and turn it on, and let the tailpipe emissions run in your home without filtering them, obviously.
Sam D'Amico (10:36):
And that has a catalytic converter on it, whereas your stove does not. So it's interesting.
Cody Simms (10:41):
When you stop and think about it, it is kind of insane that we are, many of us, regularly burning open gas flames in our home, when every other part of the gas appliance, where in our homes, has incredibly strict venting and capture requirements around it, that are required by code and permitting. And yet our kitchens don't. So maybe help us understand what that means for us.
Sam D'Amico (11:09):
Let's start with the gas network emissions and all the... The climate impact of... Let's ignore the Co2 aspect of it. Because I think that's obviously important, but imagine you've got a power plant, and you've got a resistible electric stove. You could argue that the efficiency of that may be actually higher than a gas stove, or a gas stove could be potentially more efficient than that.
(11:28):
The gas network itself is old and leaks. And so there is... As the gas is translated to your house, it is leaking basically methane and other stuff. But the one you can really model easily is methane, into the environment. That is a potent greenhouse gas, and I think it's like 30 times more potent than Co2.
(11:48):
So even if you lose 1% of the methane in transit, your emissions are up by 30%, basically. Now the other thing is, combustion isn't perfect. We're not talking about... You're not getting perfect mixing of the oxygen in the air with the methane.
(12:06):
And so, because you're not getting perfect mixing, and I don't work in rocket propulsion, that's the other company called Impulse, but if you don't get perfect mixing of methane, some of the methane's going to come out into the environment. And so that's going to leak too. So at some level, you're going to have methane leaks, both in the network, at your stove, and then the other part would be-
Cody Simms (12:26):
So this is before you've even combusted anything, this is just state of affairs?
Sam D'Amico (12:30):
Or during the combustion process, you're still also... Some methane is not getting fully burned, basically. And then, the last part is, I don't know how old your appliance is, a lot of people brag about their 1950s gas range that is unkillable and amazing. We had one of those in our old office, and I literally could smell natural gas all the time in our office.
(12:50):
So ironically, Impulse's first office had a natural gas leak all the time in it. And so, that's kind of the state of affairs with getting the gas to you, and the burning of it. And so there's basically this unaccounted for climate issue from methane getting out into the air through the network, and your appliances, and all sort of stuff. This also happens on your furnaces as well, it's just that has a clean separation between where it's burned, and it goes out in exhaust, versus going into your house, basically, through your forced air system or whatever.
(13:25):
That's the state of affairs for that, so that there's clearly an additional climate risk from natural gas use in homes, just from the fact that some of the gas doesn't burn. The second thing is, it burns really hot. And so this is something that I don't think people are... This is not something that is easily obvious to people, but that blue flame, it means it's above 2000 degrees or something like that, and that is hot enough that it will convert oxygen and nitrogen into free radicals.
(13:55):
And so when it does that, those can recombine into nitrogen oxide and nitrogen dioxide, which are basically constituent components of smog, and that reaction is endothermic. So those individual molecules may actually preferentially sink, versus enter your hood with the hot gas. So you end up combining all of these things, and you're like, okay, now you're generating smog in your kitchen.
(14:20):
You're also generating Co2, which is... People don't talk about this, but I sleep with my door open, because I put a Co2 meter in my bedroom and it went up to 1500 PPM when I sleep. And if I open my door, it fixes that. But your kitchen will actually, unless you have a window open, or something like that, you'll have higher than usual Co2 levels. And that's not great for cognition and other things like that. It's temporary, but it's not great for all these things.
(14:45):
There's the nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide risk, which a bunch of these studies coming out are saying's a childhood asthma risk associated with it.
Cody Simms (14:51):
Yeah, I have a purple air sensor near my kitchen, and I do have a gas stove, and when I cook, that thing turns red every time. I don't know how much of that is the particulate matter coming off of the gas that's combusting, and how much of that is food particles that are getting thrown into the air. But I think the Michael Thomas at Curious Founder study that you mentioned, that he published on Twitter, did go into that, where he was able to figure out the separation of the two.
(15:21):
I actually have an... Well, we're going to get into induction plates and induction burners and stoves and all that shortly. I do have an induction plate as well, and I should do an AB test against the two of them, just to compare and contrast at some point. I haven't done that yet, which would actually be a fun little personal experiment to run.
Sam D'Amico (15:38):
So I was going to predict that the defenders of gas stoves will probably run the PM test, and I have an air quality meter, I forgot the brand that I bought, it doesn't really register my gas stove on, I think, except for Co2 might increase in my kitchen or something like that, because it doesn't have the NNO or NO2 sensor in that system.
(15:59):
The PM, when I measure it, comes from... I'm like... I'm using a wok, and it's making a mess, kind of thing. And that's where you'll see a lot of the PM. But again, keeping in mind that that's not necessarily PM 2.5, that's larger particles and stuff like that, that may be less long-term harmful.
