A California Program Is Bringing Down the Cost of Heat Pumps by Buying Bulk
A California Program Is Bringing Down the Cost of Heat Pumps by Buying Bulk
加州一项计划通过集体采购降低热泵成本
When heat waves descended on California this summer, Shreyas Sudhakar, founder and chief executive officer of heat pump installation firm Vayu, took his chance. 今年夏天，当热浪席卷加州时，热泵安装公司 Vayu 的创始人兼首席执行官 Shreyas Sudhakar 抓住了机会。
Just 54 percent of homes in the state have central air-conditioning, but rising temperatures are making cooling a must-have. Sudhakar saw the hot weather as an opportunity to sign up multiple households to a heat pump “group-buy” scheme, offering them a chance to purchase technology that provides carbon-free heating and cooling at a discount. After advertising the venture online, he was flooded with queries. 加州仅有 54% 的家庭拥有中央空调，但气温的升高使得制冷成为刚需。Sudhakar 将炎热的天气视为契机，邀请多个家庭加入热泵“团购”计划，让他们有机会以折扣价购买这种提供零碳供暖和制冷的设备。在网上发布广告后，他收到了海量的咨询。
Heat pumps often cost more than cooling-only air conditioners, which is why adoption hasn’t been more widespread in the US. But the group-buy approach offers would-be purchasers a bulk discount that can defray part of the cost. Group-buys also mean installers can line up a tidy string of jobs—a win-win potentially enabling whole neighborhoods to switch to heat pumps. 热泵的成本通常高于仅具制冷功能的空调，这也是其在美国未能普及的原因。但团购模式为潜在买家提供了批量折扣，可以抵消部分成本。团购还意味着安装人员可以集中完成一系列工作，这种双赢模式有望促使整个社区改用热泵。
Along with heat pump marketplace VoltHub, Vayu launched the first California Heat Pump Group Buy last year. “Nobody, to our knowledge, had done it in California,” recalls Sudhakar. “We thought, ‘Let’s try it out.’” The program is available around Los Angeles and the Bay Area. 去年，Vayu 与热泵交易平台 VoltHub 合作，发起了加州首个热泵团购活动。Sudhakar 回忆道：“据我们所知，此前在加州还没有人这样做过。我们想，‘不妨试一试’。”该计划目前覆盖洛杉矶和湾区周边地区。
Air-source heat pumps run on electricity. They work by harvesting heat from outside air and distributing it indoors, or gathering excess internal heat and dumping it outside. 空气源热泵依靠电力运行。它们的工作原理是从室外空气中获取热量并将其输送到室内，或者收集室内多余的热量并将其排放到室外。
This isn’t exactly rocket science. Except, perhaps, to a former rocket propulsion engineer. 这并非什么高深莫测的火箭科学。当然，对于一位前火箭推进工程师来说，情况可能有所不同。
“I tell people this all the time,” laughs Sudhakar, who previously designed rocket engines at Blue Origin. “At the end of the day, it’s a bunch of pipes and a heat exchanger moving energy from one place to another.” “我总是这样告诉人们，”曾在蓝色起源（Blue Origin）设计火箭发动机的 Sudhakar 笑着说，“归根结底，它就是一堆管道和一个热交换器，把能量从一个地方转移到另一个地方。”
Among the first group of roughly 10 customers in the initial group-buy scheme was Naoya Kanai, a data scientist who lives with his wife and toddler in the Bay Area city of San Mateo. Kanai stumbled on the group-buy online and jumped at the chance, knowing that federal rebates for carbon-free appliances would soon disappear under the Trump administration. 在首批约 10 名团购客户中，有一位名叫 Naoya Kanai 的数据科学家，他与妻子和幼儿住在湾区的圣马特奥市。Kanai 在网上偶然发现了这个团购活动并立即抓住机会，因为他知道在特朗普政府领导下，针对零碳电器的联邦补贴很快就会取消。
“It was one of the most affordable ways to get a quality system,” he says of the program. Kanai recalls thinking, “I can really sell it to my spouse.” “这是获得高质量系统最经济实惠的方式之一，”他这样评价该计划。Kanai 回忆当时的想法：“我真的可以说服我妻子接受这个方案。”
Once households are signed up to the group-buy, Sudhakar and his colleagues work out what equipment they’ll need for each installation. Then, they shop around for deals from distributors so they can make offers to participants. “We’re looking for what is the best value across the entire group,” he adds. “Typically, we’re getting 15 to 30 percent discounts on the equipment.” 一旦家庭报名参加团购，Sudhakar 和他的同事就会计算出每户安装所需的设备。然后，他们会向经销商询价，以便为参与者提供报价。“我们寻找的是整个团购群体中最具性价比的方案，”他补充道，“通常我们能获得 15% 到 30% 的设备折扣。”
Kanai’s house is a two-story 1980s suburban home that has about 2,500 square feet of space. The new heat pump system cost roughly $14,500 and provides heating and cooling via ductwork that was already in place. Kanai says the flow of temperature-controlled air is much more comfortable and steady compared to his old gas furnace and air conditioner. He’s barely noticed this summer’s heat waves until going outside. “A lot of times we’ll step out the front door [and realize] ‘Oh, wow, it was actually really hot today.’” Kanai 的房子是一栋建于 20 世纪 80 年代的两层郊区住宅，面积约 2500 平方英尺。这套新热泵系统耗资约 14,500 美元，通过现有的管道系统提供供暖和制冷。Kanai 表示，与旧的燃气炉和空调相比，温控气流更加舒适且稳定。直到走出家门，他才意识到今年夏天的热浪有多严重。“很多时候我们走出前门才意识到，‘噢，哇，今天外面真的好热。’”
