These heat pumps can be installed in an hour—and will cut costs in half

Five years ago, while working at Apple as a product designer, Mary Ann Rau decided to electrify her house and move away from fossil fuels. She installed solar, a battery, an induction range, and owned an EV. But there was still one big challenge: her HVAC system. “When it came to heat pumps, I was shocked when I got a quote for $40,000 to install heat pumps in my own house,” Rau says. Today, Rau launched a startup that’s tackling the problem of making heat pumps more accessible. Merino Energy, which just came out of stealth, makes heat pumps that each take an hour or less to install and come with a fixed price per unit of $3,800, including installation fees. For a whole home, the system could be half the cost of a typical mini split installation. (For someone who wants to add a unit to a single room, it’s an even bigger difference, coming in at a third of the cost.) Merino founders Mary Ann Rau and Brad Hall [Photo: Merino Energy] Rau left Apple in 2023 and first worked at Quilt, anoth