(16:15):
Also, we evolved around cooking food and stuff, so it's worth noting that humans control fire, and wood fire is in the 500 something degree. It's in the 400 to 900 degree sort of range. It can... It's way harder to form nitrogen oxide, nitrogen dioxide from a wood fire than it is from methane, basically. And these high temperature fires have only been more... Except for niche uses, like you're a blacksmith or something. Back in the day, those weren't available, and in people's homes, and stuff like that.
Cody Simms (16:53):
And then I think you mentioned the asthma risk, and I think the number that I saw was that 40... Kids in homes with gas stoves are 42% more likely to contract asthma.
Sam D'Amico (17:03):
I think it was 14 or something, if I remember correctly. I want to be careful on those studies yet until we actually get a little bit more, because one thing is, I think it was kind of this study of study with some correlationary stuff.
(17:13):
So we want to just be very cognizant, but it appears that there's a real risk here, but now there's going to probably be a much more detailed study following children over the next couple of years, and we'll probably get pretty direct data from an explicit study. I'll also... That's my guess.
Cody Simms (17:29):
That's great. Yeah. The one I saw was from the UCLA School of Public Health, but one study is one study, and I think you're right to caution us to not take one study out of context. Until you can draw conclusions, you need to have multiple points of peer reviewed data that can all be compared against each other.
Sam D'Amico (17:48):
My point is, it seems like there's something real here. I think that we're going to get reinforcing data in the next couple ofpo0.Years, is my guess.
Cody Simms (17:57):
And so, the culture war was triggered over the potential for federal regulation around gas appliances in new home construction, which is mirrored, I think, after some of the state and local regulations that we have seen come into place in certain geographies.
(18:15):
So California, for example, has passed legislation, or regulation, I guess, to reduce commercial and residential emissions to 60% of 1990 levels by 2030. NYC has local law 97, that has a 40% reduction in building GHGs by 2030. Do either of them explicitly talk about gas hookups to the home, and/or gas stoves in that case? And/or are there other forms of regulation that have gone direct to gas stoves as a no-no, going forward?
Sam D'Amico (18:49):
Yeah, I'm trying to remember the exact... This has been kind of a blur, in terms of what's happened lately. I remember the first one was Berkeley actually, just explicitly put a ban through. And then there was a bunch of discussion of this for... Oh, and for clarification, all these are for new construction, so no one's going to take away your gas stove, and any of these situations. I mean, I'll make an argument that you should replace your gas stove with what we're working on. But the point is, no one is coming for your gas stove in a black helicopter, nineties, right wing paranoia sort of fantasy thing.
(19:23):
But yeah, I think, I'm trying to remember the exact pieces that are coming together. It appears that it's mostly happening at the municipality level, and maybe Massachusetts to a statewide one, but it was being floated in New York. It seems like the restaurant associations are also kind of pushing back a bit, because it's massive.
(19:40):
The big problem here is, if they can't do it, there needs to be a massive push for electrification, and giving people actual high power hookups to the restaurants. And this is a huge, huge, huge problem, because it's like, okay, you remodel a restaurant, you redo the kitchen, now it's a new kitchen, suddenly you can't use gas, and your panel is a hundred amps. Okay, you're not going to be able to do this.
Cody Simms (20:05):
I've watched The Bear, and I understand the challenges of running a restaurant on a budget. By the way, best show of 2022.
Sam D'Amico (20:14):
I need to go watch that actually, as someone kind of in the space adjacent, I guess. Yeah, so the thing that's interesting is, the pushback in LA was the Korean barbecue. There was like the end of Korean barbecue in LA, and I was like... What's really interesting with this is, if you look at actually how these restaurants work, it's like if you actually had a barbecue grill that was electric at every station, at every table, the power drop for seating everyone would be off the charts nuts.
(20:44):
And so, this is something where gas, and potentially even charcoal with ventilation in some cases, is actually needed, to plug a hole in the fact that our electric grid... Our electricity distribution to businesses like this, we haven't addressed this need at all, basically.
Cody Simms (21:01):
Super great point. And the sort of built in, sunk installation cost is always a huge consideration for any type of transition. And that sunk installation cost isn't just at the point of usage, it's the whole infrastructure around it, right? And to your point, the electric grid, if all of a sudden, everything was pulling 220, presumably would have major issues, I would think.
Sam D'Amico (21:30):
So California was pushing gas hot water heaters implicitly, through title 24, which is honestly... It's a climate resiliency sort of law, but the title 24 situation is like... Because... If you add an ADU in your backyard, you'd need a gas water heater, because that would add peak loads to the grid that would basically... If everyone in LA county got an ADU, then... And they all had a hundred amp water heater, that would be a huge, huge, huge problem, in terms of what the electricity grid could actually handle.
(22:01):
And so we're going to start running into this issue, where the needs of electrification, the desire for electrification, and it goes up against the fact that PG&E is super backlogged on everything. For instance, that's the Bay area, you told me to clarify. And so we're kind of in this interesting spot, where we kind of know what the right thing to do is, but the system is literally wired in a way that is not necessarily conducive to large scale electrification.
