An AI-assisted field platform for HVAC replacement & electrification sales — built to find, quote, and close the conversions other contractors miss, honestly. Working name "Field Engineer"; productized as Empower Toolbox.
Residential electrification is the largest forced wave of HVAC replacement in a generation, and the contractor who can identify the right home, prove the savings with the homeowner's own data, and stack every available incentive wins the job. Empower Toolbox does exactly that — in the driveway, in minutes.
Five advantages that are hard to copy and compound on each other.
By 2024, electricity had become the primary heating fuel in 42% of U.S. households (up from prior decades), and new construction crossed over in 2023 with 52% of new homes built electric-heated — the first year electricity passed gas. But much of that installed base is inefficient: roughly 25 million U.S. homes still run electric-resistance / baseboard heat at ~1:1 efficiency, versus only ~17 million on heat pumps. A modern cold-climate heat pump runs 3:1+, so these owners overpay for heat every winter — the highest-savings, highest-rebate conversions in the market. A large share are the all-electric homes built during the 1970s oil-embargo era.
Empower Toolbox is purpose-built for them: it recommends ductless mini-split / multi-zone systems (line sets, no ductwork or drywall) and it knows the field reality that breaks generic tools — gas on the utility map ≠ gas at the home. Electric-only bills automatically flag a likely no-gas home, which corrects both the recommendation and the incentive math instead of quoting a rebate the home can't claim.
About 12% of U.S. homes (~15 million) have no air conditioning at all, and the West has the lowest AC penetration of any region (73%). Critically, the homes Empower targets overlap precisely with this gap: all-electric and baseboard homes frequently have no central AC, and in arid Colorado many cool with an evaporative ("swamp") cooler — about half of swamp-cooler homes have no traditional AC at all.
That turns a heat-pump conversion into a double upgrade: it cuts the winter heating bill and adds whole-home air conditioning the household never had. The survey captures existing cooling (none / swamp cooler / window units / central), and when there's no real AC the proposal leads with the added-comfort story on top of the savings — a value proposition a like-for-like furnace replacement simply can't offer.
Rebates are computed on actual system tonnage across every level of government, then verified by a live AI lookup for the exact address. In Colorado that stack is large:
On a typical job these can cover a large share of project cost — turning sticker shock into "here's your price after incentives." Accuracy is the moat: the tool distinguishes cold-climate vs. standard heat pumps (very different per-ton rebates) and gates the gas-service-dependent programs, so the number on the signed proposal holds up. Every figure is labeled an estimate and linked to its source.
The tool reads the homeowner's actual electric and gas bills — from two separate utilities — and pulls usage, the real $/kWh and $/therm, peak demand, and monthly temperatures (including full 12-month history). The estimate then runs on the customer's own rates, not regional averages.
Planned next: consolidate that data into a single customer-facing chart — annual usage and cost vs. temperature, with the projected post-heat-pump curve and before/after spend. It makes the savings visible instead of asserted — a transparent artifact in the proposal — and it is most powerful exactly where the market is richest: all-electric homes, where clean single-utility data shows a dramatic winter spike that sells the conversion on its own.
Every piece of brand identity lives in a single configuration value, so rebranding the entire suite for another contractor is a one-line change. Empower runs the tool for its own crews and can license it to others as SaaS. The suite is structured as a "crew of roles" — Evaluator (sales), Sidekick (repair), Bookkeeper (pricing), Quartermaster (inventory), Concierge (customer), Foreman (install) — each a module and a potential revenue line.
The home market is concentrated where Empower already operates, and the same pattern repeats nationally.
| Metric | Colorado | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Primary heat = electricity | 26.3% of homes (2022) | 42% of households (2024) |
| Primary heat = utility gas | 65.5% of homes | 47% of households |
| Electric-resistance / baseboard (prime conversions) | Large share of the ~26% electric-heated | ~25 million homes |
| All-electric homes | Common; high electric-cooking baseline (61%) | 32.25 million (26%) |
| Air conditioning penetration | Below the national rate — dry climate, swamp coolers common | 88% (West region 73%) |
| No traditional AC | Elevated — many cool with evaporative only | ~12% (~15M homes) |
Colorado: U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2022 (heating fuel); EIA RECS 2020 (cooking, AC, all-electric). U.S.: Census ACS 2024 via EIA; EIA RECS 2020. Colorado household counts and resistance-heat shares are approximate, derived from state percentages applied to ~2.3M occupied units; firm before external circulation.
Directional, using current tool defaults and Colorado program figures — not a forecast.
| Line | Figure | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Typical Front Range job (sell) | $11,000–15,000 | Furnace+AC or heat-pump conversion, tool's working estimate |
| Estimated incentives, 3-ton cold-climate HP | ~$7,750 | ~$2,250/heating ton Xcel + $1,000 CO credit; more with high-altitude / income-qualified programs |
| AI cost per visit | cents–low single $ | A handful of stateless model/search calls (nameplate, bills, utilities, sizing, incentives) |
| Net to homeowner (headline) | Materially reduced | "After-incentive" price is the close; transparency is the brand |
| Capability | Status |
|---|---|
| Guided survey → recommendation → savings → pricing → branded proposal/PDF (e-sign) | Built |
| AI nameplate read + published-spec lookup (per equipment type) | Built |
| AI bill ingestion — electric & gas, two utilities, real rates | Built |
| Tonnage-aware, multi-jurisdiction incentive engine + live lookup | Built |
| AI sizing sanity check; equipment-type selection flowing to pricing & rebates | Built |
| White-label brand config + suite naming | Built |
| All-electric / baseboard → ductless multi-zone path; capture cooling & sell added AC | Built |
| AI multi-unit equipment identification (batch photos → auto-assembled systems) | Built |
| Bill consolidation & energy-story chart (customer offering) | Planned |
| Office backend (Calendar + QuickBooks), accounts/roles, central store | Planned |
| Repair Copilot (Sidekick), Pricing, Inventory, Customer app, Install | Roadmap |
Empower Toolbox — Investor Brief. Market figures are drawn from EIA RECS 2020 and U.S. Census Bureau ACS (2022 Colorado; 2024 national); rebate amounts reflect Colorado programs as of mid-2026 and are illustrative. All customer-facing savings and incentive figures are labeled estimates verified at source. Status tags track the live build.