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this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2026
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TechTakes
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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This system uses heat pumps at the consumer sites rather than plain radiators, so they’ve got a bit more flexibility in how hot they have to run their cooling loop. There’s also mention of a swimming pool, though I have no idea how much energy it takes to warm one of those. Does provide a year-round demand, though.
okay so they want to use layer of soil as a sort of seasonal storage. fine; this part works. 1. who's paying for all these residential heat pumps? 2. this kind of arrangement means a lot of digging and drilling. it takes one (1) nimby to stop it in its tracks and all these earthworks also cost money 3. at this point it's way simpler and cheaper to just use solar collectors to top up heat reservoir in the summer, as long as heat pumps are paid for. also these same solar collectors would just provide hot water in summer directly
were they advised by rube goldberg?
also, your local university probably has a kind of stability that makes years-decades long commitment worthwhile, unlike some sketchy bloated startup that probably dealt in crypto seven years ago