Cody Simms (22:27):
And I want to get into the electric solution for cooking in particular, but before we do that, I think one other thing that that's worth bringing up on the legacy gas install base, and the efforts of the gas industry over the last 50 years, to move so many homes to cooking with gas, it's literally a phrase, like cooking with gas.
(22:51):
There's an amazing piece that Mother Jones put out recently, that the Investigative reporting organization titled 'How the Fossil Fuel Industry convinced Americans to Love Gas Stoves'. And they talk about, even today, there have been sort of micro influencer campaigns on next door, that are actually being created by a PR firm that's working with the local gas utility in Los Angeles, SoCal Gas.
(23:22):
Sort of just basically seeding people to think about, "Hey, is the government coming for your gas stoves?" And I'm curious how you... If you've seen, if you've felt any backlash kind of coming through any of these influencer campaigns on your own company, which we haven't even talked about yet. We will get there. But what you are seeing in terms of the engagement levels around gas, just in the broader conversation space.
Sam D'Amico (23:51):
Yeah, so I think this is actually really interesting. So one, I'll caveat on the utility side. What's been an interesting change in the past couple decades is, a lot of utilities have started, whether it's through M&A, or through various other things, they're starting to be... Both offer electric and gas. So they don't necessarily lose a customer on these electrification things, and they may actually make more money on it, because it may cost more.
(24:12):
And so you see Bay areas giving incentives, like 750 bucks to switch to induction stoves at this point, from your utility. So the gears are turning, so the incentives are actually not as... They're not as directly like, "Hey, look, we're pushing you to do gas." They used to be, but yeah, this stuff still exists.
(24:31):
We haven't seen direct pushback on us at all. I think we're too below the radar, and all these other things, but also we're not trying to like... I'm not stirring the pot in the culture war, is basically the take. But the micro influencer thing is really interesting, just to see how any sort of... The movement building on that is like... It's very interesting to see that. I think it feels like a holdover from the before times, if that makes any sense. The before times being like, we're cooking with gas, where the gas industry straight up was directly marketing to people.
Cody Simms (25:03):
By the way, there is, in that Mother Jones article, for anyone who wants to go look it up, there is a hilarious 1990s era video of people rapping about cooking with gas, that is just totally hilarious. Anyway, but back... Speaking of your old holdover influencer campaigns...
Sam D'Amico (25:24):
I'll ping MC Hammer, we'll get him onto the electrification side. But yeah, I think this is really... What I'm saying is, there is a full stack for cooking, and getting people to... And this exists if you're a company making new appliances or old ones. There is... Everyone... The permission structure to buy something, especially if it's expensive, it involves getting someone into your house to put it in, et cetera.
(25:51):
You want to have a chef that you may respect from TV endorsing it, in a certain sense. And so part of this is, they worked through all of the influence sectors, whether it was fifties TV ads, to all these other things, to convince people that this was the thing.
(26:08):
But this goes back to what I was saying earlier, which is that gas has a user experience associated with the flame. And so if you can get them on gas stoves, as this is clearly the best way to do gas, best way to cook, you then get them as a gas customer, and then maybe you'll get them to switch off of oil heat or wood heat, et cetera, to gas as well.
(26:28):
And then that's where you actually get a ton of money, because that's expensive.
Cody Simms (26:33):
Oh, got it. So using the stove as the entry point to get more gas hooked up into the home. I mean, to be fair, we're going to talk about induction. In fact, let's move into induction in just a minute. But gas, compared to cooking on old, coil style, electric burners, cooking with gas is better, from a user experience, for sure it's better.
(26:58):
Now from a climate perspective, from a health perspective, all the things we've since learned, it's way worse. But from a just cooking perspective, there's no doubt it's better than the legacy version of electric stove tops.
Sam D'Amico (27:11):
Yeah, and I think that's actually worth describing how those work. And so those work by, basically, they're just a big resistor, and you can think of it like almost... You know those light bulbs you get for your reptiles? Maybe I'm weird, beside I had frogs as a kid, but you need a warming lamp and it glows an infrared. They're basically, it's big chunk of metal, it's a big metal spiral that you run electricity through, and it gets hot, and then it starts glowing, and then that transfers the heat to your pan.
(27:39):
The problem with that is, that thing is a big chunk of metal, and so when you turn off the power, it still glows. And so it'll take up to maybe minutes or something to cool down. So to actually cut power, you have to physically remove the pan from the... I guess burner, hob, whatever you want to call the cooking zone. And so, gas on the other hand, it's literally the combustion rate, or the rate of energy transfer is controllable linearly with a dial.
(28:08):
And so that's real time, super low latency. You're able to do that instantly. And so that's where it's a huge level up on the control side, and especially when your first stove might be a cheap electric one in your college dorm room or something. This is like it's night and day, and amazingly different, basically.
Jason Jacobs (28:31):
We're going to take a short break right now, so our partner, Yin, can share more about the MCJ membership option.
