Tom Kraeutler: This is The Money Pit’s Top Products podcast. I’m Tom Kraeutler at Greenbuild 2015 in Washington, DC. This show is all about sustainability, so why not talk to a guy whose title is the Global Sustainability Expert, and he is Ron Voglewede with Whirlpool. Talk to me about what the consumer appetite is for sustainability in today’s world.
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, off the charts. I think this is where it really is meeting where the expectation of the consumer is. There’s just a latent expectation … over 90% … of consumers who are really focused on how can they bring energy and energy efficiency into the real world and to where they live, and that’s where it really starts, is in the home.
Tom Kraeutler: Don’t consumers tend to get overwhelmed when they think about this because they see it as a big topic and not one that they can maybe break down into smaller projects and get a little bit more sustainable step by step?
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, so that’s been the big issue before. There’s no easy button, if you will, for how do you achieve energy efficiency, and I think a lot of people, there’s a lot of messages out there. I think the big start is how do you look at efficiency? I think this is where we haven’t done well as an industry, especially in appliances, really telling people the efficiency story, and I think this is why we’re here today and why you’ll hear a lot more from us here in the near future.
Tom Kraeutler: Okay, so by way of an example, you have a new product that you’re rolling out, and it’s called Whirlpool [HydroCare 00:01:24]. This is a dryer, and dryers were actually one of the least efficient appliances for many, many, many decades. Even when we talk about Energy Star standards and things like that, the dryers were the odd man out. They weren’t available, they weren’t rated by Energy Star, and all of that is changing now because the technology is changing. Now you guys are building what you call a heat pump dryer. How is this more efficient than what we’ve had in the past?
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, so it works totally different. Instead of just blasting your clothes with heat, one, it dries let’s say bad fabric care performance, but what we’re doing here is essentially like an air conditioner or a dehumidifier would. We’re dehumidifying your clothes, which makes it a lot more efficient, because we’ve learned from our refrigerators that now use less than a 60 watt light bulb, so your iMac on idle actually uses more energy than that five door refrigerator we have here today.
What we’ve done with this, is it uses ventless drying, so not only did we take the technology up, but we made it more versatile, so it’s about choice, so we did a lot of different things. One, it uses a closed loop system to dehumidify your clothes, so we take and extract the water out, condense it, but we don’t vent it back into the house and we don’t vent it outside, so it does even better than the traditional condensing dryer.
Then we didn’t sacrifice capacity, so one of the big things in sustainability for Whirlpool that we’ve been driving is one, how do we make positive impacts, but how do we not compromise performance? That’s sustainability 1.0. You have the CFL bulbs that make you look sick. You can’t throw them away; they have mercury. What we’ve done here is really leap-frogged and done essentially the, if you will, the Tesla of dryers and just did a stop function change, where it doesn’t work with essentially heaters anymore in blowing air outside of your house. We’re actually recirculating all that hot air, and we can get up to 71% more efficient on the product.
Tom Kraeutler: Yeah, I guess the end result of dehumidified clothing is dry clothing.
Ron Voglewede: Exactly. You put the water in, we take the water out, but we do it a lot more efficiently. Then we have settings that allow the consumer, if you want to do fast, you can do fast. If you want to do super efficient, you can do super efficient, and really play off on the consumer choice side of the equation as well.
Tom Kraeutler: Traditional heat pumps have back-up systems built into it, so if you call for more heat than the system can deliver, it switches a resistance back-up, which is more expensive to run, but it gets the job done faster. Does a heat pump dryer work the same way?
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, so that’s why it’s a hybrid heat pump. We do have the heat in there to do that to actually drive that energy boost and be able to also drive the speed down to it. A traditional condensing dryer may take 3 to 4 hours and be half the size. We’re able to do the combination of technologies in the right way and not vent to the house, so then give you the versatility of just the 120 plug-in to actually do heat pumps anywhere in the house: Multi-family, single family, you name it. We can put it anywhere, even in your bedroom closet.
Tom Kraeutler: Yeah, that’s crazy. Now let’s talk a little bit more about the ventless technology, so what exactly happens to all that lint that we’re used to pulling out of our dryer?
Ron Voglewede: We have a two stage, so if you think about one of the big things about dehumidifiers, is how do you clean the coils? What we do is we have a customer-facing secondary lint filter that keeps those coils clean and keep it efficient through the whole life of the product. It’s only about every two weeks you have to clean that out with a traditional lint dryer filter.
Tom Kraeutler: You don’t have the fire hazard you would have typically associated with a non-ventless dryer?
Ron Voglewede: Exactly. You get rid of that completely, you get rid of all the building code issues. Where you have to place it, what do you want to do with it, so it drives a totally different flexibility, from both a design, retrofit and placement.
Tom Kraeutler: Now we know why you were in charge of Global Sustainability for Whirlpool. Ron Voglewede, thank you so much for stopping by The Money Pit.
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it, enjoy the show.
