Every time a winter storm hits, Texans run through a mental checklist: gather more blankets, drip the pipes, and hope the grid holds up. Kurt Heim, Vice President of Environmental Advancement at Daikin Comfort Technologies North America Inc., understands why that anxiety stuck after 2021’s devastating Winter Storm Uri.

But this reliability and affordability problem has a surprisingly accessible solution.

In this episode, Kurt and host Matt Boms zero in on a big part of winter peak demand that doesn’t get enough attention: electric resistance heating, especially in older houses and apartments. These systems use excessive amounts of electricity to heat homes in one of the least efficient ways possible.

It’s an easy issue to miss … until you run the math for millions of housing units.

As Matt notes, if Texas has to serve roughly 12 gigawatts of resistance heating load during extreme cold temperatures, that represents real low-hanging fruit. Addressing it would fortify the grid in a way that helps Texans who struggle to afford their power bills:

“What it would do is pay some really good dividends around affordability.”

Kurt also talks about “flattening the peaks” so Texas gets more value out of infrastructure that Texans already paid for, instead of constantly adding fixed costs that show up in rates.

That framing lands even harder in light of ERCOT’s booming load forecasts: if Texas is serious about serving this growth, we should be just as serious about reducing waste, especially during the most extreme weather.

Policy levers that are already moving

Diving into the weeds, Kurt discusses updates to the technical reference manual that sets industry calculations for energy efficiency. The updates will make it easier for new construction and multifamily development to have more efficient systems.

New construction is only part of the story—improving existing structures will take more work. But as this episode makes clear, such investments will pay off in greater reliability and affordability.

Final Thoughts

Texas can chase growth and reliability at the same time. But we can’t afford to do so with outdated systems that exacerbate grid weaknesses and punish the people least able to absorb their bills.

The grid has a waste problem. Texas needs to deal with it. The best place to start is with a readily accessible solution that addresses a clear problem, lowers bills, frees up capacity when Texas needs it the most, and allows the grid to keep growing.

If this sparked a question for you, drop it in the comments. And if you know someone who still thinks winter reliability is only about power plants, send them this episode.

Energy Capital is produced by ClarityForge Studios.

Timeline:

* 00:00 – Winter peaks, why it matters

* 01:20 – Kurt Heim, background

* 02:59 – Winter anxiety, resilience mindset

* 05:08 – The resistance heating problem

* 07:08 – How big these loads get

* 09:21 – Heat pumps, how they work

* 13:11 – Climate tech, variable speed

* 15:10 – Efficiency math, 1x vs 2–4x

* 16:50 – Economics, bills and adoption

* 18:57 – ACEEE study, scale of savings

* 26:58 – What blocks heat pump adoption

* 29:05 – Codes, standards, and design basis

* 35:30 – Incentives and contractor training

* 37:53 – Political will, signs of progress

Resources:

Guest & Company

* Kurt Heim - LinkedIn

* Daikin Comfort - LinkedIn

* Matt Boms - LinkedIn

* Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance - LinkedIn

Books & Articles Discussed

* Transforming Texas: How Heat Pumps Can Replace Electric Resistance Heat, Reducing Costs and Winter Power Peaks

* Quantifying the impact of residential space heating electrification on the Texas electric grid

* Our Homes Aren’t Ready for Extreme Cold and Power Outages

Related Posts by Texas Energy and Power

* Texas Got Tested, Grid Stayed Upright

* 2022 Cold Snap Shows Resistance is Futile

* ERCOT calculates a 1:7 chance of outages in December; could be worse in January and February

* ERCOT Still Doesn’t Understand Winter Demand

* NRG’s Gigawatt VPP in Texas with Travis Kavulla

External References and Tools

* Energy Efficiency at the PUCT

* Texas Climate Zones by County

* State Energy Conservation Office Programs

Transcript

Matt Boms (00:05.004)

Why does Texas continue to see winter peak demand spike so sharply during cold weather, even years after winter storm Uri put winter reliability front and center? Welcome back to the Energy Capital podcast. I’m Matt Bombs. And today we have a really special guest and someone I’ve been excited to talk with for a very long time. Joining me is Kurt Heim. Kurt is vice president of environmental advancement.

Matt Boms (00:32.662)

and Texas Government Affairs at Deichen Comfort Technologies, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of high efficiency heating and cooling systems. Kurt has spent more than two decades in the HVAC industry, including leading the development of Deichen’s massive manufacturing facility in Waller, Texas, one of the largest HVAC plants in the world. He works at the intersection of technology, manufacturing, policy, and grid reliability.

Matt Boms (01:02.102)

And he is exactly the right person to help us talk about how heat pumps can lower bills, strengthen the Texas grid and help us stop panicking every time winter shows up. So Kurt, you’re the star today. Welcome to the show and thanks so much for your time.

Kurt Heim (01:20.108)

Matt, thank you very much for having me. I’m a long time listener of the podcast and I’m really excited about the direction that you’re going in. I’m just really pleased to be here and get a chance to talk about ePumps.

Matt Boms (01:32.91)

Thanks so much, I appreciate that. So I want to kick us off. We’re coming off of this winter storm Fern and it feels like this anxiety cycle that we go through in Texas. You can trace this all the way back to Yuri and understandably Texans get nervous when they hear a winter storm is coming. We had a few since then, we had winter storm Heather that hit, now we have Fern. And I think just to tee this up, why do we still feel like the grid is on knife’s edge?

Matt Boms (02:02.41)

every time it gets cold in Texas.

Kurt Heim (02:05.036)

Yeah, that’s a good place to start. I am probably going to say that really Yuri was a shared experience in a searing event that touched a lot of people. I don’t know anybody that didn’t have some level of disruption in their life. Mild forms of it would have been that you lost your power for a few days, but you know, a lot of people had severe issues. My neighbor was one of them that lost power, but then had pipes burst in his

Kurt Heim (02:34.026)

ceiling in his attic. And so he had a major, you know, rehabilitation of his, of his house. So those things really make an impression in your mind when we watched it happen in front of us. And there were a lot of scary things that were talked about at the time. Like would we lose the grid? Would it lose functionality? And that was something that I think sticks in our mind going forward. So I think that’s why we still have some anxiety around it.

Kurt Heim (02:59.434)

I think for me, I try to use the anxiety to my benefit. Like, Hey, let’s prepare for it. Let’s get things in line to do it so that you can personally be more resilient. But I think that’s where it comes from, Matt. We just all had that very, very visceral experience with Yuri.

Matt Boms (03:14.87)

Yeah, it’s definitely a shared experience. And I know that the media pays a lot of attention now when a winter storm comes. And the question that I get asked the most is, you know, w...