Yin Lu (28:37):
Hey folks, Yin here, our partner at MCJ Collective. Want to take a quick minute to tell you about our MCJ membership community, which was born out of a collective thirst for peer-to-peer learning and doing, that goes beyond just listening to the podcast.
(28:49):
We started in 2019, and have since then grown to 2000 members globally. Each week, we're inspired by people who join with differing backgrounds and perspectives. And while those perspectives are different, what we all share in common is a deep curiosity to learn, and bias to action around ways to accelerate solutions to climate change.
(29:07):
Some awesome initiatives have come out of the community. A number of founding teams have met, nonprofits have been established, a bunch of hiring has been done. Many early stage investments have been made, as well as ongoing events and programming, like monthly women in climate meetups, idea jam sessions for early stage founders, climate book club, art workshops and more.
(29:26):
So whether you've been in climate for a while, or just embarking on your journey, having a community to support you is important. If you want to learn more, head over to mcjcollective.com, and click on the members tab at the top. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the show.
Jason Jacobs (29:39):
All right, back to the show.
Cody Simms (29:42):
I would postulate that when most people hear, "We need to get rid of gas stoves and go to electric", people are thinking of these coil style electric stoves, or they're thinking of the sort of sleek, induction or, excuse me, convection... Convection, be very clear, convection cooktops.
Sam D'Amico (30:02):
That's called radiant electric, actually. The ones that look like an induction, the ones that look like an induction cooktop, but they have still that glowing heating element, but it's below a sheet of glass, that transfers the infrared through it.
(30:15):
And those have the same problem with... It takes a second for them to, one, get hot, but then also cool down. And so, the problem with those is, they look like a normal... They look like an induction cooktop. People look at an induction one, they're like, "Oh, that has to suck, because it looks like that thing."
Cody Simms (30:32):
Because I used this thing in the 1990s, in my grandma's house, or my parents' house, and it was terrible, right?
Sam D'Amico (30:39):
And so the way to tell, by the way, is if you turn it on, it glows, versus it doesn't glow, then it's a good way to tell. But like... And maybe there'll be a tiny word that says induction, right next to one of the burners or something.
Cody Simms (30:51):
Got it. So that's called radiant, that's called radiant electric. Radiant.
Sam D'Amico (30:53):
Radiant electric.
Cody Simms (30:54):
Okay.
Sam D'Amico (30:55):
Yeah, it's hilariously how bad this has been marketed.
Cody Simms (30:57):
It's terrible. Okay. So now, the new type of electric stove is an induction stove, which is fairly new technology, as far as I understand it.
Sam D'Amico (31:09):
50 years old actually.
Cody Simms (31:10):
Okay, so what is an induction stove?
Sam D'Amico (31:14):
So an induction stove was enabled by power transistors. So it basically was only possible in the sixties plus, effectively. But what it does is, it converts the incoming energy from the grid, into a high frequency, I think it's usually 20 to 30 kilohertz, high frequency waveform, and 20, 30 kilohertz is, it's not exactly like radio frequency, AM radio frequency, but it's like one tenth that, kind of thing.
(31:42):
But it's not an antenna. It's in like a coil. So you can think of it like an electromagnet, if you've ever used one of those in middle school science class, or something like that. But you're switching the... Because you're switching magnetic field at 25,000 times a second, that, if you have a... I'm going to use my coffee can as an example here, but if you have that, if you have something that has steel in it, that has iron atoms, and those iron atoms will literally vibrate at that frequency.
(32:08):
That causes friction in the steel, and that heats the pan up directly. So what ends up happening is, all the guts of the stove are... I mean, maybe they're mildly warm from various inefficiencies in the system, but the only thing that really gets hot is the pan itself.
Cody Simms (32:25):
And so, as I understand it, I think of it as these kind of magical magnets. And what I'm hearing you say is that they're actually moving iron atoms, and vibrating them, to generate heat. Is that the right way to think about it?
Sam D'Amico (32:39):
Yep. And so there's two heating methods in an induction stove. There's eddy currents, so it's causing current to flow in the pan, and then it's also causing those iron atoms to vibrate. And so the combination of those provides heat.
(32:50):
But what's cool about it is, as soon as you turn that field on or off, you get direct control over heating. That's putting energy in immediately, and turning it off. So you have... It's instantaneous in the same way as... Possibly even faster than you turning a gas valve.
Cody Simms (33:05):
And so there's not actual radiant heat flowing from the cooktop to the pan, or to the food?
Sam D'Amico (33:12):
Nope. No.
Cody Simms (33:12):
Okay.
Sam D'Amico (33:12):
You could literally put a spacer between the cooktop and the pan. You could put fiberglass, or fancy aerospace materials, like aero gel, between them, and only the pan gets hot, basically.
Cody Simms (33:26):
And as I understand it, it also can heat faster, and with more control than both... If this is true, both a gas and/or a traditional electric stove top.