Tom Kraeutler: This is The Money Pit’s Top Products podcast. I’m Tom Kraeutler at Greenbuild 2015 in Washington, DC. This show is all about sustainability, so why not talk to a guy whose title is the Global Sustainability Expert, and he is Ron Voglewede with Whirlpool. Talk to me about what the consumer appetite is for sustainability in today’s world.
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, off the charts. I think this is where it really is meeting where the expectation of the consumer is. There’s just a latent expectation … over 90% … of consumers who are really focused on how can they bring energy and energy efficiency into the real world and to where they live, and that’s where it really starts, is in the home.
Tom Kraeutler: Don’t consumers tend to get overwhelmed when they think about this because they see it as a big topic and not one that they can maybe break down into smaller projects and get a little bit more sustainable step by step?
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, so that’s been the big issue before. There’s no easy button, if you will, for how do you achieve energy efficiency, and I think a lot of people, there’s a lot of messages out there. I think the big start is how do you look at efficiency? I think this is where we haven’t done well as an industry, especially in appliances, really telling people the efficiency story, and I think this is why we’re here today and why you’ll hear a lot more from us here in the near future.
Tom Kraeutler: Okay, so by way of an example, you have a new product that you’re rolling out, and it’s called Whirlpool HybridCare. This is a dryer, and dryers were actually one of the least efficient appliances for many, many, many decades. Even when we talk about Energy Star standards and things like that, the dryers were the odd man out. They weren’t available, they weren’t rated by Energy Star, and all of that is changing now because the technology is changing. Now you guys are building what you call a heat pump dryer. How is this more efficient than what we’ve had in the past?
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, so it works totally different. Instead of just blasting your clothes with heat, one, it dries let’s say bad fabric care performance, but what we’re doing here is essentially like an air conditioner or a dehumidifier would. We’re dehumidifying your clothes, which makes it a lot more efficient, because we’ve learned from our refrigerators that now use less than a 60 watt light bulb, so your iMac on idle actually uses more energy than that five door refrigerator we have here today.
What we’ve done with this, is it uses ventless drying, so not only did we take the technology up, but we made it more versatile, so it’s about choice, so we did a lot of different things. One, it uses a closed loop system to dehumidify your clothes, so we take and extract the water out, condense it, but we don’t vent it back into the house and we don’t vent it outside, so it does even better than the traditional condensing dryer.
Then we didn’t sacrifice capacity, so one of the big things in sustainability for Whirlpool that we’ve been driving is one, how do we make positive impacts, but how do we not compromise performance? That’s sustainability 1.0. You have the CFL bulbs that make you look sick. You can’t throw them away; they have mercury. What we’ve done here is really leap-frogged and done essentially the, if you will, the Tesla of dryers and just did a stop function change, where it doesn’t work with essentially heaters anymore in blowing air outside of your house. We’re actually recirculating all that hot air, and we can get up to 71% more efficient on the product.
Tom Kraeutler: Yeah, I guess the end result of dehumidified clothing is dry clothing.
Ron Voglewede: Exactly. You put the water in, we take the water out, but we do it a lot more efficiently. Then we have settings that allow the consumer, if you want to do fast, you can do fast. If you want to do super efficient, you can do super efficient, and really play off on the consumer choice side of the equation as well.
Tom Kraeutler: Traditional heat pumps have back-up systems built into it, so if you call for more heat than the system can deliver, it switches a resistance back-up, which is more expensive to run, but it gets the job done faster. Does a heat pump dryer work the same way?
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, so that’s why it’s a hybrid heat pump. We do have the heat in there to do that to actually drive that energy boost and be able to also drive the speed down to it. A traditional condensing dryer may take 3 to 4 hours and be half the size. We’re able to do the combination of technologies in the right way and not vent to the house, so then give you the versatility of just the 120 plug-in to actually do heat pumps anywhere in the house: Multi-family, single family, you name it. We can put it anywhere, even in your bedroom closet.
Tom Kraeutler: Yeah, that’s crazy. Now let’s talk a little bit more about the ventless technology, so what exactly happens to all that lint that we’re used to pulling out of our dryer?
Ron Voglewede: We have a two stage, so if you think about one of the big things about dehumidifiers, is how do you clean the coils? What we do is we have a customer-facing secondary lint filter that keeps those coils clean and keep it efficient through the whole life of the product. It’s only about every two weeks you have to clean that out with a traditional lint dryer filter.
Tom Kraeutler: You don’t have the fire hazard you would have typically associated with a non-ventless dryer?
Ron Voglewede: Exactly. You get rid of that completely, you get rid of all the building code issues. Where you have to place it, what do you want to do with it, so it drives a totally different flexibility, from both a design, retrofit and placement.
Tom Kraeutler: Now we know why you were in charge of Global Sustainability for Whirlpool. Ron Voglewede, thank you so much for stopping by The Money Pit.
Ron Voglewede: Yeah, thank you. Appreciate it, enjoy the show.
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