The Power of What We are Building

Our Mission: Empower individuals and communities to become their own renewable energy provider.

Our Vision: We believe that our products will decarbonize homes by 60–80+% within the first three years of ownership.

These are bold claims, but we believe this is what is required if we intend to stabilize our climate and educate as many people around the world on how to, what we call at Torus, Live a Renewables Life (LRL).

What we do. We are direct to the consumer, meaning this product is aimed at your home. We set out to solve one of the hardest problems the world throws at society: energy storage.

Who we are. Torus is comprised of some of the brightest engineering minds around the planet to help solve the global energy storage problem. From the beginning, we have been solving the problem from a First Principles engineering mindset and will continue to do so for decades to come.

Why do it this way?

We believe in the power of a single customer’s story more than just being one of the million customers of a large-scale utility. Like electric vehicles, we believe we are at the beginning of a massive shift where fossil fuel homes will become fully electrified homes. And like large utilities, fossil fuel car manufacturers didn’t see it this way too. It took an outside incumbent to disrupt the entire industry and serve a philosophically aligned customer. What turned out to be “just an electric car company” is now a mega trend and a movement to electrify the world. And we believe Torus will lead the way for electrified homes.

And this is where you come in :) This movement is you. You see a new way as we do. The world is changing — for good — and you’re going to make it happen.

We also know that large-scale utilities are heads down trying to solve this same problem. They will get there, but we need both solutions to succeed if, in fact, homes are going to need ~300% more power than they do today. Energy infrastructure is going to cost a ton, and that will need to be passed on to the consumer to some degree. We think that will make the math in increased utility costs even easier to digest a renewable plus battery solution.

Torus’ Energy Storage Invention

We invented an alternative solution to chemical batteries. The invention is a Flywheel Energy Storage Device (or FESS) designed for the home. This insanely old technology has been underutilized and underrated. The advancement in hardware, firmware, and software design has made the FESS possible today. The cost of the battery measured in kilowatt-hours is going down significantly with our technology. Solving all of these hurdles at the same time is insanely hard, to put it lightly. Here are the main advantages of why you want a FESS:

FESS service life is 30 years. With chemical batteries, you will need to purchase a new battery storage device every 7 to 10 years. There is a term in the industry which gets overlooked called Levelized Cost of Storage (LCOS), which is the cost of kWh or mWh electricity discharged from a storage device when accounting for all costs incurred and energy produced throughout the lifetime of the device. Because of the long service life and cost of the FESS, it is a fraction of the cost compared to chemical batteries.

FESS discharge rate is 100%. Chemical batteries usually have discharge and charge rate thresholds. Most chemical batteries discharge with 10–20% left, and EVs typically ask you to only charge your vehicle to 75–85% of its full capacity. So you really don’t benefit from the total battery storage and performance amount sold to you.

The FESS does not suffer from memory loss from charging and discharging your batteries. Chemical batteries, on the other hand, lose their usable capacity after 25% of the total charging cycles. The battery chemistry starts to inhibit full charging and discharging cycles.

The FESS is not affected by ambient temperature changes. Most chemical batteries really don’t do well below 10°C (50°F) and very hot temps. These batteries are not designed for colder climates, along with humid/dry and hot climates. Many manufacturers are building batteries to only support certain climates for home use and have a lot of caveats, like ensuring they are mounted indoors and are temperature controlled, which in most cases falls to the customer to solve for and purchase.

The FESS is 95% recyclable (my favorite). Not only is the FESS sourced or mined once, but it also has high recyclability. After its service life, we can replace the $300.00 bearings then the FESS can be placed right back in service. Lithium-based batteries, on the other hand, and as you may know, have some less than favorable mining practices and do not have clear or solid plans for recycling.

Last but not least, our software. We designed world-class software and firmware to manage the use, generation, and storage of your power so you and your loved ones could benefit from decarbonizing your home while saving money at the same time.

Efficiency

We believe that generating and storing power right in your yard is insanely more efficient than getting power through long lines and poles that come from hundreds of miles away. To quantify this, our systems can be 88–91% efficient compared to large-scale utility providers, which, on average, are ~60% efficient. This is called transmission loss, which is energy lost as it gets to your home. Add in energy independence, less reliance on the grid to help stabilize our infrastructure, and the macro trend of global electrification, it sure feels like Torus is really on to something.