Sam D'Amico (33:38):
Yeah, because your control is basically within one wave cycle of that 25 kilohertz or so waveform. So if you could adjust it, waveform after waveform, you can control amplitude arbitrarily quickly. I believe on our system, you probably could play audio over it if you really wanted to.
Cody Simms (33:57):
Actually, to that point, whenever I turn it on, my sister's dog starts shaking. So is it putting out some kind of high frequency sound?
Sam D'Amico (34:06):
Yep.
Cody Simms (34:06):
Okay.
Sam D'Amico (34:07):
Yeah. So that's actually something we've largely fixed, which is interesting, but I'll get to that later. So when your induction stove runs off of AC voltage, that AC voltage has a 60 hertz line rate. When that gets into the system, it gets chopped up, and it gets rectified, so it gets actually converted to DC, but you almost take the absolute value of it. So that turns into a 120 hertz waveform.
(34:31):
Now the next thing is, that then gets converted, it goes through some capacitors and some other stuff, but it gets converted to that 25 kilohertz. You get a mixing of that 120 hertz line ripple with the 25 kilohertz, and that's what your dog hears.
Cody Simms (34:48):
Fascinating. So that is a solvable problem, because that I could see that being a barrier, if all of a sudden, the entire world has stove tops that their pets dogs go, whatever, pee on a rug whenever they turn their stove on, that's going to be a problem.
Sam D'Amico (35:04):
Yeah, I've been maybe to too many concerts, but my understanding of our-
Cody Simms (35:08):
I can't hear either.
Sam D'Amico (35:10):
Yeah. You get a click when basically the power comes on, and then after that it's silent. But that's because we've got the battery, which we'll get to later, as the power source for the induction system.
Cody Simms (35:22):
If anyone listening, who has a gas range, and is like, "Oh, this sounds cool. A, no emissions. B, no health issues. C, better control. D, no flame or heat in my house, no brainer. I want to do this."
Sam D'Amico (35:37):
It's higher performance. You can get up to maybe 1.5 to 2 x performance of a gas stove with this. So...
Cody Simms (35:45):
So what I did is, I went on Amazon, and there was like, you could buy a hundred dollars single panel, just so I could learn and play with it. And I bought a single... The equivalent of a single gas burner, but it sits on my countertop, and it's a single induction panel that I use.
(36:01):
If I'm cooking a whole dinner, obviously I can't cook everything on one panel, but when I'm just heating up leftovers in a pan, no big deal. And so that was really easy. It just plugs right into my regular outlet. But as I understand it, if you wanted to replace your actual full range top with it, you need to actually install higher power voltage into that part of your kitchen. Is that correct?
Sam D'Amico (36:24):
Yeah, so first, for those hot plate products, which are awesome by the way, I got one to do hot pot with my friends and stuff, but end up using it because it's like... The control is pretty good. They sometimes cheap out on some of the transistors in there, so it may not necessarily get, when you go to setting, instead of one out of 10 power, it may turn on and off instead of letting you simmer all the way down.
(36:43):
On the higher end stuff, you don't have that problem. But that literally is like, do you have one transistor or two transistors in the system, is the thing. But yeah, so the cool thing with those individual hot plates, they're almost as powerful as a 15 kbt gas stove burner. And so you're not actually, if you're concerned about home air quality, all these other things, you could just get two of those and plug them into different circuits, and you're probably good, as a near term thing you could do.
(37:11):
Now if you actually want to upgrade a four burner stove top or range product, you have to run anywhere from a 40 amp to a 60 amp breaker and associated high current wire drop from your panel to where your stove is. And that's an electrician visit, basically.
Cody Simms (37:32):
So I could go to Home Depot, I was on the Home Depot website before our call, and there are a hundred plus induction cooktops available on Home Depot that I could use to swap out my... I think I've got a four or six gas range stove top in my kitchen, but I couldn't just order it on Home Depot and flip it out myself.
(37:50):
I'm going to a) have the gas company come out to shut off the existing gas one and remove it, cap the line, and then b) have an electrician come out and install something locally in my kitchen, to plug this new system into, and potentially upgrade my panel, or look at my breaker system as well. Is that correct?
Sam D'Amico (38:10):
So typically, when you buy a induction cooktop or a range, it comes with a pigtail, where basically, it terminates out to ground neutral, and the hot wires. And so you would need to get a junction box put in with a dedicated circuit, with a dedicated breaker for that. That could be up to 60 amps.
(38:26):
So it's basically if you want to put a Tesla charger in your garage, it's a similar order of operations, type thing. Now the next issue is, does your panel have a free 60 amps? And you could go talk to coastal elites like myself who have gas stoves, and my panel, I think, is 125 amps or something like that.
(38:46):
Maybe you'll add one gas appliance. But as soon as you start putting pressure on this, it's like, it's not going to hold up. And so then you have to potentially upgrade your panel, or get a smart panel that can trade off between different appliances. And then, let's imagine your house was built a hundred plus years ago, your conduit's too narrow to upgrade the service to that panel.
