nPower Makes Battery Charging a Walk in the Park | Mobile Tech

Tremont Electric may very well be traveling along the same path once crossed by the Little Engine That Could. The two-year-old startup is headed where several other power generation companies want to go but have yet to get off the research and development tracks.

If the inventor and developer of the nPower PEG (Personal Energy Generator), Aaron LeMieux, stays on schedule, consumers may find his product on store shelves by next Spring. Several developmental delays compounded a missed target date of reaching market by this past holiday season.

Still, LeMieux has moved his alternative energy product from concept through basement laboratory development to patented product in a little under two years. He expanded his initial four-member start-up team to seven in 2008, adding two engineers and a specialist in the consumer electronics industry to the team.

"Overwhelming need exists for consumers to remotely charge their electronic devices. Getting the nPower PEG to market will allow our company to get into the revenue generation phase faster than any other means," LeMieux told TechNewsWorld.

Creating renewable electrical energy from walking around is not a new concept. Neither is converting kinetic energy made by phenomena like the waves of large lakes and oceans. Actually harnessing that energy, however, is often difficult.

The working prototype LeMieux designed based on what he calls "nPower technology" is proof that the concept works, he asserted. He formed Tremont Electric, named after the Ohio town in which he settled, to bring a consumer product using that approach to market.

"We deployed the crawl, walk and run strategy. We don't want to appear that we are boiling the ocean. But we have a very unique technology that will allow us to impact the alternative energy market," he said.

How It Works

The concept is relatively simple. The device lets users never lose battery power for their pocket devices. By plugging a cellphone, MP3 player or portable computer into the PEG and then carrying it vertically, walking or running -- even peddling a bicycle -- recharges the battery.

The company also plans to extend that concept to other forms of alternative energy generation. nPower WECs (Wave Energy Converters) will convert energy from the waves in lakes and oceans to produce large-scale energy not unlike that produced through wind and solar power.

Kinetic energy is produced by human locomotion (walking or running). Since people tend to move at a consistent frequency regardless of body factors, the nPower PEG tunes into this frequency. For example, a person walking up a set of stairs expends some 200 watts of power.

Cellphone and other mobile devices have batteries that at most accept is 2.5 watts on a recharge. The nPower PEG harvests 1.25 percent of the walking power and delivers it to the mobile device, according to the company.

Incubation Time

Typical of college students, LeMieux spent much of his time outdoors hiking 10 years ago as an engineering student. He conceived the idea for a walk-around energy converter while backpacking along 1,500 miles of the Adirondack Trail.

"I had a lot of time to think about converting power but couldn't get the conversion of kinetic to electrical energy right," he explained.

In the decade since then, he found a way to pull all of the components together. His Initial design goal was to use as many off-the-shelf components as possible to prove out the technology.

In 2006 LeMieux was ready to move on from thinking about converting energy forms toward actually attempting it. He left his job as a consultant to a Fortune 100 company and turned his family's basement into a laboratory. Less than one year later he established Tremont Electric and hired a startup team to commercialize the technology. In 2008, Tremont Electric moved from the inventor's basement into its first office, located in Tremont, Ohio.

Stumbling Block

Using off-the-shelf parts instead of engineering components from scratch often proved troublesome. However, LeMieux also faced a major hurdle imposed by his basement work ethic as an early-stage startup.

"I had to prove myself as both an inventor and an entrepreneur simultaneously. It was difficult to get from the idea in my basement to funding and then build the company at the same time," he explained.

Funding the fledgling company was a huge stumbling block as well. However, Tremont Electric sparked some favorable currents for its potential and its geographic location.

County Roots

LeMieux applied to Cuyahoga County for some early seed money. These local officials recognized the potential for converting kinetic energy from the wave actions in Lake Erie and the home-grown product development in a locally based factory the company could create.

As a result, Tremont Electric received the Northcoast Opportunities Fund from Cuyahoga County to assist with product commercialization. The company was selected from a pool of six other candidates.

"The county created a loan fund for pre-seed funding to help qualified startups. Tremont Electric approached the county with his project and was selected as the first recipient. We selected him because we thought he had the strongest potential to attract follow-up funding for his projects. Since then he has raised (US)$400,000," Gregory Zucca, Strategic Program Officer for Cuyahoga County Department of Development, told TechNewsWorld.

Consumer Play

Part of the selection process for Cuyahoga County officials was the potential staying power Tremont Electric represented. The fact that military officials are reviewing the consumer product for possible battlefield use certainly did not hurt the invention's appeal.

The nPower PEG's innovation to convert kinetic energy into electrical energy is being reviewed by the Army and the Navy to see if his consumer product can be adapted to meet their needs. If so, it would have to be more militarized, Zucca and LeMieux said.

"Other companies are trying to do the same thing. Tremont Electric is the first to move towards a commercial market friendly product. The others are still in R&D. He's the first to move his product to market," said Zucca.

His invention has consumer play. But the military interest in it is the most promising because military personnel carry around so much electronic equipment. This can be a big ply for him, noted Zucca.

Scaling the Future

One of the product's most attractive traits is its scalability. Changing the size and diameter of nPower's components provides the ability to increase or decrease the power output. This ability lends itself to cross-industry adaptability, according to LeMieux.

Even though Tremont Electric has but one product, it can channel that product into a variety of markets. For instance, over the next two years, the company plans to utilize its nPower technology to produce commercial energy for the electric grid. Independent testing has shown that the technology can scale upward to produce alternative energy on a large scale.

Reverse scaling is also possible. This gives nPower even greater product flexibility.

"As this device gets smaller and smaller, it can be embedded in medical equipment. In the future his evolutions will give him a play in the biomedical field," said Zucca.

The More the Merrier

The overall road map is very scalable technology conducive to the automotive, biomedical and industrial-scale electrical power generation market, according to LeMieux. He is looking at being able to power netbooks and larger electronic devices with his new technology.

He sees multiple market outlooks on the horizon. In addition to having his product in consumers' hands by the spring, he is hopeful to have the military using the nPower PEG in Afghanistan by the end of next year.