Finally, efficiency requires you to be an active participant. This doesn’t mean you need to change all of your habits. It means when Torus teaches you how you generate, use, and store all your power, you will need to make some minor adjustments. One of our internal goals for customers is “No Disruption is the Disruption,” so when we say minor adjustments, we have designed the product in such a way that it feels like activism. You get switched on. Awoken, if you will. To make subtle changes that have a large, worldly impact that produces serotonin and thrusts you into action.

“Torus-Powered means I used Torus 85% of the time vs. the Grid.“

How Torus Works

So what the heck are you looking at?

From left to right, top row.

Image 1: This is my Torus-Powered Score at 85%, which shows where my power comes from and how grid-independent I am. For this particular day, you can see in the Gray grid screen I only used 6.4kWh from the grid that day.

Another big factor here is the weather. This is why we install and integrate with a weather station right in your yard. Torus looks at the microclimate weather three days in advance and is tuning your Torus Station’s generation, use, and storage in real-time. Most systems just prepare you for event-based outages. We are day-over-day. This is a big big difference to anyone else building for this space.

Image 2: Probably my favorite screen in the entire app. The screen with 43.7 kWh is the total power my home used for that day. The green line shows Torus deploying battery power in the morning to cover a time of day that society produces a ton of CO2 just due to the natural pattern of humans waking up in the morning, turning on appliances, taking showers, lights, etc. Torus is fully integrated with my Tesla, and we are dynamically throttling my level II charger to charge the car, run my home, and charge the Torus battery all at the same time from my solar production. Torus knows this and covers you when there are not any renewables like Solar, Wind or Hydro being produced. It also does this in the evening as well shown with the green line above 8:10 pm.

Image 4: This screen shows how much power I consumed from the grid. Only 6.4 kWh of power! That’s after I charge my EV with 126 miles!

Image 5 and 6: It probably goes without saying, but these last two screens are the most powerful from my chair. They are built right into the app experience and are tracked every 50 ms. For fun, take those numbers and multiply them out and see just how impactful Torus is for every home every single day.

Here is the math

The gray bar accounts for if you didn’t have a Torus station and you stayed in a Fossil Fuel Home. The green bar shows how much you reduced your carbon output with your Torus Station

Save the World (C02 reduction)

Fossil Fuel Home CO2:

65 lbs x 365 days X 25 years = 583,125 lbs of C02 produced

Torus CO2 Reduction: 65–8 =57.

57 lbs reduced x 365 days x 25 years = 520,125 C02 reduced

Your home with a Torus Station 25-years: 63,000 lbs vs. 583,125 lbs

Save Money (Savings from Torus)

Fossil Fuel Home Spend:

$13.85 x 365 x 25 years= Spent $126,381

Torus Savings:

$13.42 x 365 x 25 years = Saved $122,457

I will still spend $3923.50 over that 25 years time frame which works out to be .35 cents a day.

*Caveat: this is higher than our vision of 60–80% savings and C02 reduction assumptions, so keep that in mind; these numbers could be lower or higher depending on sun availability, your willingness to load shift, and proper battery sizing.

The cost: Torus will cost me about $50k with Solar & after government incentives which is about 30% off my battery and solar purchase. There are state and local incentives as well, but they differ. For Utah, it’s $800.00 bucks which needs to be more substantial.

How can you get a Torus Station?

Simply click this link and make a reservation. It’s $250 bucks, fully refundable. We don’t waste your time. It’s a slot in the installation line, and we send experts (not sales bros) to your house before you spend a dime of money. We show you your real math with real carbon reduction and savings scores that you can take and shop with any competitor.

P.S.: The fine print. We are in early beta. So expect bumps and bruises. But for those bumps and bruises, we are also giving a heavy discount to early beta folks.

P.P.S.: We ship your Torus station with a FESS pre-charge battery that is made of Lithium IRON, not lithium ION, which is about 60% more recyclable than lithium ION. This will be replaced with the FESS in July-ish 2023 if all testing goes smoothly. But all the items for you to enjoy what I shared above are included.

If you want to visit the site, head over to www.torus.co