(39:05):
And so then you got to go call the utility, they got to dig up your front lawn, or go up on the pole, and do a bunch of different stuff, and then that's going to potentially be a $10,000 exercise, and maybe a year of weight.
Cody Simms (39:17):
Got it. So for some people, maybe the upgrade's not that big of a deal. For some, it is a big deal, unless you are personally very literate in home sort of wiring and electrification, this isn't something you're going to probably be able to figure out on your own.
(39:32):
You need to have an electrician come through, and help you figure this out, which isn't that big of a deal, but it just creates one more hurdle for adoption and movement. Whereas new construction obviously can just build these from the get go, and is generally set, but for the consumer who's looking to swap, there's a couple of steps involved that they have to deal with. And so, with that, maybe now, let's describe your product, Impulse, and how you've helped try to solve that swapping use case for people.
Sam D'Amico (40:04):
Yeah, so this company came about, I think it was... I'm trying to think, technically it's a year and a half old, but this idea has been poking around kind of my friend group chats since 2018 or 2019.
(40:15):
And the idea was like, if you can put a battery next to the peak loads, you really can solve the problem of like... So typically, your stove is not running all the burners on high all the time. What it's rated for, and what you actually need, in terms of average power delivery, are vastly different.
(40:32):
And so that even includes holding a boil, all these other things. Just getting stuff up to temperature is a very different requirement than you need to sustain use. And so what you can do is, you basically put a small lithium fire and phosphate battery pack right in the appliance itself, and then that lets you basically solve all your peak power use cases, and more, we'll get to how we're more powerful than anything else.
(40:56):
But also, you can run this off a normal 120 volt, 15 amp outlet, and it works just fine. And so, the whole idea here is basically, this also exists for other appliances too, so all of your home appliances you can think of, are they in use right now? You can just mentally check, and it's like most stuff is off, on average, like 90 plus percent of the time, your appliances are off.
(41:21):
And so if you realize, you size this battery for at least a use, you could be completely off... You can be completely off grid basically, but still be able to use a fully electrified device.
Cody Simms (41:34):
I mean, it's interesting, whether it's Tesla or others, have sort of trained us to think when it comes to home battery, we have to buy this big multi-thousand dollar, monolithic battery as a backup system, and to solve everything. Your approach is kind of, "Hey, let's explode this out into each appliance, and use it so that each appliance can have its own kind of supply and demand curve on energy usage." Am I understanding that correctly?
Sam D'Amico (42:02):
Yeah. And I think Tesla's done a really great thing for the industry, and honestly, has driven down the price of batteries, to the point where it's actually tractable to do this. I think that they deserve a lot of credit for that, but they're charging a thousand dollars per kilowatt hour for a home battery system, and then it doesn't solve the wiring challenge that we mentioned earlier with any of this other stuff.
(42:20):
So it's like, in some sense, they're both an overpriced battery that mostly caters to single family homeowners, and then also it's like you still don't solve the wiring challenges, all the other stuff. And if you integrate the battery at the peak load, you can both get a home battery in the Tesla style of like... You can use this for fractional home energy storage, but also you solve the last... It's not last mile, but last 10 feet wiring challenge, which ends up being... Turns out that this is going to be a huge challenge in the next couple of years, especially with electricians being totally slammed, utilities being totally slammed, all this other stuff happening as we make this hard pivot into a fully electrified world.
Cody Simms (43:03):
So Tesla has helped drive down the cost of batteries, and batteries are still expensive. So I'm assuming an impulse stove with a battery built into it is going to cost more at face value than a range I could go get at Home Depot today. But I think your argument is twofold, from what I'm hearing.
(43:20):
One, the cost of installation is going to be significantly less and easier, and two, the ongoing cost of operations is going to be less when it comes to your electricity bill, because you can charge this thing up during low cost hours, from an energy users perspective, and then run a lot of the needs off of the battery itself. Is that the kind of correct, one two assumption?
Sam D'Amico (43:45):
That's correct. And there's a third one too, which is, thanks to the IRA, there is now a huge subsidy regime for this, and there's one for induction stoves, but there's also one for home batteries that changed. The biggest change, the quiet change in the IRA, is they got rid of... You need solar panels predominantly charging your home battery to get the 30% investment tax credit on the battery.
(44:06):
And so our understanding is, if we can plug the battery in, as a home battery, basically, in that sort of use case, so we'll encourage people if you can install it with 120, but if you get it wired for 240, you get three plus kilowatt hours in your home, basically, that you can use for whole home load shifting.
(44:26):
And that would then qualify you for 30% off, ideally the entire product in our case, because you could make the argument for the battery. Price per kilowatt hour, we're below Tesla.
Cody Simms (44:35):
Is that point of sale discount? Or is that on my tax return at the end of the year discount? Or to be determined?
