Carroll Tower, a 194-apartment public housing development in Providence, Rhode Island, was built in 1974. For more than 50 years, residents there relied on electric baseboards for heating and their own window air conditioners, if they had them, in the summers.
But now, the entire building has been retrofitted with a modern HVAC system: 277 heat pumps from Gradient, a San Francisco-based climate tech startup, will heat and cool the property.
The heat pumps were installed as part of a $1.25 million public-private project between the Providence Housing Authority, Gradient, the Rhode Island Office of Energy Resources, energy consulting firm Abode Energy Management, and Envr Air, which works to accelerate HVAC electrification.