Other group-buy programs are available across North America, with one of the oldest operational programs on Gabriola Island, British Columbia, a 58-square-kilometer land mass home to about 4,500 people. In 2010, a group called Energy Gabriola set itself up as a heat pump dealer via a distributor, so it could buy heat pumps in bulk and sell them at cost. This was possible because, until that point, there was no heat pump market or installation service on the island whatsoever. 北美各地还有其他团购项目，其中运营时间最长的项目之一位于不列颠哥伦比亚省的加布里奥拉岛（Gabriola Island），这是一个面积 58 平方公里、拥有约 4500 名居民的岛屿。2010 年，一个名为 Energy Gabriola 的组织通过经销商注册成为热泵经销商，以便批量购买热泵并按成本价出售。这之所以可行，是因为在此之前，岛上根本没有热泵市场或安装服务。
Relying partly on volunteers, the group has installed more than 1,000 heat pumps to date, electrifying nearly half of the island’s households. “We think we’re the heat pump capital of Canada,” says Steven Earle, of Vancouver Island University, who is involved in Energy Gabriola. 该组织部分依靠志愿者，迄今已安装了 1000 多台热泵，使岛上近一半的家庭实现了电气化。参与 Energy Gabriola 的温哥华岛大学教授 Steven Earle 说：“我们认为我们是加拿大的热泵之都。”
Energy Gabriola had a relatively easy time because there were no installers to compete with. “Any other place where there are already people doing this, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t tolerate that,” Earle says. Energy Gabriola 的起步相对容易，因为没有安装商与之竞争。Earle 说：“在任何已经有相关从业者的地方，我敢肯定他们不会容忍这种做法。”
Enthusiasm can also be weather-dependent. Sudhakar and his colleagues attempted a group-buy in early 2026, but he says it was “a total flop” due to lack of interest. Then, those heat waves hit California over the summer. 热情也可能取决于天气。Sudhakar 和他的同事曾在 2026 年初尝试过一次团购，但他表示由于缺乏兴趣，那次活动“彻底失败了”。随后，夏天热浪袭击了加州。
“What we learned through that is we do need to promote this stuff when people have the external trigger,” he says. “The weather is our natural partner.” “我们从中吸取的教训是，当人们受到外部触发因素影响时，我们确实需要推广这些产品，”他说，“天气是我们天然的合作伙伴。”
With a renewed group-buy scheme on offer during the hotter weather, queries flowed again. Now, another 10 to 15 households are in line to get a heat pump in the next few months. Sudhakar hopes to scale up these numbers in the coming years. 随着天气变热，新的团购计划再次推出，咨询量也随之增加。目前，又有 10 到 15 个家庭排队等待在未来几个月内安装热泵。Sudhakar 希望在未来几年内扩大这一规模。
“It’s a good idea,” says Andrew Sissons, director for a sustainable future at Nesta, a charity in the UK that promotes policy innovations. “这是一个好主意，”英国慈善机构 Nesta（致力于推动政策创新）的可持续未来总监 Andrew Sissons 表示。
Seeing neighbors install heat pumps can convince others on the block to do the same. “That’s a really important effect,” says Sissons, saying such ventures can build “social contagion”—the same phenomenon that makes people want to install solar panels after seeing them on their neighbors’ roofs. 看到邻居安装热泵可以说服街区里的其他人效仿。“这是一种非常重要的效应，”Sissons 说。他认为此类项目可以建立“社会传染”——就像人们在看到邻居屋顶安装太阳能电池板后，自己也想安装一样。
However, he cautions that high-quality installations and good aftercare are needed ensure the positivity lasts. Because every home generally requires a slightly different system, it’s key to ensure that participants don’t get stuck with a heat pump that’s ill-suited to their needs. 然而，他提醒说，高质量的安装和良好的售后服务是确保积极影响持续的关键。由于每个家庭通常需要略有不同的系统，确保参与者不会买到不适合其需求的热泵至关重要。
Sudhakar says that he has three or four installation designs that he matches to most homes. But they might not work for older properties without ductwork or those with asbestos-laden ducts that require remediation. These wouldn’t be a good fit for the group-buy, says Sudhakar, though they could still get a heat pump through a more bespoke installation. Sudhakar 表示，他有三四种安装设计方案，可以匹配大多数家庭。但这些方案可能不适用于没有管道系统的老旧房产，或者含有石棉、需要修复的管道系统。Sudhakar 说，这些情况不太适合团购，尽管他们仍然可以通过更定制化的安装方式获得热泵。
As for the quality of the heat pumps themselves, most of the models Sudhakar recommends have a cooling efficiency rating that would be considered good. Another key measure of efficiency called coefficient of performance r 至于热泵本身的质量，Sudhakar 推荐的大多数型号的制冷效率评级都被认为是良好的。另一个关键的效率指标被称为性能系数（COP）r