Sam D'Amico (44:42):
This is getting worked through. I think we're mid rule making on this, and then the situation I'd imagine is, there's also a bunch of buy now, pay later financing schemes, and things like that. Solar industry did a great job with this, but there's also a bunch, just for consumer products that exist right now. So I think that there's a way to square the circle on the financing, provided that you can validate that the installation will qualify, basically.
Cody Simms (45:03):
And Sam, what's your background? How did this company become the thing for you to go do? I understand you worked at Google and Facebook on things like Oculus and things like Google Glass, so you've kind of had a hardware career, but not kitchen appliance hardware. So what prompted you to a) move into the space, and b) build this product?
Sam D'Amico (45:30):
So some background on me, just for folks listening, is I worked on a bunch of different head mounted display products, including Google Glass, Oculus, most recently I was doing the Quest pro controller. So if you've seen that product in the marketplace, it actually shipped after I left Facebook/Meta.
(45:49):
So my background, actually, hilariously, was I was doing camera hardware and various other things, and I kind of wormed my way into system engineering and system architecture. The big thing that was kind of back before, is I really like to cook, and I host a lot of friends over for barbecues, and I really grilling on a tiny skewer grill, because I got into trap when I was traveling to China a lot for hardware engineering.
(46:11):
I really liked the lamb skewer barbecue guys on the street, and I was a huge fan of that. And so, I got one of those skewer grills, and was grilling, and I've turned this into like a social event. Yeah, it's so good by the-
Cody Simms (46:24):
In Beijing, that is the place, it's my favorite place to go eat whenever I'm in Beijing.
Sam D'Amico (46:27):
And I've been to Shian, I've been to all the other things. My favorite is, you're out in bar streets in Shanghai, and there's a guy in the street serving these things, and they kind of banned them, but then now they're back. So it's like, I'm super excited to go back and try it again.
(46:39):
So I like to cook a lot. I like to cook socially with friends and stuff like that. But the other thing is, both me and our CTO both, we actually met doing solar car racing in 2010, and we're both on different solar car teams, different American universities, and that was kind of the full stack experience with doing electrification, in a do or die environment, basically.
(47:00):
And so if you're not familiar with it, the solar car races, there's an American one, but the Australian one is the most famous one, is you drive from Darwin, which is the north tip of Australia, to Adelaide in the South, and you have to race a solar powered, single seat electric vehicle, I think it's like 3000 kilometers or something like that, across the outback.
(47:20):
And so I got to do this a couple of times, and it was honestly one of the best experiences I've done in an engineering context, in terms of very stressful but also very, very awesome.
Cody Simms (47:29):
So you were actually helping to build the vehicles that you then helped race?
Sam D'Amico (47:33):
Yeah, I managed to become firmware lead or something like that, but hilariously, I was writing battery pack firmware for that, and so I got a full experience with how to do design, and make safe lithium ion battery packs, and that's... Hilariously, I had to kind of do that again for us, when we were kind of back at scene stage and stuff like that, because I had still expertise I hadn't forgotten yet.
Cody Simms (47:55):
And then what's next at Impulse? Today, your product is this battery powered induction stove top. How do you see the company evolving?
Sam D'Amico (48:05):
Right now, what we're doing is, focusing on doing the MVP product, and ideally, and the way we're approaching the MVP is like, this will be broadly available. So the plan is, this is not, this will be... The ideal situation is like, this is something that we will launch [inaudible 00:48:18] for, and it'll be broadly available.
(48:20):
I won't go into details on the launch date, but we'll have more info this year on that. The broad plan is that everything we're doing is modular, and we're building a foundation to kind of parametrically make products with this approach, in a way that scales out, so we can be ubiquitous in the next couple of years.
Cody Simms (48:39):
The approach, meaning the local battery included hardware for an appliance, is that what, by approach, what you mean?
Sam D'Amico (48:54):
Yeah, in making sure you have an inverter that does all the stuff I've mentioned before, the individual induction burner technology, we've innovated a lot there. We'll have more info on all the things we've done there to really level up, because that's something that, it's actually interesting if you poke into the supply chain for induction, there's like a couple of companies that actually make the power electronics for all of these brands.
(49:12):
Like our CTO background is automotive [inaudible 00:49:16] actually, but he has designed his own electric motors, designed his own power electronics, including motor controllers, and all this other stuff. So he's, in some sense, the right kind of full stack engineer to do a lot of this tech development.
(49:28):
And so we're in a place where, basically, we can actually innovate on the foundational axis in a way that may be interesting to even the big appliance vendors, because we'll have tech that they may not even have internal capability of developing.
Cody Simms (49:38):
So if I'm thinking of Impulse, obviously your first product is this induction stove, but I should think of Impulse more as a home electrification appliance sort of company and integrator, it sounds like, is sort of the way to think about you, from a bigger picture perspective, over time.
Sam D'Amico (49:57):
Yeah, I think there's like, there's a technology play, where we can do some licensing deals, and I'm not against that. I think delivering the full vision in a first party product is very important, especially early on. I think Tesla did this too, to start the flywheel where they worked with Toyota and Daimler on some early projects.
(50:13):
So it's like, this is something that I'm definitely not closing the door on, but I think it's important to actually ship the full vision of like, "Hey, this is where we think this stuff is going to go. And this is a very forward looking product." As the kind of day zero thing we launch.
Cody Simms (50:26):
So coming back, before we close out, coming back to induction stoves, we talked a little bit earlier about how poorly the marketing has been, frankly, and I think it's plagued the sort of home electrification space in general. I mean, heat pumps are kind of frankly a terrible name for the product that they are.
Sam D'Amico (50:43):
Reverse air conditioner is better, like a reversible air conditioner is better. It's hilarious.
Cody Simms (50:49):
Yeah, I mean, induction, similarly, is confusing, and it's obviously getting cognitive dissonance in people's minds with what they think of when they think of electric cooking.
(51:00):
I had a friend on Twitter reply to a question I asked about this recently, and he said, "Well look at TVs, you have plasma, you have LED, you have LCD. None of them really marketed heavily, from a category perspective. What they all are, is they're flat screen, they're not low weight TVs, or talking about the power utilization of them. They are simply flat screen." And that kind of worked, as people were moving from big, boxy TVs to these things, but they were also significantly lighter, and significantly easier to use.
(51:31):
What do you think needs to happen in this category, from a sort of mainstream, naming perspective? Or is induction it, and we just all need to help people understand what it is?
Sam D'Amico (51:42):
Oh, I'll give you the selfish answer, then I'll give you the not selfish answer. The selfish answer is, you just by the Impulse stuff. And I think we can exist as a brand that tells you exactly what you're getting, but I think that's a little silly, and that's delusions of grandeur, and all that other stuff.
(51:56):
I do think that it's very important to... I think induction's going to break through, and people will, regretfully, just use it, and know what it is, because enough people are going to have that experience. There's also just a lot of, I think, confusion on the look and feel, and various other things like that.
(52:10):
So we're obviously going a little bit different, in terms of what we're planning on making the thing look like, and various other things. Because I think having it existing in different categories is important, but my sense is, power electronics getting cheaper, it should be a point where basically every cooktop is induction.
(52:27):
That seems like an obvious no-brainer, from where the industry should go. And so, then it's like, okay, I think that self addresses it, and maybe you can call it glass cooktop, or whatever you want to call that thing. I think that's an important situation.
(52:42):
Now for us, it's the battery part. It's interesting, but I don't think that's necessarily a... It will change the UX, in that we have way higher performance than anyone else. We're able to do significantly more, I'll say at least two x versus anything else in the market. But that's something where, I think it's more associated with our brand than what the capability wound up being.
(53:03):
Yeah, I think this is actually, this is a tricky one, and I think it almost requires more of an educational thing, and obviously Stephen Colbert a couple of nights ago, and all this other stuff, it's starting to break through. But that's something where I'm not sure if I necessarily am going to be the one to engineer new branding, beyond our own branding as a company.
Cody Simms (53:24):
Well, frankly, maybe a culture war is the best thing that could happen to raising the awareness of what induction is. Who knows?
Sam D'Amico (53:35):
Well, I think it is important to look at who has stoves and who has induction. I think it's like, if you want to negative polarize all the gas stove users, who are like San Francisco, left-leaning, elite types, to switch to induction.
(53:51):
You couldn't have engineered a better thing than have congressmen taking photos with their rental unit gas stove in their DC apartment, kind of thing. Because they don't probably have one at their real house.
(54:02):
That's something that actually is probably the bigger meta story here than there being a culture war, is that, because there's signs of the culture war, it actually is going to cause people in the cities to switch.
Cody Simms (54:12):
So, interesting. Your prediction is there will be some early adopters, purely on virtue signaling, in addition to better performance, but the virtue signaling is going to cause a wave of movement as well.
Sam D'Amico (54:26):
I don't think there's going to be a near term ban of any type on this stuff. I think that that's probably pie in the sky on the federal level, but I do think that negative polarization is a potent force, I would say.
Cody Simms (54:38):
Sam, thanks so much for coming on, helping us understand what's going on, and also explaining what you're building, because it's super exciting, and excited to see it out in the wild here, hopefully soon.
Sam D'Amico (54:49):
Thanks so much.
Jason Jacobs (54:52):
Thanks again for joining us on the My Climate Journey podcast.
Cody Simms (54:55):
At MCJ Collective, we're all about powering collective innovation for climate solutions by breaking down silos and unleashing problem solving capacity.
(55:03):
To do this, we focus on three main pillars. Content, like this podcast and our weekly newsletter. Capital, to fund companies that are working to address climate change, and our member community, to bring people together as Yin described earlier.
Jason Jacobs (55:17):
If you'd like to learn more about MCJ Collective, visit us at dub dub dub dot mcjcollective.com, and if you have guest suggestions, feel free to let us know on Twitter at MCJ pod.
Cody Simms (55:32):
Thanks, and see you next episode.